According to Francis S. Collins (56), leader of the international Human Genome Project, believing in God & believing in the science of evolution aren't incompatible. He should know -- he's dedicated his career to biological evolution, & 28 years ago he dedicated his life to Jesus Christ as his personal Lord & Savior.

Collins spoke this week during a conference at Williams College in Williamstown, MA sponsored by the C. S. Lewis Foundation & will speak on the same subject next week at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI for the annual American Scientific Affiliation convention.

Crediting his first softening toward belief in God to his reading of C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, Collins said last week, "In the very first chapter, all my arguments about the irrationality of faith lay in ruins." He had been raised by nonreligious parents & had turned into what he describes as "an obnoxious atheist" until, as a medical student, he began to wonder why patients who were suffering & dying retained faith in God. He realized that as a scientist "you're not supposed to decide something is true until you've looked at the data. And yet I had become an atheist without ever looking at the evidence whether God exists or not."

Continuing to be troubled by doubts, 28 years ago he took time out to go hiking in Oregon's Cascade mountain range where, finally, "I fell on my knees & asked Christ to be my Lord & Savior. And he has been here ever since, the past 28 years, as the rock on which I stand." Denominationally, he has been a Methodist, two kinds of Baptist, & is currently Presbyterian.

He is both embraced & criticized by both secular scientists & evangelical Christians. By secularists because he is an unabashed believer who says there is plenty of evidence for God's existence, & by evangelicals becaue he says the evidence for evolution is "overwhelming."

In his new book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (Free Press, 2006), Collins argues that both approaches are "profoundly dangerous. Both deny truth. Both will diminish the nobility of humankind. Both will be devastating to our future. And both are unnecessary."

The book encourages secular scientists to investigate God with the same open-minded zeal they apply to the natural world, assuring them there's no incompatibility between belief & scientific rigor. It also warns evangelicals that opposition to evolution undermines the credibility of faith.

"It is time to call a truce in the escalating war between science & spirit," Collins pleads.

For the full story: Scientist Encourages Skeptics to Investigate God.