Science & Faith Fail

Has Francis Collins Become Unmoored from Reality?

Background:

Raised by two freethinkers, Francis Collins was comfortable in his atheism until he was a med student and a critically ill patient asked him what he believed about God. He realized it was an important question for which he had no answer. It set him on a search, and at age 27, he became a Christian. He practiced medicine for three years before going into academia, where he specialized in genetics. He joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1993 and served as its director from 2009 to 2021. He also founded BioLogos in 2009, an advocacy group that promotes Darwinian evolution to Christians. He's most well-known for heading up the Human Genome Project and for being a professing Christian and scientist in a high-profile position.

Reason for Surveillance:

Collins wrote about his conversion with commendable humility in his book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. But beyond that, the book was not so much about God (or his language) as it was about setting forth a science and faith compatibility structure whereby mainstream biology provides the foundational scaffolding for knowledge about the world, while the tenets of faith may be added in, but only so long as they leave the evolutionary foundation undisturbed. At most, God may have made evolution look "random and undirected." For the entirety of his public life, Collins has been a reflex critic of intelligent design. Without substantively engaging with its arguments, he's called ID "lies," "anti-scientific thinking," and "not only bad science [but] potentially threatening in other deeper ways to America's future."

When he was first appointed NIH director, some expressed concern that his Christian faith would have too much influence. But, as Science magazine reflected in 2019, it "never became an issue." In fact, Collins has overseen all manner of ethically problematic research. Following President Obama's order, he loosened restrictions on stem-cell research, and he not only defended fetal-tissue research, but his NIH took it to the next level, funding, for example, the harvesting of body parts from aborted babies as mature as full-term and creating from them human-mice hybrids.

As the cultural tides have turned, so has he—to the point of breaking with biological reality. For Pride month 2021, he recounted several NIH SGM-related (Sexual and Gender Minority) projects, including one on issues related to measuring sex as a non-binary construct. When Ed Stetzer invited him to affirm that "women get pregnant" after the CDC started referring to "pregnant people," the best he could muster was, "All human institutions have flaws," but we should "look past that" and ask, "What is the truth?" What he's really worried about, he went on, is that we've become "unmoored from an appreciation that truth is what really matters"—not just the secular world, but the church as well.¹

Most Blatant Punt:

This is stunning. Indeed, "What is truth?" is the ultimate question, but don't miss that here he was, arguably the top "official" health scientist in the country, asked to confirm a biological truth about human reproduction, and he wouldn't do it. Instead, he turned the question back around, and in so doing, criticized the church and defended the CDC with the bizarrely vacuous, "You'll find a lot more truth on the CDC website than on Facebook."

He's probably right about that, but Dr. Collins's obfuscation regarding biology and sex remains. I think we can agree with him about one thing, though. He's right to worry about becoming unmoored from truth.

Note
1. youtube.com/watch?v=sI0ymYgkNS8&t=1s.