That was really illuminating, thank you.

I really like all these posts about atheism.

I can understand that people hold this belief in God because they feel in their insides it must be true. During my crazy period I felt alot of things were true, then I took 4 little pills and hello! I experience things diffrently. I wish I could simulate the diffrence to people because it would teach them what its like to experience things on a whole diffrent level. From believing with all your heart (despite the lack of evidence) something is true to knowing it is not and having this being accomplished by a change in brain chemistry. (Like I said taking four pills). It is amazing!

"While Collins argues for the rational basis of his faith, passages like this make it clear that he "decided" (his word) to believe in God for emotional reasons."

===========================================

Was his *quest* for God emotive? I believe it was:

"I had to make a choice. A full year had passed since I decided to believe in some sort of God, and now I was being called to account."

He made a choice and decided to "believe", which sounded like it was coming from a place of deficiency and desperation. He was actively thinking and seeking. Thoughts and decisions, based on emotive reasoning rarely produce the desired result, and if they do on occasion, never is it the reliable outcome. The more you seek something out of a place of desperation the more elusive it becomes. His goal here was not achieved..

But then, it wasn't. Here he says:

"As I rounded a corner and saw a beautiful and unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over."

Here he said he "knew" his search was over (he didn't believe it to be over, so it wasn't a belief, rather, he knew). When I know something, I am not particularly emotional about it, I just *do*, or I just am. No thinking, no believing, no needing of outside validation or having to explain myself...I just know. What he is describing here looks to me more like a "state of being". A state of completion for him. A profound intuition.

Only when I can admit to myself that I can't possibly know everything, can I begin my search for knowledge. Only when I admit that I know nothing, am I given the freedom to understand and learn. What can be more rational than that?

I think Collins was on to something back at the waterfall… yet, nothing is permanent.

(Then of course, he goes and runs to religion - hoping someone else’s beliefs is the answer) He is now right back where he started, depravation, desperation and deficiency.

Good luck, Mr. Collins.

I'm confused. I don't understand how you can "decide" you believe something. You can decide to go through the motions and act like you believe something, but I don't think you can actually make the decision to believe something. You can research it and somehow come to a certain view, but a decision to have faith? That doesn't make any sense to me.

A decision to have faith is made like all other decisions: a need is felt and judgments are made (only to the point return on investment is no longer seen), then a viewpoint is assumed, to serve as a "base" for further cogitation. The quality of that cogitation can be extremely poor. Notice the word, "choice" being used despite a lack of research as to alternatives?

Mankind cannot decide who, when, what or how to worship, although plenty will tell you with conviction that what they think is totally correct.

But you decide what to believe all the time. You just don't present it so melodramatically.

I wish the canting Republicans would stop hiring religious zealots to head government agencies.

Francis Collins is a renowned scientist and administrator. He's smart and capable. To oppose him because of his religious beliefs is bigotry, pure and simple.

I have to agree with Pseudonym on this one. I've seen no evidence that Collins lets his religion push him into doing bad science or making bad administrative decisions.

Just as there should be no religious test for election to public office, there should be none for administrative appointments.

In complete agreement with Pseudy & Axman here. If you had to be rushed to the emergency room for life-saving surgery, would you demand that no Christian doctor be allowed to lay a scalpel on you? Isn't that as insane as the religious fanatics who refuse to let doctors operate on their children because prayer should be enough to make them better?

And while you & Sam Harris are getting your panties in a bunch over Francis Collins, Obama has appointed John Holdren to be his top science adviser. This is a man who has called for compulsory abortions, putting sterilizing drugs into drinking water to make all North American women infertile for the good of Mother Earth, and putting a Planetary Regime in complete control of the world's economy & natural resources:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35587

Much more, from original sources, at the zombietime link in the article. Holdren's psychotic ravings make Jimmy Swaggart seem like the sweet voice of reason, never mind Francis Collins. Why does he get a pass from Harris & you?

Martin, I read the Holdren bit a few weeks back. spooky stuff. Reminded me of the novel Brave New World.

It also reminds me of the University of Vermont's Eugenics program which originated in their Zoology Department (Perkins).

UofV scientists went to Germany to consult with Hitler in his final solution of the Jews (they didn't know that at the time, they were just lacking in humility and their ego's were more than happy to oblige Hitler's fawning). They were happy to share their work product with the Fuehrer. Never did they anticipate or intend for Hitler to have taken these idea's much further than sterilization. It’s still one of American University’s darkest times in history.

THey were awarded metals by Hitler for the sterilization program using the Abenaki Indians in rural Vermont as test subjects.

Margaret Sanger was involved as well.

I don't know Collin's work enought to say either way if he would be a strong pick. I don't care for religion, so that is a bias I have (up front). But I am in agreement, that alone is not a reason to disqualify Collins.

More gullible and irrational than all the scientists & academics who still believe in socialism?

I did read the entire Harris piece, Amy, and I was not impressed. I was especially revolted by his cavalier dismissal of what happened to James Watson, one of the greatest scientists of all time, and a much better man than Harris himself. For the record, Dr Watson was sacrificed to the Gods of Political Correctness by his fellow scientists. His views on African intelligence did not spring from ignorance & bigotry, but from reason, evidence, and a hard look at the data. As men of science, his opponents had one clear, honorable course of action open to them. They should have refuted his conclusions with more evidence, better data, and clearer reasoning. They did not (and apparently could not). Harris can't either, and the excuses he makes for what the scientific community did to Watson in the name of PC are awfully lame.

I think Collins' beliefs are nutty, and find it hard to underatand how a guy who did groundbreaking science can hold them sincerely. But apparently he does, so what can you or I do about it? The fact remains that Harris can spill out thousands of words attacking a scientist for his personal religious beliefs, but can only muster up a half-hearted defense of a truly great scientist crucified by PC, and has absolutely nothing to say about non-religious scientists like Holdren who hold beliefs so evil they could have come straight from the pages of Mein Kampf.

The Holdren ref, though, is a "two wrongs" fallacy, which doesn't excuse Collins.

Here's an article from the Reason Project.

That's the original article that Amy linked to up top, Rad.

Collins doesn't need excuses. Amy, you, and I all agree his personal religious beliefs are nutty. So? As Axman asked above, where is the evidence that Collins has let those beliefs push him into doing bad science or making bad administrative decisions? Nowhere in his spiel does Harris present any.

Harris is screaming that Scientist A must not be appointed to a position of political power because of his personal religious beliefs, despite a complete lack of evidence that those beliefs have ever influenced his science or politics. Yet he is silent about Scientist B being appointed to a position of political power, despite the fact that that scientist holds totalitarian POLITICAL beliefs, and has argued forcefully that those beliefs should be put into law and imposed on everyone.

Harris is getting hysterical over an imaginary threat while ignoring a real one. The fault in logic is his, not mine.

where is the evidence that Collins has let those beliefs push him into doing bad science or making bad administrative decisions?

how about

he regularly repeats the Christian talking point about Jesus being the only person in human history who ever claimed to be God

Also there was the Time Magainze interview in which he claimed to know what god was thinking

> putting sterilizing drugs into
> drinking water to make all
> North American women infertile

Now Martin, which kind of North American are you, specifically?

Got a better idea, put sterilizing brugs in booze

Has everyone forgotten that the worlds most renown scientists have been religious?

Lots of scientists are or were religious nuts, Newton for example.

Religious belief is not an impediment to scientific reasoning or scientific creativity.

I'm confused. I don't understand how you can "decide" you believe something. (Jessica Kunkle)

Read Theodore Dalrymple's In Praise of Prejudice. (Only buy it through Amy's marketplace.) Because of the limitations of the human mind, we have to adopt preconceived beliefs. Because of time scarcity, there's just no way we can reason about all the diverse situations we are likely to encounter in life. So, we use heuristics which in practical reasoning are prejudices. Objectivists call it the "sense of life," a pre-rational concept about the nature of the world. They advocate the "benevolent world" idea.

It's not possible to live prudently without prejudices, so we'd better ensure our prejudices are good.

What's a good prejudice? Good question. Conservatives will say the ones that worked well in the past. Liberals will say the ones that produce a certain kind of egalitarian society. Libertarians will say the ones that give the most scope for individual human action. And so forth.

I've been a Christian all my life, and I live in what is very much the Bible belt. I have never in my life heard "the Christian talking point about Jesus being the only person in human history who ever claimed to be God," and I am certain that I would remember if I had, as it smacks of absurdity.

(I have heard something along the line of Jesus was the only one who claimed to have certain powers and whose claims were vindicated, which makes a little more sense, as everything that we have, historically speaking, on Jesus does say he did what he said he would, though, obviously, it's up to you whether or not you believe the limited records. But, I've only heard that one a few times, certainly not enough to make it a standard Christian talking point.)

Based on my experiences, I'm having a hard time believing that is anything but an outright mischaracterization of what Mr. Collins says, and, if that is the case, it betrays the author's prejudices quite handily.

The problem with Collins is that he uses his scientific credentials to promote ideas that are patently unscientific. It's not like everyone's up in arms because he's saying, "hi guys, I'm a scientist AND i happen to be Christian too. Have a nice day everybody!" (Presumably, other scientists, who happen to also be Christians, have been head of the NIH. Did you hear any objections to them? No.)

Collins draws attention (and criticism) because he uses the capital he has gained by his accomplishments in science to lend credibility to his patently bad arguments that science proves that God exists.

Once one studies his arguments, one immediately sees that they are FAR from scientific, and that his conclusions are informed NOT by science, but his need to uphold religious doctrine. For example Collins says:

"After evolution had prepared a sufficiently advanced “house” (the human brain), God gifted humanity with the knowledge of good and evil (the Moral Law), with free will, and with an immortal soul."

It should be noted that these very unscientific public ramblings of Francis Collins (e.g. morality is inexplicable by evolution, therefore - 'God') began AFTER his work at the Genome Project. It is the things he has been saying since publishing his book 'Language of God' in 2006, that make many suspicious about his ability to sustain scientific reasoning when it 'clashes' with his beliefs.

To be honest, Collins' new appointment as head of NIH is going to be a more administrative one, so I wouldn't worry too much. However, I think Sam Harris has done a fantastic job of explaining the strangeness of people like Collins who can think scientifically on one hand, and yet think its possible that stories about a man feeding 5000 people with 2 fish can be true! Honestly, any scientist worth his salt should be embarassed to admit to believing in such ancient superstitions.

Yes famous scientists in the past WERE religious. But lets not forget that back then they didn't have the kind of information or evidence we have today. In the days before Darwin, even the smartest people of the day thought that diversity of life could only be explained by divine command. Since 1859 we've known this is not the case. Diversity of life is the result of evolution by natural selection i.e. No-God-Needed.

Newton couldn't understand what kept the orbits of planets in the Solar System stable, given the laws of gravity he had formulated and so concluded 'God' was behind it. If he was alive today, he certainly would have had one less reason to believe in 'God', since advances in our knowledge of physics have provided answers to that question.

People tend to place 'God' wherever there are gaps in our knowledge. These gaps are getting smaller and smaller everyday.

Responsible scientists don't shy away from mysteries and declare them insurmountalbe. They EMBRACE them, in search of knowldge. This very inquisitiveness is the spirit of science - and Collins, since 2006, has been publicly demonstrating that he lacks it. That such a person become the public face of science in a country where science literacy is at an all-time low, is heartbreaking.

Collins draws attention (and criticism) because he uses the capital he has gained by his accomplishments in science to lend credibility to his patently bad arguments that science proves that God exists.

He says that science proves God exists? His quote from the article actually says the opposite:

If God is outside of nature, then science can neither prove nor disprove his existence. Atheism itself must therefore be considered a form of blind faith, in that it adopts a belief system that cannot be defended on the basis of pure reason. (Collins, 2006, p.165)

This is exactly true. I'm not sure I'd phrase it that way because we all have belief systems that cannot be defended on the basis of pure reason. Our worldviews are heuristics not proof trees.

Francis Collins doesn't seem to know what is meant by atheism. To quote Sam Harris:

"Elsewhere he says that of “all the possible worldviews, atheism is the least rational” (Ibid, p. 231). I suspect that this will not be the last time a member of our species will be obliged to make the following point (but one can always hope): disbelief in the God of Abraham does not require that one search the entire cosmos and find Him absent; it only requires that one consider the evidence put forward by believers to be insufficient. Presumably Francis Collins does not believe in Zeus. I trust he considers this skeptical attitude to be fully justified. Might this be because there are no good reasons to believe in Zeus? And what would he say to a person who claimed that disbelief is Zeus is a form of “blind faith” or that of all possible worldviews it is the “least rational”?"

http://www.reasonproject.org/archive/item/the_strange_case_of_francis_collins2/

Francis Collins doesn't seem to know what is meant by atheism. To quote Sam Harris: "Elsewhere he says that of “all the possible worldviews, atheism is the least rational” (Ibid, p. 231)."

What makes you think that he doesn't know what is meant by atheism?

Since there are multiple definitions of atheism and agnosticism in common use one could level the "don't understand" charge at anybody, claiming that the other definition (philosophical or popular-culture, whichever the speaker isn't using) is the "correct" one. Since Collins is smart and has studied the matter from both sides, I suspect he actually knows both the philosophical and popular-culture definitions of atheism and agnosticism.

Here's what I think he meant by his "atheism is least rational" statement: the most that science or objective reason can say about the existence of God is "it hasn't been proven." To go beyond that and actively disbelieve requires more than science: it requires the heuristic correlation of subjective experiences that humans are so good at, which some people refer to as a "leap of faith".

Personally, answering "I don't know" about philosophical questions brings comfort to me. If I had to know everything or be right about everything I'd be screwed.

Pseudonym,

I think Collins' doesn't understand what is atheism given his gross mischaracterisation of it. That an informed person like Collins didn't go out of his way to define his terms is not my problem. If he meant something else by atheism then the fault is his for not defining it first, before making sweeping generalisations and declaring it to be 'the least rational worldview'. For goodness' sake atheism is not even a worldview. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_view).

If you read Dawkins' 'The God Delusion', on page 50 Dawkins painstakingly describes 7 possibilities within the spectrum of probabilities pertaining to human judgements about the existence of 'God'.

It looks like this:

"1 Strong theist. 100 per cent probability of God. In the words of C. G. Jung, 'I do not believe, I know.'

2 Very high probability but short of 100 per cent. De facto theist. 'I cannot know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there.'

3 Higher than 50 per cent but not very high. Technically agnostic but leaning towards theism. 'I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.'

4 Exactly 50 per cent. Completely impartial agnostic. 'God's existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable.'

5 Lower than 50 per cent but not very low. Technically agnostic but leaning towards atheism. 'I don't know whether God exists but I'm inclined to be sceptical.'

6 Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. 'I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable,and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.'

7 Strong atheist. 'I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung "knows" there is one.'

I'd be surprised to meet many people in category 7, but I include it for symmetry with category 1, which is well populated. It is in the nature of faith that one is capable, like Jung, of holding a belief without adequate reason to do so (Jung also believed that particular books on his shelf spontaneously exploded with a loud bang).

Atheists do not have faith; and reason alone could not propel one to total conviction that anything definitely does not exist. Hence category 7 is in practice rather emptier than its opposite number, category 1, which has many devoted inhabitants. I count myself in category 6, but leaning towards 7 - I am agnostic only to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden."

(Dawkins, The God Delusion)

So you see, a good writer first defines his terms before expounding on his views regarding them. Collins should borrow a leaf from Dawkins.

You said: "Personally, answering "I don't know" about philosophical questions brings comfort to me. If I had to know everything or be right about everything I'd be screwed."

Good for you Pseudonym. Enjoy your comfort. Some of us DO ponder the philosopihical AND scientific arguments put forward for the existence of gods, and are able to show them to be non-sequiturs, fallacious, unsound or false.

Like the good doctor, I too met a girl with acute angina. And you should've seen her tits! Made me a true believer JUST LIKE THAT.

Some of us DO ponder the philosopihical AND scientific arguments put forward for the existence of gods

Obviously I am one of you, or I wouldn't be participating in this conversation.

You have yet to show that Collins does not understand the definition of "atheism". Dawkins' discussion is also incomplete because it limits itself to a monotheistic god, omitting polytheism and other non-monotheistic supernatural beings or events. Does that mean that Dawkins doesn't understand atheism? Hardly.

In philosophy, atheism is the absence of belief in any deity. Strong atheism says there is no god and weak atheism encompasses every other non-theist position, including "I don't know". Philosophical Agnosticism says there is no way to prove or disprove anything about a god: "I can't know". Interestingly, the philosophical definition allows for the existence of agnostic theists.

In popular culture, atheism is defined like strong atheism above and agnosticism is defined like weak atheism above.

In what way has Collins mischaracterized atheism, keeping in mind that his characterization only has to match one of the above definitions in order to be correct?