When the head of the human genome department identified himself as an evangelical Christian, penning this well meaning (and well selling) book about the relationship between his science and his faith, he attracted scathing criticism from people with scientistic and irreligious persuasions. But the mocking derision of so many of his understandably skeptical interlocutors is undeserved, given what I think is this book's fairly modest goal—namely, to present to a variety of readers how faith and science work together in forming Collins' worldview. His views should instead be engaged critically and dispassionately, which is what this review intends to do.
First, Collins is an amateur theologian at best. He allows C. S. Lewis to make most of his theological arguments for him, which is at once charmingly naïve and disappointing. Therefore, his arguments for God's existence come across as unstudied, revolving primarily around the perceived existence of a nebulous (but universal) Moral Law (which, if fact, may well be something genetic and in any case must not be confused with a comprehensive set of moral guidelines that a religion would prescribe) and the apparently universal human desire for the sacred (which in most traditions is not identified with Lewis' and Collins' God; furthermore, this assertion completely disregards the interface of knowledge and power that gives the sacred its sacredness). Collins' insistence on following Lewis causes him to miss a great opportunity in his appendix about bioethics. Instead of framing his discussion of bioethics as a concrete way in which religious teachings can inform science, he uses it as a platform to again offer the concept of universal moral law as an argument for God's existence.
These criticisms aside, other aspects of his book show that Collins' ideas have some potential. While his summary of the modern scientific understanding of the universe is readily available in a variety of other books, Collins takes a tentative step toward relating scientific understanding to philosophical worldview—though this is a link he curiously does not make altogether explicit when he transitions from his discussion of the former to the latter. Potent questions about the function of scientific discovery within a worldview and the concurrent application of scientific knowledge outside that worldview are mostly left unconsidered.
By far Collins' most important contribution to the discussion is the way he dismantles the “arguments” for Creationism and Intelligent Design by supplying incontrovertible evidence from his work as a geneticist (of course, if the archeological record and logic hasn't convinced Creationists and ID supporters, the genetic code is unlikely to change their minds); Collins is less successful in pointing out the inconsistencies of atheism and agnosticism. His counter-proposal BioLogos (essentially a new and [to him] slightly less problematic name for theistic evolution) is promising in that it could allow an authentic dialogue between science and religion to occur, but once identifying his stance, Collins is content to ignore these possibilities and move on.
Collins is unlikely to convert any disbelievers (and I for one would be more than a little disappointed in any atheist who was convinced by the flimsy theology of Collins' book), but perhaps some fundamentalists and Intelligent Designers might be moved to abandon their scientifically indefensible beliefs in favor of Collins' "BioLogos," which is a much more considered and reasonable incorporation of the language of evolution into the language of religion.
