Ugh. This article bubbled to the top pages of Digg today. I’d known about it before, but found it freshly disturbing upon reading it again. From the Times Online:
Francis Collins, the director of the US National Human Genome Research Institute, claims there is a rational basis for a creator and that scientific discoveries bring man “closer to God”.
His book, The Language of God, to be published in [July, 2006], will reopen the age-old debate about the relationship between science and faith. “One of the great tragedies of our time is this impression that has been created that science and religion have to be at war,” said Collins, 56.
“I don’t see that as necessary at all and I think it is deeply disappointing that the shrill voices that occupy the extremes of this spectrum have dominated the stage for the past 20 years.”
Yeah, I hate those shrill voices at the extremes too. I’m picturing Fred Phelps and his ugly brood picketing funerals, or the smug, hateful voice of Jerry Falwell, or the recent crockumentary by Ben Stein, and I look on the other side of the divide for equally shrill voices, and I DON’T FIND ANY.
Collins, like too many others, is caught up in the subjective moment of the current conflict, and has no insight at all into the broader relative positions of the forces involved.
He has all the imagination of the high school gym teacher who finds two boys fighting and punishes both indiscriminately … when in fact it DOES sometimes happen that one is defending himself against a vicious and unprovoked attack, and is only trying to get out of it without being beaten to a pulp.
Not to say that the magnitude of the horror is anywhere near the same, but I just can’t help but imagine the reaction to similar juxtapositions of opponents in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust, or America’s Deep South during slavery — a group of Jews or slaves actively protesting would fit right into this blindly reactive gym teacher model. No fighting! How many times have I told you guys, no fighting! I don’t wanna hear it! You’re both goin’ to the principal’s office!
And here’s Coach Collins doing the exact same thing. Way to go, doc. You’ve actually taken a left-handed swipe at science’s defenders, and defended the freaks who’d have shut down your genome research in two seconds, were they in charge.
Plus, there’s this: < shrieks > “He’s a famous SCIENTIST! Who believes in God! It must be true!!”
Argh.