Franics Collins

[Jehanne]

So this wonderful minister gave me his own copy of Mere Christianity, Lewis's slim tome that outlines the arguments leading to his conclusion that God is not only a possibility, but a plausibility. That the rational man would be more likely, upon studying the facts, to conclude that choosing to believe is the appropriate choice, as opposed to choosing not to believe.

That was a concept I was really unprepared to hear. Until then, I don't think anyone had ever suggested to me that faith was a conclusion that one could arrive at on the basis of rational thought. I, and I suspect, many other scientists who've never really looked at the evidence, had kind of assumed that faith was something that you arrived at, either because it was drummed into your head when you were a little kid or by some emotional experience, or some sort of cultural pressure. The idea that you would arrive at faith because it made sense, because it was rational, because it was the most appropriate choice when presented with the data, that was a new concept. And yet, reading through the pages of Lewis's book, I came to that conclusion over the course of several very painful weeks.

I didn't want this conclusion. I was very happy with the idea that God didn't exist, and had no interest in me. And yet at the same time, I could not turn away. I had to keep turning those pages. I had to keep trying to understand this. I had to see where it led. But I still didn't want to make that decision to believe.

I have heard numerous Muslims make the exact same line of argument with respect to Islam and the Quran,  So, why didn't Collins become a Muslim?  Per his own testimony, he decided to "give his life to Jesus" while walking:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Co...ristianity

All that Collins' conversion demonstrates is that a person can be brilliant in one area while a complete imbecile in another.

[athrock]

So this wonderful minister gave me his own copy of Mere Christianity, Lewis's slim tome that outlines the arguments leading to his conclusion that God is not only a possibility, but a plausibility. That the rational man would be more likely, upon studying the facts, to conclude that choosing to believe is the appropriate choice, as opposed to choosing not to believe.

I have heard numerous Muslims make the exact same line of argument with respect to Islam and the Quran,  So, why didn't Collins become a Muslim?  Per his own testimony, he decided to "give his life to Jesus" while walking:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Co...ristianity

All that Collins' conversion demonstrates is that a person can be brilliant in one area while a complete imbecile in another.

Either way, he wasn't going to remain an atheist because, as a rational man, he had examined the arguments and concluded that a god exists.

The fact that he chose Christianity suggests that he may have been persuaded by CS Lewis' reasoning in Mere Christianity.

Have you read it?

[The Grand Nudger]

Oh FFS...CS "Liar, Madman, or Christ" Lewis?   I'll pass.

Just what -is- it that you're "open minded" about missionary? At what point do we drop the pretense?

[Jehanne]

Either way, he wasn't going to remain an atheist because, as a rational man, he had examined the arguments and concluded that a god exists.

The fact that he chose Christianity suggests that he may have been persuaded by CS Lewis' reasoning in Mere Christianity.

Have you read it?

No, I haven't, but I have read other things in its same genre (Josh McDowell, Gary Habermas, William Lane Craig, etc.), but yes, it's the "3 Ls -- Liar, Lunatic, Lord" crap that we've all heard before.  Read for yourself:

http://www.rejesus.co.uk/site/module/fai...cience/P2/

A pro-Jesus site, by the way, but here are some highlights:

The fact, for instance, that the universe had a beginning (and Big Bang theory calls out for an explanation, because nature has not been observed to create itself) immediately draws the question of how that beginning came to be. At the time of this incredible explosion of matter and energy there must have been something outside nature that was capable of creating. And that ‘something’ sounds like God himself.

When you look at the fine-tuning of the universe – the so-called anthropic principle – where you see how incredibly improbable it is that all of the constants that govern the behaviour of matter and energy were set at exactly the point at which some sort of stable life was possible, you can’t help but marvel and conclude that there was something more than happenstance behind the process to set those constants in just that precise way.

Then there’s the moral law, or ‘law of right behaviour’, which is present in humankind. We might argue about what is right and what is wrong but we all have a sense of right and wrong.

The moral law cannot be readily explained in terms of evolution because it sometimes calls us to do things that are really quite the opposite of what evolution would ask – like jump into a river to save a drowning stranger. The moral law has been fully set in the heart of only one species – humankind. There’s no bigger signpost towards the existence of a personal God.

Why do I see the "hand" of William Lane Craig over all of this?  (More on him later.)  Francis, you are a geneticist and a damn good one, but that does not make you into a cosmologist, also!  Please stop "practicing" physics without a license!!  (Or, at least a physics degree!)

I wasn’t raised in a faith tradition. As a child I was vaguely aware of the concept of God. My parents enrolled me in a church choir to learn music. I took to the music but not to the theology.

And, this Church that Francis attended did not have their own copy of Mere Christianity?  Difficult to believe that Francis, a great scientist to be sure, could absorb nothing but music and yet no theology!

I was convinced that everything in the universe could be explained by equations and physical principles. No thinking scientist, I concluded, could seriously entertain the possibility of God without committing intellectual suicide. I had gone from being an agnostic to an atheist. To me, faith was sentimental superstition. But then I changed direction and went to medical school, and I started to encounter the reality of suffering and death in a much more up-close-and-personal way.

And, so, "Francis cracked?"  He was all "pure" while in graduate school, but then, the realities of life began to catch-up with him.  What can I say?  I sympathize, I really do; I ended-up going down the exact same path that he did.  I could not deal with death and human loss, and guess what?  "I was born again," at least for awhile.  Perhaps the Ivory Towers have a thing or two to teach us here; discussing the existence of god is not something that we do while visiting folks who are in hospice.

One afternoon an elderly patient with a terminal illness shared her faith with me and explained why this gave her comfort and peace as she saw the end of her life approaching. She turned to me and said: ‘Doctor, I’ve told you about my faith but you haven’t said anything. What do you believe?’

I had never been asked that question so directly. Suddenly I felt a great sense of unease that I didn’t have a good answer, that I had never seriously asked myself the question, that as a scientist I had never taken the time to look at the evidence for and against belief, and had drawn a conclusion without having considered that evidence.

Really, Francis?  In all those years of graduate school, no one ever asked you outright, "Do you believe in god?"

My moment of commitment came one autumn day while I was hiking in the Cascade Mountains. It was a beautiful afternoon and as I rounded a corner I unexpectedly saw a frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high. The remarkable beauty of creation was overwhelming. I could no longer resist. I fell on my knees and asked Christ to be my Saviour. My days of willful blindness towards God were gone. The search was over.

Been there, done that; you seem kind of arrogant though, Francis; a little hubris perhaps?  Do scientists ever have an "Ereka" moment that they can point to?  Perhaps, perhaps not, but scientific conclusions, especially radical ones, are usually the result of a long process that takes place in the presence of one's peers and not alone.

[Delicate]

How would you know what a rational atheist can say with confidence, Del?

[Delicate]

Rational atheists can't say that with much confidence.

I can say that with lots of confidence because no one has yet given, demonstratable and veritable evidence of a god, let alone a theistic god.

And that's consistent with what I said.

RATIONAL atheists, buddy. Not you.

[Delicate]

The lie you're most likely to believe is the lie you're convinced is the truth.

That would explain why this self pro claimed pursuit if truth peters out on this forum.

You have no alternative, other than fables, from which you have chosen to believe one among many.  Atheism only requires an absence of belief, which is hardly an appeal to "truth".

So invoking one fable to attack another?

[Jehanne]

You have no alternative, other than fables, from which you have chosen to believe one among many.  Atheism only requires an absence of belief, which is hardly an appeal to "truth".

So invoking one fable to attack another?

Atheism is, of course, an absence of fables.

[athrock]

I was struck by this passage from his interview with PBS:

"As I began to ask a few questions of those people, I realized something very fundamental: I had made a decision to reject any faith view of the world without ever really knowing what it was that I had rejected. And that worried me. As a scientist, you're not supposed to make decisions without the data. It was pretty clear I hadn't done any data collecting here about what these faiths stood for."

I can't help wondering how many people in this forum are in that same position of having rejected faith without actually knowing what it is that they have rejected. When I read the posts of many forum members, it is obvious that they have little to no real understanding of basic theology and that their views of the Bible are based not upon a careful reading of those 72 books but on mischaracterizations of them by Internet bloggers and other forum members.

The irony pointed out by Collins is that while these folks claim to believe in the principles of the scientific method, they behave in a decidedly unscientific fashion by making their decisions to reject God with flawed or incomplete data.

And why is this the case? Collins explains:

"...if you're going to accept the existence of God, at some level you have to give up control, and you can't just do what you want to because it feels good. And I liked very much being in control. I liked not having to answer to what was holy and vote for what was right. Maybe in some way, I was aware already without having put words to it, of the moral law — and aware that I wasn't living up to it.

So in recognizing my desire to have relationship with God, I also had to come face to face with my own massive imperfections. If God is holy, and if you can see God in some ways as a mirror to yourself, you realize just how far you fall short of anything that you could be really proud of. And that is a terribly distressing kind of experience for anybody who's first coming to that. So I would not say I was an ecstatic convert."

And thus it comes down to an emotion-driven act of the will to avoid the intellectual rationale for faith. The brain knows (or fears) that God is real, but the unbeliever does not want to give up control of his life (falsely believing that what he calls freedom is actually slavery to sin), so he refuses to make the choice to act upon that knowledge. From that point on, life for the unbeliever is a daily struggle of swimming against the tide.

Only the apatheist is free from such internal conflict...free because thoughts such as these never cross his mind. But for the atheist, the one who has declared to himself (if not to others) that there is no God, crossing that line has not brought peace but open warfare.

[The Grand Nudger]

I reject vicarious redemption and so cannot be a christian. I'm not the kind of guy who's going to string up the better man for my own misdeeds...even if it's an option. Pretty cut and dry. Have I missed anything, in your estimation?
(good thing you came along to tell people what they believe or fear, missionary, if it weren't for your expert opinion we might never know......lol)