Spring Break
Science versus religion
Lecture series invitees discuss implications for scientific progress to support or suppress faith
By: Nathan Ball
Issue date: 3/25/08 Section: News
Francis Collins, the director of the human genome project, and Stephen Weinberg, a Nobel Prize recipient for physics, came to Texas A&M to discuss the interplay between science and religion.
Both men received 2008's Trotter Prize, awarded by the College of Science in conjunction with the Dwight Looke College of Engineering.
Collins and Weinberg took opposing viewpoints Thursday evening as they discussed the "ultimate question": How can science and religion be reconciled?
Collins said they are complementary. He said he sees God as an intelligent, caring being who made the universe, created the laws of mathematics and physics and programmed the DNA of all living things.
"I can find God in a church, and I can find him in a laboratory. I can read about him in the Bible or in the genome," Collins said.
Stephen Weinberg agreed that science and religion can co-exist. Weinberg said they have for all of human history and he had no reason to believe that God and science were mutually exclusive, but he has not seen sufficient evidence to believe in God.
There is a tension between religion and science, Weinberg said. "Scientific discoveries make religious explanations increasingly unnecessary."
"Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, for it is the assertion of a universal negative," said Collins, quoting G. K. Chesterton, an early 20th century Christian writer.
Collins said that he came to believe in God in his late 20s after he finished his doctorate degree in physical chemistry from Yale. Collins was an atheist and had come to faith through questioning and searching religion for answers to life where science had left him with only questions.
"The Bible makes sense," he said. "Historically, we know as much about the life of Jesus Christ as a human being as we know about the life of Julius Caesar.
"Science is the only reliable way to understand how the natural world works, but it is powerless to answer the ultimate questions of existence, and of death.
Both men received 2008's Trotter Prize, awarded by the College of Science in conjunction with the Dwight Looke College of Engineering.
Collins and Weinberg took opposing viewpoints Thursday evening as they discussed the "ultimate question": How can science and religion be reconciled?
Collins said they are complementary. He said he sees God as an intelligent, caring being who made the universe, created the laws of mathematics and physics and programmed the DNA of all living things.
"I can find God in a church, and I can find him in a laboratory. I can read about him in the Bible or in the genome," Collins said.
Stephen Weinberg agreed that science and religion can co-exist. Weinberg said they have for all of human history and he had no reason to believe that God and science were mutually exclusive, but he has not seen sufficient evidence to believe in God.
There is a tension between religion and science, Weinberg said. "Scientific discoveries make religious explanations increasingly unnecessary."
"Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, for it is the assertion of a universal negative," said Collins, quoting G. K. Chesterton, an early 20th century Christian writer.
Collins said that he came to believe in God in his late 20s after he finished his doctorate degree in physical chemistry from Yale. Collins was an atheist and had come to faith through questioning and searching religion for answers to life where science had left him with only questions.
"The Bible makes sense," he said. "Historically, we know as much about the life of Jesus Christ as a human being as we know about the life of Julius Caesar.
"Science is the only reliable way to understand how the natural world works, but it is powerless to answer the ultimate questions of existence, and of death.
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