As an atheist evolving to agnosticism, and seeking answers to whether or not belief in God is potentially rational, my life was turned upside down 35 years ago by reading C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. Francis Collins More Quotes by Francis Collins More Quotes From Francis Collins I believe in the literal rising of the body of Christ. It's the cornerstone of my Christian faith. Francis Collins rising christian believe What more powerful form of study of mankind could there be than to read our own instruction book? Francis Collins powerful science book Faith is not the opposite of reason. Faith rests squarely upon reason, but with the added component of revelation. Francis Collins revelations reason opposites It's not like you're closing the old doors and that investigators working away in a laboratories on a unique hypothesis are no longer needed. My gosh, they are indeed. But this becomes a real engine for hypothesis generation and even for proof if you have interventions that you can carry out in this kind of large scale and conduct them in a rigorous way. I guess, yeah, it's different. But it's different in a good way. Francis Collins unique real doors Proponents of intelligent design don't accept that some of the very complex nanomachines that we have inside ourselves could have come about solely on the basis of natural selection. Francis Collins design intelligent natural I took biology in high school and didn't like it at all. It was focused on memorization. ... I didn't appreciate that biology also had principles and logic ... [rather than dealing with a] messy thing called life. It just wasn't organized, and I wanted to stick with the nice pristine sciences of chemistry and physics, where everything made sense. I wish I had learned sooner that biology could be fun as well. Francis Collins nice fun appreciation The human genome will not help us to understand the spiritual side of humankind, or to know who God is or what love is. The well-heeled couple who decide they want to use genetics to have a child that is a gifted musician may end up with a sullen adolescent who smokes marijuana and doesn't talk to them. Francis Collins couple spiritual children When does life begin? When does the soul enter? That's a religious question. Science is not going to be able to help with that. Francis Collins soul religious doe Sometimes you develop a passion for something because of some personal experience. Francis Collins personal-experiences passion sometimes If God is real, and I believe he is, then he is outside of nature. He is, therefore, not limited by the laws of nature in the way that we are. Francis Collins real law believe Science's tools will never prove or disprove God's existence. Francis Collins existence prove tools But full sequencing? No. Very hard to interpret. At some point probably we'll all have that opportunity but most of what's there will be stuff that we don't know what to say much about. So it's a great research tool, but for clinical purposes to advise somebody to practice better health maintenance, it's not necessarily gonna be a big one for a while. Francis Collins tools practice opportunity As a scientist, you're not supposed to make decisions without the data. Francis Collins scientist data decision God gave us free will, and we may choose to exercise it in ways that end up hurting other people. Francis Collins hurt exercise people Research is so unpredictable. There are periods when nothing works and all your experiments are a disaster and all your hypotheses are wrong. Francis Collins disaster periods research By investigating God's majestic and awesome creation, science can actually be a means of worship. Francis Collins creation-science majestic mean A lot of people think PMI is the genome project 2.0. No. This is about all the influences on disease - genetics is in there, but the environment is in there as well, health choices, behaviors, all the factors that are important, otherwise we're not doing what we promised we would do - which is in a holistic way look at how people stay healthy or how do they fall ill. Francis Collins people fall thinking The best diet is the one that can be sustained over the long term, combined with other healthful lifestyle behaviors. Francis Collins lifestyle behavior long When a drug comes out [that's broadly prescribed] there are going to start to be a lot of people on it [in a million person cohort] and you might get therefore an early signal of something unexpected that hadn't come through in the clinical trials. And I'm sure [drug companies] would love it if, in fact, FDA, recognizing that, would say, OK, maybe you don't have to do your trial with 30,000 people because we're going to find out shortly after registration because we'll have a lot of people taking the drug and we'll be able to see what happened using PMI. Francis Collins fda drug people One must dig deeply into opposing points of view in order to know whether your own position remains defensible. Iron sharpens iron. Francis Collins iron views order
