Francis Collins at BYU

This week Francis Collins gave a speech at BYU that I enjoyed watching. Here is the link and this post will give you the highlights. 

He started out talking about his impressive career which included being the head of the National Institute of Health for many years, including during COVID. He headed up the Human Genome Project and also did research, finding the genes for cystic fibrosis and Huntington's Disease. He got a Ph.D. in chemistry from Yale and then went to medical school at University of North Carolina. 

He also talked about how he became a Christian. Before medical school, he was an atheist, but it was at the bedsides of people who were dying that he started to realize he wouldn't know how to handle that. One woman who reminded him of his grandmother told him about her faith in a compelling way and then asked him a question, "Doctor, what do you believe?" He realized that he had spent almost no time pondering this extremely important question. He said he basically ran out of the room because he was so embarrassed at not knowing what to say.

He spent the next two years studying this question. He read the books of C.S. Lewis which were a huge help to him as he had traveled the same road with the same questions. Ultimately he became convinced that the rational choice was to believe in God. Then he realized that the only way he could approach God in his imperfect, sinful state was through Jesus Christ. He had thought that Christ was a myth but realized that actually the historical evidence for Christ is quite compelling. Finally, at age 27, he said he gave his life to Jesus Christ and continues as a committed, evangelical Christian today.

He said he was surrounded by skeptics but that he had discovered that Nature gives evidence of God in the world around us. 

1.  There is something instead of nothing (why are we here?)

2.  "The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics"--how can we explain the behavior of matter and energy?

3.  The Big Bang--scientists cannot explain what started the Big Bang

4.  The precise tuning of physical constants in the universe, like gravity and nuclear forces--if those constants changed by a tiny amount, chaos would result.

5. The Moral Law--why do all humans have an implicit sense of what is good and bad?

6.  Beauty--why are we so attracted to beauty?

The next thing he talked about was how we're doing as a country and his view is not good. He specifically talked about how COVID was an extremely divisive time and how the vaccine which actually saved lives were not trusted by some because of misinformation. He said 230,000 Americans died because they did not get the vaccine. 

He says that part of our problem is that some of the traditional anchors of our society have been lost. One of those anchors is the idea that truth exists. The current popular thinking is that something might be true for you but not true for someone else. He said if you're talking about a movie, then it doesn't matter but if you're talking about the fact that the earth goes around the sun and not the other way around, then your opinion doesn't matter. 

He said, all too often, we get in a discussion and we forget which circle we're in. He said that science has a big role to play in finding truth but that some people don't trust science. (I would say that this is not helped by scientists who weigh in on politically-charged topics that are completely out of their field and expertise.)

He gave a plug for continuing to fund medical research which can help so many people live healthier lives. 

Next, he talked about how faith can help.

He is disappointed with some of his fellow evangelicals and other Christians who are not showing the Christian values that he holds to. He says he reads the Sermon on the Mount every week to remind him of the person he should be--to love his enemies, be long-suffering, and peace-loving. Certainly we Christians can do better.

Another anchor that has been lost is a loss of trust in institutions. Only the military has gained in trust in the last 50 or so years while trust in everything else has gone down significantly.

He said people used to use different criteria for deciding how much they trusted an institution:  competence, integrity, humility, and aligned values. However, now the main and sometimes only value people use is alignment. People say, if that person or institution is in my tribe then I'm going to trust them without doing much critical thinking or being that skeptical. He says we all do it.

So how do we course-correct? He had some ideas:

He advocated for the organization called "Braver Angels" which puts people together who are on opposite sides of the political spectrum and has them talk to each other. He had a discussion with a trucker who was furious about what happened during COVID. On the Braver Angels website is a pledge which he suggested we sign.

He finished up the forum by playing a tune on his guitar that we know as "In Humility Our Savior" with different lyrics written by a pastor in Colorado. I didn't really get the words because they never showed them on screen.

It was a good forum! I have a better, more informed opinion of Francis Collins than I did before and I'm looking forward to reading his book: