Genome scientist and Evangelical Christian Francis Collins got the nod from President Obama today to head up the National Institutes of Health. Atheists are already on the attack. Thus Jerry Coyne at the U. of Chicago pronounces himself “worried”: “I’d be much more comfortable with someone whose only agenda was science, and did not feel compelled to set up a highly-publicized website demonstrating how he reconciles his science with Jesus.”
Just so happens I have an op-ed in the Forward this week reflecting on precisely the fight over “accomodationism,” pitting Coyne et al. v. Collins et. al. The issue: can science and religion be reconciled, or does it perhaps make a difference what you mean by “science”? Readers of this blog will know that I’ve shown how Francis Collins makes a mash of the very serious religious belief that human beings are made in the image of God. More on Collins and his insipid theology here.
The author doesn’t see a need for divorce of science from religion. I maintain there is not marriage, and one should not be made. Science and religion are not the same, indeed they are fundamental opposites — one finds conclusions from facts, and the other finds facts to fit a conclusion (that there is an invisible man in the sky). To adhere to both is to apply different world view to the same world, depending on the subject matter.
There is no reason for science to tolerate religion, nor even consider it, save for the archaeological kernels of truth that may appear in religious texts. I’m getting tired of this debate.
