Helping Christians Reconcile God With Science

This article first appeared in the Religion News blog and it's about time someone tried reconciling science with mainstream religious thinking!

http://www.religionnewsblog.com

Guest post by Amy Sullivan, Time Magazine: Summarized by Religion News Blog!

For many young Christians, the moment they first notice discrepancies in the Biblical tales they’ve faithfully studied is a rite of passage: e.g., if Adam and Eve were the first humans, and they had two sons — where did Cain’s wife come from? The revelation that everything in the Bible may not have happened exactly as written can be startling. And when the discovery comes along with scientific evidence of evolution and the actual age of planet Earth, it can prompt a full-blown spiritual crisis.

That’s where Francis Collins would like to step in. A renowned geneticist and former director of the Human Genome Project, Collins is also an evangelical Christian who was the keynote speaker at the 2007 National Prayer Breakfast, and he has spent years establishing the compatibility between science and religious belief. And this week he unveiled a new initiative to guide Christians through scientific questions while holding firm to their faith. (Finding God on YouTube)

After his best-selling The Language of God came out three years ago, Collins began receiving thousands of e-mails — primarily from other Evangelicals — asking questions about how to reconcile scriptural teachings with scientific evidence. “Many of these Christians have been taught that evolution is wrong,” Collins explains. “They go to college and get exposed to data, and then they’re thrust into personal crises of great intensity. If the church was wrong about the origins of life, was it wrong about everything? Some of them walk away from science or faith — or both.”


Collins, 59, who with his mustache and shock of gray hair looks like former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton’s cheerful twin, seems genuinely pained by the idea that science could be viewed as a threat to religion, or religion to science. And so he decided to gather a group of theologians and scientists to create the BioLogos Foundation in order to foster dialogue between the two sides. The name — combining bios (Greek for “life”) and logos (”the word”) — is also what Collins calls his blended theory of evolution and creation, an approach he hopes can replace intelligent design, which he derides as “not a scientific proposal” and “not good theology either.”

Through the Washington-based foundation, Collins says he and his colleagues hope to support scholarship that “takes seriously the claims of both faith and science.” Its online component, biologos.org, is designed to be a resource for skeptics and nonbelievers who are interested in religious arguments for God’s existence. But the primary audience for BioLogos is Collins’ own Evangelical community.

I dug up a presentation made by Dr. Collins a couple of years ago, and although we don't agree with everything he says, "Perspective" feels it is important to present all sides of a discussion so without further ado here is Dr. Collins.

(Note; This speech is two hours long so even though you might not listen to the whole thing, it is important to listen for a little while to get the general message he is trying to convey. -Allan)


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-Allan; While this is fun, it doesn't really work. The Evolution/Creation conflict is merely one front in the greater Biblical Literalists/Biblical Interpretationalist conflict. The Absolutist view any dilution of the Literal Word Of God as Anathema. People have been trying the reconcilliationist approach since before Darwin.It's trying to teach a pig to sing.
Pelagius Hereticus,

Fun???? what do you mean 'fun'?As Allan says, if Adam and Eve had two sons, one of the sons woruld have to sleep with his mother to have any generation beyond A&E and the two boys!Just look at the 'begats' where did all these people come from?!All FAiry-Tales!
Georgiana S.,

Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know......!) and is available as an E-Book H E R E! and H E R E! And as a paperback H E R E ! and H E R E !

Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://allans-perspective.blogspot.com