Science and Religion – 7.5.2020<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Often, we think of Science and Religion as separate and competing concepts. Below is an excerpt of an interview with the chief U.S. scientist who is dealing with the current coronavirus crisis. He is a practicing Christian who clearly justifies his belief in GOD.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ronald Mangum, Master<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Excerpt from an interview with U.S. National Institutes of Health director Dr.Francis Collins on the Corona Virus and Belief in GOD<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jebediah Reed, @jebediahreed<\/a>, published in \u201cThe Intelligencer\u201d on 1 July 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As someone who is both an acclaimed scientist and a public Christian, what\u2019s your perspective on the pandemic as a cultural issue? Do you see any clear way around that?<\/strong>
It\u2019s one of the great tragedies of this current moment that scientifically based public-health measures have somehow been captured as cultural or political phenomena. Your chance of spreading the coronavirus to a vulnerable person has nothing to do with what culture you come from or what political party you belong to. Your responsibility is to try to prevent that from happening to vulnerable people around you. But our country\u2019s polarization is so extreme that it even seems to extend into a place like this \u2014 where it absolutely doesn\u2019t belong. That is really troubling because it\u2019s putting people at risk who shouldn\u2019t be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a happier note, what was it like to <\/strong>recently win the Templeton Prize<\/strong><\/a>, the prestigious annual award recognizing individuals for their efforts to bridge the gap between science and faith? That must have been a nice surprise.<\/strong>
It was stunning to get that phone call and to look at the list of previous winners and try to imagine how this could possibly have happened \u2014 the first prize winner being Mother Teresa, and other prize winners along the way people I have incredible respect for, like Billy Graham and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I could only conclude the committee must have made a terrible mistake. I\u2019m really grateful, just the same, because I\u2019m an amateur theologian. I\u2019m a pretty good scientist. But to be put on this roster with those heroic figures was beyond any expectation I ever could have had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You have worked, in your capacity as a scientist, to fund a fair amount of brain research, and you\u2019ve also written a book called <\/strong>The Language of Go<\/strong><\/em>d: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief<\/u><\/strong><\/em>. Before taking over at NIH, you started a foundation called <\/strong>BioLogos<\/strong>, which makes the case for a harmony between science and Christianity.<\/strong> What\u2019s your perspective, at this point in your career, on what consciousness is?<\/strong>
That\u2019s the big question in all of neuroscience. In terms of the scientific basis of consciousness, we really don\u2019t have a clue. In terms of the spiritual significance, obviously it\u2019s pretty important that we human beings seem to be special in our awareness of ourselves and our ability to imagine what other people are feeling at a given moment. All that is part of consciousness. I was an atheist when I entered medical school. I was a Christian when I left \u2014 and it was much driven by this experience of trying to integrate the reductionist aspects of science into the much more fundamental issues I saw my patients wrestling with, like is there a God and does God care about me and what happens after I die?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those are uncomfortable questions for an atheist 23-year-old, but ultimately they became totally compelling and required some investigation and some answers. Ultimately, out of that, it came to me that it makes a lot more sense to believe in God than to deny God\u2019s existence. A scientist isn\u2019t supposed to make assertions that you would call universal negatives, because you can never have enough evidence to do that, and yet that\u2019s what atheism calls you to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I surprised myself as I began to look at the pros and cons of belief versus nonbelief \u2014 that actually through science there seem to be a fair number of pointers, not proofs, but pointers toward the idea of a creator and a creator who was not only interested in creating something out of nothing, but also in having that something ultimately give rise to creatures with big brains who would have consciousness, who would have self-awareness, and who would have curiosity not just about nature, but also about who they are and what kind of spiritual creatures they might be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It took me a couple of years to get through those many thickets of intellectual debate, but it led me then at that point in my life to see science and spirituality as not in conflict but actually quite compatible, quite harmonious, quite self- and co-reinforcing. People said my head was going to explode, that it would not be possible to both study genetics and read the Bible. I\u2019ve never found a problem with this at all, despite the way in which some scientists have caricatured faith to make it seem incompatible. Most of those caricatures don\u2019t resemble my faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, the way that some people have caricatured science as a threat to God, that doesn\u2019t resemble the science that I\u2019m doing. It\u2019s been a terrible, I think, consequence of our last century or so that this polarization has been accepted as inevitable when I see it not at all in that light. There are many interesting scientific questions that tap into the kind of area that you\u2019re asking about, like what is the neuroscientific basis of consciousness? What is the neuroscientific basis of a spiritual experience? If there is such a neuroscientific basis, does that make this spiritual experience less meaningful or more so? Those are fun conversations to have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Very few people seem to stand publicly and effectively at the juncture of those two worlds. There are certainly some, but not as many as one might expect. From your perspective as head of the NIH, and someone who has also won the Templeton Prize \u2014 when you lie in bed at night, what gives you hope about the next 50 or 100 years for humanity? What are the really hard problems that test your optimism and your faith?<\/strong>
Boy, that\u2019s a big one. What is our future? I don\u2019t want to see a future where this science-versus-faith conflict leads to a winner and a loser. If science wins and faith loses, we end up with a purely technological society that has lost its moorings and foundation for morality. I think that could be a very harsh and potentially violent outcome. But I don\u2019t want to see a society either where the argument that science is not to be trusted because it doesn\u2019t agree with somebody\u2019s interpretation of a Bible verse wins out. That forces us back into a circumstance where many of the gifts that God has given us through intellectual curiosity and the tools of science have to be put away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I want to see a society that flourishes by bringing these worldviews together by being careful about which worldview is most likely to give you the truth, depending on the question you\u2019re asking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Science and Religion – 7.5.2020 Often, we think of Science and Religion as separate and competing concepts. Below is an excerpt of an interview with the chief U.S. scientist who is dealing with the current coronavirus crisis. He is a practicing Christian who clearly justifies his belief in GOD. Ronald Mangum, Master Excerpt from an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,29],"tags":[10,35,11],"class_list":["post-786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-messages","category-news","tag-grandmaster","tag-mangum","tag-osmtj"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/osmtj.global\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/osmtj.global\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/osmtj.global\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/osmtj.global\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/osmtj.global\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=786"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/osmtj.global\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2598,"href":"https:\/\/osmtj.global\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786\/revisions\/2598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/osmtj.global\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/osmtj.global\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/osmtj.global\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}