The Language of God

We are at an interesting junction in the overall scheme of things.  The economy is very bad - several countries are going under much like banks and other "businesses" have been doing domestically.  There have been a seemingly disproportionate amount of earthquakes, hurricanes, and other such natural disasters as of late.  And we seem to be reading more and more news stories of people dying relatively young - from cancer, freak accidents, and suicide. In the midst of all this chaos, there is a tendency to blame God.  And blaming God often turns to a complete disbelief in His existence.  Try talking to a person who angrily rejects God and he or she will undoubtedly tell you that if there was a God, then why is there so much evil and overall bad things happening in this world?  If you try to answer with the fact that we have free will and have made a mess of things, they will tell you that they do not believe in free will.  Moreover, they assert that it is illogical to believe in a higher intelligence.  They have reduced us to nothing more than a series of biological processes and events.  To them, science is truth, and God and science can not mix.  It's been a while since I have had a chance to post anything here.  Since I last touched base with you all, I have been reminded that if you want to keep excess weight off, you have to count calories - there's just no way around it.  We had snow last month - the first time I have seen snow in Northern Virginia as early as October. And I discovered that Breadfruit, a supposedly bland but extremely plentiful plant,  is the food of the future.  I considered posting about one of these topics.  But, instead, I am going to do something I have not done before - I am going to recommend a book. 

The book, The Language of God, by Francis S. Collins, is the most brilliant attempt I have seen to reconcile God with Science.    Collins is a one-time-atheist who is also a renowned scientist, known for his work with the Human Genome Project.   He was among the first to unravel our DNA, a process which led him to understand what he calls "the language of God".  "We have caught the first glimpse of our own instruction book", he said concerning it, "previously known only to God."  Collins unites Darwin's theory of evolution with the story of creation in the book of Genesis as only a scientist can do.  He sees the Big Bang as the moment when God set the universe in motion, ultimately leading to the emergence of life, which culminated in the appearance of intelligent beings that are able to participate in and comprehend the creative process itself.   He gives strong scientific evidence for the existence of a higher, creative intelligence.   And he very articulately explains why we humans inherently possess a longing for something greater than ourselves. 

In response to the claim that a belief in God is merely "wishful thinking", Collins discusses the Moral Code that humankind inherently adheres to, the "God-shaped vacuum' we all seem to have, and culminates with the fact that just because we wish for it doesn't mean it is not true - that "creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists".  

Collins' thoughtful and thought-provoking scientific arguments for the existence of a higher intelligence include the fact that scientists are unable to explain or interpret the very earliest events in the explosion we know as The Big Bang, as well as explaining how developments in quantum mechanics have now turned scientific determinism on its ear.   His discussion of the Cambrian explosion is compelling (including reducing all of creation to a 24-hour day and realizing that, in that context, if the earth was created at 12:01 a.m., life would have appeared at 3:30 a.m., with the Cambrian explosion at 9:00 p.m., and the extinction of dinosaurs at 11:40 p.m.   Human beings appeared on the scene with just seconds left in the day...)  The question he raises is why and how was there a sudden explosion of complicated life forms so late (9:00 p.m.) in our world's existence?  What "caused" that sudden explosion of life?   His discussion of the ramifications of unraveling our DNA, of course, is the crux of his book and I would do it a severe injustice if I tried to summarize it in anything you could read in a matter of minutes. 

Why am I writing a post on this topic?  The same reason why I have not posted anything in so long.  My heart has been heavy and I have felt weighed down trying to explain and defend why I believe what I do.   I challenge anyone who denies the existence of God on scientific grounds (or knows and loves someone who does) to read this book.