francis collins, homeopath of the soul

BioLogos is determined to bridge the divides between science and religion by... well, avoiding any topic of substance.





I’ve recently mentioned BioLogos, the latest project of biologist Francis Collins who’s best known for heavily mixing his science with his religious beliefs. Now that project received a glowing write-up in Time which has a rather cryptic and misleading statement about his mission:

[BioLogos] is also what Collins calls his blended theory of evolution and creation, an approach he hopes can replace intelligent design, which he derides as ‘not a scientific proposal’ and ‘not good theology either.’

Wait a second. Collins derides the combination of diluted scientific terminology with religious dogmas as an unscientific proposal in poor theological taste and his solution to replace it is… diluted science with a heavy handed injection of theology on a grant from the John Templeton Foundation? Did I miss something or is he doing the exact same thing while saying that he’s going to do it better just because it’s his version? Nothing on BioLogos is any different from the standard intelligent design noise you hear from the Discovery Institute. The only change you would notice is the absence of Casey Luskin’s incessant whining, which is actually a pretty big improvement if you ask me.

The article does admit that the project is more for the benefit of Collins’ own Evangelical flock than it is for any skeptics or atheists who want scientific proof of God. But that begs the question of how exactly he gives these people anything beneficial by presenting warmed over creationism with some tenuous science peppered on what are otherwise typical religious tracts repeated since the Enlightenment and in vogue at every seminary where people spend hours debating the fine points of scripture and religious history. Any way you cut, when you start blending evolution and theistic creation, you get the very same intelligent design to which the project is so opposed, or at least claims to find it so disagreeable.

If anything, Collins is more like a homeopath who takes a gallon of religious dogma, cautiously puts in just a few drops of high school science, shakes it for hours on end and distributes it in small doses, claiming that a few terms like “evolution” and “natural selection” made a molecular impact on the vast quantities of religious rumination. In reality, whatever science he tried to slip in there has been lost and all he ends up offering is the same fare you can pick up at a local bookstore in the Christianity section.