Welcome back to Engaging Faith, a weekly series of Street Prophets. Here, we want to have a conversation between the broader progressive community and us religious progressives. This conversation is intended to help us all work together on our shared goals in helping this nation, and this world, become a better place.
This forum is open to respectful questions and concerns on anything within the broader mission of the series. Need details on how to work with the religious left? Want strategies for how to work against the religious right without alienating the religious folks who aren't your enemies? That's what we're here for.
As a conversation starter this week, let me talk about a man who has spent a great deal of time at the crossroads of politics, science and faith, Dr. Francis Collins, PhD, MD, former head of the Human Genome Project, current Director of the National Institutes for Health. That's him to the right. He's also one of the "Nifty Fifty" speakers for the USA Science and Engineering Festival.
Engaging Faith is a forum for respectful engagement, we never fully understand each other, we may not completely agree with each other, but we share many of the same goals. To that end, it's important to be able to ask each other questions (and listen to the answers), share our viewpoints with each other (and observe the points of view around us), and that's where I hope this series comes in.
For this to work, however, I want participants to remember that we're not here to change people's minds, we're here to express our minds, understand others, and learn how to work together to everyone's benefit. I consider it important and helpful to share my views mindful of the fact that they're my views, not anybody else's, regardless of how much I identify with a group. To remember that my experiences are limited, and I shouldn't make overly broad characterizations. To recall that people have been truly hurt by the actions of people who identify as religious or political, and when someone lashes out from that pain, lashing back only makes things worse.
This forum lies within the Street Prophets community, you are welcome, but please remember that our community rules for respect apply here, and are in place to permit dialog among people with a wide diversity of views, not to suppress anybody's opinion. Don't act like a jerk or a hater.
For more about what I'd like to see here, and what I wouldn't, I go in more detail in the first post.
Francis Collins
Francis Collins is a scientist, but he's not particularly well known for his own scientific research. He is religious, and some people know him from that context (eg. he was apparently one of the interviewees in Bill Maher's flick Religulous), but his faith didn't get him the jobs he's had that brought him to my attention. He is a member of the current administration, but he's not particularly well known for his politics. What he's really best known for, where he really shines, what inspired Obama to appoint him NIH Director (with quick and unanimous Senate approval, while they were dragging their heels about dozens of other appointees), is he's an exemplary leader, organizer and administrator of scientists.
Some might say he herds cats for a living.
- Early on, he developed a technique called "positional cloning", which has helped genetic research.
- As director of the NHGRI, he led the Human Genome Project, a foundation on which an increasing amount of medical research is being built on top of. Some of the innovations resulting from that project are directly attributed to him.
- He successfully fought some of the efforts of rival genetics researcher Craig Venter to turn foundational genome research into a proprietary profit center for Celera Genomics.
- As NIH director, he has been a strong proponent of "Personalized Medicine", an attempt to refocus medicine to pay more attention to the individual, with their unique needs and quirks. This push includes everything from reminding doctors to actually pay attention to patient medical histories, all the way through helping researchers develop medications (largely starting with cancer treatments) that take into account each patient's genetic and protein profile. This last one has sparked a massive fight against Big Pharma, since it's a poor fit with their current business model.
And he does this, not in spite of his faith, but inspired by and concordant with his faith. Raised without much contact with faith, he considered himself an atheist during grad school at Yale, and became a Christian as a result of years of soul searching during his time at medical school. Finding religion didn't turn him away from science, it helped him focus what was until that point a skilled mind that had been still trying to find a direction, as he was partway through his second graduate degree.
"I have found there is a wonderful harmony in the complementary truths of science and faith. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. God can be found in the cathedral or in the laboratory. By investigating God's majestic and awesome creation, science can actually be a means of worship."
— Francis Collins, Interview with CNN, April 3, 2007
He's not alone, either, some studies have indicated that as many as 40% of professional scientists in the US believe in God in some form. Even more than that are religious in some way, as many religions, including my own, don't involve a belief in God. To help connect the scientists who are Christian (not to be mistaken for Christian Scientists, a different thing altogether) keep connection to each other, he founded the BioLogos Forum, which seeks to "represent the harmony of science and faith".
Hopefully needless to say, you cannot do important genetics research without a strong understanding and acceptance of evolution theory as a foundation of modern biology. Indeed, Collins has been an outspoken and public critic of those who seek to push Intelligent Design into schools. This, too, he can justify in terms of his faith in a God whom he believes has created a universe which we can rationally explore using our senses and our sensibilities.
Apparently he's also a good public speaker, and he's not afraid to bring his guitar along and start singing.
While he's in a band, I don't think he's leaving his day job for a music career anytime soon.
Context
I bring up Collins not to point him out as a perfect example of anything (except the best example of a himself I could find), nor as a call for people to agree with him. Personally I find some of what he says about "moral law" to miss the mark widely, he often uses the word "truth" in a way that makes me cringe. But that's OK, he's not me, he's not speaking for me, he's himself, and speaking for himself.
I bring him up because he's such a strong example of a public figure who has successfully had a solid spiritual practice, a solid political connection, and a solid scientific career. He's an example of how none of these fields are incompatible with each other.
I hope you find this a useful series, and can help me develop it into one that's useful for many people. However, I can't do it alone, please check out and respond to my call for volunteers in comments below.
And with that, I open up the floor, to questions, comments, concerns, on Collins or anything else in our broader topic.