[close]
Review by Scott Rachui (
http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/52...)
There are a few claims made by atheists on a regular basis. They include the following:
- Only the uneducated become Christians. Truly educated people, especially scientists, would never accept such nonsense
- The only reason people are Christians is that they were raised to believe as they do
This book is proof that these two claims are simply nonsense. Francis Collins was an atheist prior to his scientific work on the human genome project. His career has been stellar (he led the Human Genome Project and is currently the director of the National Institutes of Health). He is a leading scientist, and certainly qualifies as a truly educated person. He was also not a Christian his entire life.
Collins became a Christian when he began to look at the complexity of the human genome. As he recounts in this book, he was simply unable to remain an atheist since his scientific findings led him to the inescapable conclusion of design and a transcendent designer (this same argument has persuaded many atheists, by the way...check out Antony Flew's conversion. Or Alister McGrath. Or John Polkinghorne. Or Frank Tipler...I could go on).
In this book, Collins describes his journey and shows why he came to the conclusion that God exists. He makes the case that was persuasive to him, and also builds the case that evolution and Christianity are not mutually exclusive (in fact, as philosopher William Lane Craig has said, the existence of evolution in such a short span of time [speaking of the length of time our planet has existed] would itself be a miracle, and thus proof of God).
Collins does a good job of showing that science and Christianity are not enemies, but partners in the quest for truth (Christianity is, after all, largely responsible for Western Science getting its start). He shows the reasonableness of being both a leading scientist and a believer. And he destroys the two claims I listed at the beginning of this review. Not only is it possible for highly educated scientists to be raised as non-believers only to be converted to Christianity when confronted with the evidence. But Dr. Collins is living proof of this fact.
Pick this book up if you'd like to read Dr. Collins' story. It's a very interesting one. And if you're open to following the evidence where it leads, it provides a persuasive case that the evidence leads directly to the existence of an all-powerful creator and designer.
One other thing...if you're looking for a good, quick overview of Bayes Theorem, this book has a nice treatment of it that anyone can understand.
Simply put...atheism is wrong. The evidence is inescapable.
