Dr. Francis Collins has mapped the human genome and embraced Christ. He sees no conflict, but there are skeptics on both sides... A scientist and a believer. A born-again Christian and director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, a federal project with 550 employees, a $480 million annual budget and a mandate to explore every twist of the DNA that makes us who we are. The synthesis has brought Collins much joy and intellectual satisfaction. But he's frustrated, too, that he's perceived as such an oddity. In his new book, "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief," Collins expresses his dismay at what he calls "the chasm between science and faith." Evolution versus intelligent design. Darwin versus God. Embryonic stem-cell research versus the sanctity of human life. "We act as though there's a battle going on," Collins said. "An irreconcilable conflict." He feels no such conflict. He believes in evolution and in the resurrection. He wears a silver ring with a raised cross and works at a dining-room table painted with the double-helix of DNA... He urges his fellow scientists to give up the arrogant assumption that the only questions worth asking are those science can answer. He entreats his fellow believers to recognize it's not blasphemous to learn about the world... Polls routinely show that about half of all Americans believe God created man, fully formed, within the last 10,000 years, as the Bible recounts. The vast majority of scientists find that ludicrous, but their account of man evolving from primordial muck does not resonate broadly, especially with Christians who believe in a personal God, deeply concerned about each human life... Some Christians accuse Collins of denying the foundation of faith when he calls the Biblical creation account an allegory. "Not accepting the history in Genesis undermines the entire gospel," said Ken Ham, president of a ministry called Answers in Genesis, which promotes creationism. "The Bible says from dust we come and to dust we return. We don't return to an ape-man when we die." From the other camp, some scientists ridicule Collins' effort to find a place for God in the scientific framework. "I could just as well say that there are 70 pink elephants revolving around the Earth," said Herbert A. Hauptman, a Nobel laureate in chemistry. Science and faith "are simply incompatible," he added. "There's no getting around it."... Collins considers evolution irrefutable; he has no doubt that all life emerged from a common ancestor over millions of years. But he began to ask himself whether God could have set this amazing process in motion: Maybe it all appears random from Earth - as though man's existence is due to an improbable series of lucky breaks - but from God's perspective, perhaps evolution is a logical, even elegant, way to populate the planet. Maybe God intended mutations in DNA over the millennia to lead to the emergence of Homo sapiens. Once man arrived, maybe God set him apart from the other creatures by endowing him with knowledge of right and wrong, a sense of altruism and a yearning for spiritual nourishment. Collins knew he could never prove any of these ideas, but that no longer troubled him the way it once had. Science could reel back time 14 billion years to postulate a Big Bang that created the universe. But it could not explain what came before that singular moment - or how the energy that fueled the cosmic explosion came to be. Science clearly had limits. So it seemed unfair to Collins to reject the divine simply because God's existence could not be proved. That argument frustrates Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg. Yes, he said, science does have limits. But attributing the unknown to God doesn't advance human knowledge or serve a useful purpose, except to give believers a "warm, fuzzy, reassuring feeling."... Polls have found that 40% of scientists believe, as Collins does, in a God who actively communicates with man. Among elite biologists, however, the figure is much lower, about 5%... Creationists have e-mailed denunciations, labeling him a false prophet. Advocates of intelligent design call him illogical for holding that God designed the universe and perhaps even the first molecules of DNA, but not complex structures like the human eye (which Collins says must have come about through evolution, though biologists haven't yet figured out exactly how that's possible). The harsh words have stung - and eaten up his time; he wakes up at 4:30 a.m. to try to answer every e-mail after his morning ritual of reading the Bible and the Washington Post. Still, Collins said he's encouraged to be part of a broader movement to explore harmonies between science and faith.
