God and the Genome - Francis Collins

[ChrisHoulihan]

Geneticist Francis Collins, Director of the famous human genome project, gave a lecture at stanford called God and the Genome. It outlined how he came to belive in God through reason, and how he came to be specifically christian, and how he sees evolution and the christian faith as not in conflict.

I'm wondering what others think of this lecture, so if you are interested, it is found at this link:

God and the Genome - Geneticist Francis Collins speaks at Stanford

Just a warning, this is a University lecture, its two hours long and not ment to entertain. So you have to have a mature attention span to watch this.

If you have little scientific knowledge, you have to pay very close attention.

[GentleArtillery]

Maybe you can write a (if short) summary of the lecture? That would probably attract more people. Seeing a video is so passive, reading something is rather active.

[Lord Westcott]

I might watch it at some point, but I haven't got two hours going spare right now. Sounds like the kind of thing that will interest me when it isn't 8am and I haven't been up all night though.

[ShadowLink92]

Sounds interesting. I dont have time to watch it right now, but Im curious to see how he reconciles evolution and Christianity. I had thought the two concepts mutually exclusive.

[Lord Westcott]

I always thought they could coexist in harmony, so the video may just come accross as common sense to me...

[ChrisHoulihan]

Arg! no one has time to look at the evedence watch this excellent video

[Miilou Suede]

I'll go through it, just give me a little while and expect an answer by tomorrow evening.
Edit: BLAH! Sorry, give me another day.

[Miilou Suede]

I do realize I'm double posting, but perhaps it is justified in that I said I would respond at a later time. If the powers that be hold a different position, understand I do apologize and will cease to double post in the future.

The video was exceptionally well put together. Dr. Collins is a very eloquent man and I think he's a key to help bringing people to the "middle ground" as he calls it. I was not aware that ID rejects evolution as a ground rule and found it comforting to know I probably fit in with him at Theistic Evolution. I also appreciated in the fact in how consistent he was in his rule that very little actual material proof could be found for a personal, loving God and that it belief is mainly structured upon an unbreakable and resonant spiritual experience.

The questions were actually a bit disappointing I think; very little of them had to do with a healthy blending of both faith and science, but at least some did.
Some questions I ponder after watching:

1. It did bug me how he said it may be possible for those "who never heard" to possibly gain salvation. I'm really not sure what I believe, but I was exceptionally happy to hear that he was persistent in claiming "I don't have all the answers" and "Go ask your pastor.
2. Were Adam and Eve real people? He identified that modern consensus claims that we may have descended from a pool of ten thousand. It bugs me in that, how does Jesus and his ancestors fit into that?

[ChrisHoulihan]

First off, thank you Miilou Suede for taking the time to watch this! I think it was a great video too, best I've ever seen on this topic.

Originally Posted by Miilou Suede

1. It did bug me how he said it may be possible for those "who never heard" to possibly gain salvation. I'm really not sure what I believe, but I was exceptionally happy to hear that he was persistent in claiming "I don't have all the answers" and "Go ask your pastor.

Collins get s alot of ideas from C.S. Lewis. I find this idea interesting. God is the Judge of who is saved, not us.

Christianity is the truth, but its not knowing the truth the saves us, it is God that saves us, its God's choice. I'm kind of guessing Collins is a Calvinist.

Originally Posted by Miilou Suede

2. Were Adam and Eve real people? He identified that modern consensus claims that we may have descended from a pool of ten thousand. It bugs me in that, how does Jesus and his ancestors fit into that?

You know, the bible just says that Adam and Eve were the fist humans. God breathed breath into Adam and gave him his image. God could have also breathed life into ten thousand others, the bible just doesn't mention this.

Who did Seth Marry if Adam and Eve were the only two people?

[Miilou Suede]

Originally Posted by ChrisHoulihan

Who did Seth Marry if Adam and Eve were the only two people?

That's an interesting point! Something I like to hold about the garden is that it gives NO indication of what kind of time could have passed. It's very probable MANY, MANY years could have passed to allow for the gap between the first humans and early Jewish civilization. After all, there was no death before the fall.

[Mirror Image]

Well, from what I got from that video I don't think that Collins thinks Adam and Eve actually existed, I guess I could be wrong, but I'm guessing that God won't hold it against me if I don't believe in Adam and Eve, but take them for the biblical truth I'm taught in my church. So this is something I've never concerned myself with.

I wrote some notes on the video as I watched it. They kind of died towards the end, but these are some things I took from it, and just some questions I'm just going to throw out there.

Why is there something instead of nothing?

That is a very, very hard question to think about, and I'm glad Collins brought it up, becuase that is the very thing that kept me from ever calling myself an atheist. Something insides me refuses to believe that there is not something beyond what we see as natural at work that made everything possible, and to me that is God. If it's the same as the Christian God, I cannot say yet if it is personally to me, but I'm working on it, beleive me, I'm working on it.

Why does math work?
This, on the opposite, I've never actually thought about, but I will say that math is a very beautiful thing, and while I will not reject the idea that math could work differently in a parallel universe or whatever, the whole 15 constants thing made me think of the wonder of math, how things just work so perfectly. It was thought provoking is all I could really say on the subject.

He also said something about Occam's Razor pointing to a creator being more likely than infinite parallel universes, and I didn't really like that all that much. I guess to me Occam's Razor only works with within the laws of our universe (I know that it's really a philosophical thing, Occam's Razor and not scientific) but it rubs me the wrong way to let something supernatural fall under its ideology, though that could be just me.

He also said something that I wrote down here that I found very humorous.

"A Universal feature of humanity unique to our species." It makes perfect sense, but it just goes to show how language makes things look odd. Universal doesn't seem to work well in a sentence with unique, which just made it oddish, though it is a very, very thought provoking idea and one I agree with 100%

But I'd also like to turn the conversation that he said toward something else. He, and it seems he got his idea for this argument from C.S Lewis, which I will talk about later, was talking about how we have a universal idea of morality, and he basically made the claim that that was beyond human ideology, that since it is within us all it had to come from somewhere, and even if I agree with this, I really don't understand why Justice can't just be a man made fact. At least, that what I think I'm agruing, admittedly my notes on this suck.

But I don't exactly see why good and evil are supernatural to him. Why couldn't we have evolved into this mindset? I expect this argument can be torn apart easily, and I'm not really trying to argue with it, so I guess I'm just asking your opinion on the whole good and evil thing.

That's really all I can decipher from my notes, and I wish I took better ones so I can have a more expansive opinion on this whole thing, but I guess I feel what I have so far is sufficent enough. The speech was in no way boring as you initially explained it, and it kept my interest the entire way though, and I would like to thank you for sharing it. If you would, can you tell me your ideas on it? Anything you disagreed with/liked? I'm curious.

Also, I picked up a copy of Mere Christianity today. Have you read it? I'm on chapter 3 only, but so far it is very good. I almost got Collins's new book, but I got this one instead and plan to get his at a later date. So if you want to take anything out of your thread, know that it has seriously got me thinking, and I thank you.