No one knows better than Dr. Francis Collins how easy it might be for scientists to play God. As the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute since 1993—what some call the most prestigious job in science—Collins has led the effort to decode human DNA, along the way

developing a revolutionary method of screening genes for disease. Yet according to this widely respected scientist, the newfound power to ”read our own instruction book” is no obstacle to faith in the existence of God. He converted from atheism to Christianity in his twenties after seeing how radically his patients’ faith transformed their experience of suffering, and after reading several works by C.S. Lewis. Some 30 years later, he stands by his convictions, positioning science not as substitute for theology, but as a subset of it. Here, Collins traces out his personal

path to God, and explains how his faith affects his work.

You describe yourself as a rather obnoxious atheist in your youth. Tell me more about what you mean by that.

FRANCIS COLLINS: Well, growing up, I was vaguely aware of things that went on in church, because I was in the boys’ choir at the local Episcopal Church. But I got the clear message that I was supposed to learn music there, and not pay too much attention to the rest of it. I followed those instructions very carefully. When I got to college and was challenged about what my beliefs were, I realized I had no idea what they were. I listened to others make an argument that religion and beliefs were basically a superstition, and I began to think, “Yeah, that’s probably what I believe, too.”

Then I went off to be a graduate student in quantum mechanics at Yale, where I was very compelled with the notion that everything in the universe can be described in a second-order differential equation. I frankly couldn’t see why I needed to have any God at all. I was in a very

reductionist frame of mind.

I concluded that all of this stuff about religion and faith was a carryover from an earlier, irrational time, and now that science had begun to figure out how things really work, we didn’t need it any more. My mission then was to ferret out this squishy thinking on the part of people around me and try to point out to them that they really ought to get over all of that emotional stuff and face the fact that there really wasn’t anything except what you could measure.

C.S. Lewis was not concerned with scientific endeavor like you were, but he shared some of those views. How did you come to discover his work, and why did that have an influence on you?

COLLINS: I finished my graduate degree in quantum mechanics, but underwent a bit of a personal crisis, recognizing that I didn’t want to do that for the rest of my life because of the lack of the human aspect. And so in considerable disarray, I decided to go to medical school as a way of trying to explore a more human side of science, namely biology.

So it was really as a medical student, and later as a resident, when I encountered the realities of death and disease. I began to wonder about this. Some of my patients were clearly relying very heavily on their faith as a source of strength in circumstances that were pretty awful. They had terrible diseases from which they were probably not going to escape, and yet instead of railing at God for putting them in this situation, they seemed to lean on their faith as a source of great comfort and reassurance. That faith in the face of difficult times was interesting, puzzling and unsettling.

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.

Now, I was still pretty sure that faith traditions were all superstition. But I did feel compelled to find out a bit more about what it was that I had rejected. So with an intention of shooting this all down, I went to speak to a Methodist minister. I sat in his office and made all sorts of accusations about his faith, but also sincerely asked him to help me find out what it was all about. He was very patient, listened, and then suggested that I read a little bit more about what his faith stood for. He also suggested that the Bible would be a good place to start. I wasn’t so interested in that at the time. But he also said, ”You know, your story reminds me a little bit of somebody else who has written about his experience—that Oxford scholar, C.S. Lewis.”

I had no idea who Lewis was. The idea that he was a scholar appealed to my intellectual pride. Maybe somebody with that kind of a title would be able to write something that I could understand and appreciate.

So this wonderful minister gave me his own copy of Mere Christianity, Lewis’ slim tome that outlines the arguments leading to his conclusion that God is not only a possibility but a plausibility. This 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 suspected that I and many other scientists who’ve never really looked at the evidence, had assumed that faith was something that you arrived at. I thought that people believed in God because it was drummed into their head when they were a little kid by an emotional experience, or some sort of cultural pressure. The idea that one would arrive at faith because it made sense, because it was rational, because it was the most appropriate choice when presented with the data, was a new concept. And yet, reading through the pages of Lewis’ book, I came to that conclusion over the course of several painful weeks.

I didn’t want this conclusion. I was very happy with the idea that God didn’t exist. 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. But I still didn’t want to make that decision to believe.

The decision was an important step that I hadn’t been aware of. You can protest all you want, on the basis of pure intellect, right up to the precipice of belief, but then you have to decide. I don’t believe intellectual argument alone will push someone across that gap, because we are not talking about something to be measured in the same way that science measures the natural world. This is supernatural truth. And in that regard, the spirit enters into this, not just the mind.

I struggled with my possible faith in God for many months, really resisting this decision, going forward and then backward. Finally, after about a year, I was on a trip to the northwest. On a beautiful afternoon hiking in the Cascade Mountains, where the remarkable beauty of the creation around me was so overwhelming I felt, ”I cannot resist this another moment. This is something I have really longed for all my life without realizing it, and now I’ve got the chance to say yes.” So I said yes. I was 27. I’ve never turned back. That was the most significant moment in my life.

Of Lewis’ arguments, which one was the most difficult for you to dispute?

COLLINS: To my surprise, I found myself fairly easily compelled by his arguments about the existence of some sort of a God, because even as a scientist, I had to admit that I had no idea how the universe began. The hard part for me was the idea of a personal God, who has an interest in humankind. And the argument that Lewis made there—the one that I think was most surprising,most earth-shattering, and most life changing— is the argument about the existence of the moral law. How is it that we know what’s right and what’s wrong? In every culture one looks at, that knowledge that is there.

Where did that come from? I reject the idea that it is an evolutionary consequence, because that moral law sometimes tells us that the right thing to do is very self-destructive. If I’m walking down the riverbank, and a man is drowning, even if I don’t know how to swim very well, I feel this urge that the right thing to do is to try to save that person. Evolution would tell me exactly the opposite: preserve your DNA. Who cares about the guy who’s drowning? He’s one of the weaker ones, let him go. It’s your DNA that needs to survive. And yet that’s not what’s written within me. Lewis argues that if you are looking for evidence of a God who cares about us as individuals, where could you more likely look than within your own heart at this very simple concept of what’s right and what’s wrong. And there it is. Not only does it tell you something about the fact that there is a spiritual nature that is somehow written within our hearts, but it also tells you something about the nature of God Himself, that He is a good and holy God.

I know this is not a new idea that Lewis came up with. It builds upon long traditions over centuries of careful scholarship and thought. But I’d never seen it before, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it explained as well as it is in his book.

You describe a very intellectual process that led you to change your worldview. What about the emotional aspect of what happened on that day, and thereafter?

COLLINS: It certainly did carry with it this experience that life is now different and along with that, this sense that God is not some distant concept, some ethereal, fuzzy entity. God became personal for me at that point. That really was the decision I was making, to believe not just in God, but in a God who wishes fellowship with me—that God is a God who both created the universe and also had a plan that included me as an individual human being. God made it possible for me, through a series of explorations, to realize that. God allowed me to realize that He is not simply an abstract philosophy but a real Being who can be known.

For someone who has not had that experience, it sounds like a really elating and wonderful occurrence. However, both you and Lewis describe it as something rather painful and chaotic. Can you talk a little bit about that?

COLLINS: The day I accepted Christ was a mix of emotions. There was this sense of great relief, because I felt like I had been running from this for my whole life. And finally that pursuit was over. But there was also this sense of deep discomfort. Even in my rudimentary way, I had a sense that 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. I liked being in control. I liked not having to answer to what was holy and do what’s right. I was aware of the moral law—and aware thatI wasn’t living up to it.

So in recognizing my desire to have a relationship with God, I also had to come face to face with my own massive imperfections. If God is holy, and if you can even slightly comprehend God’s transcendence, you realize just how far you fall short of anything that you could be proud of. That is a terribly distressing kind of experience for anybody who’s first coming to Christianity. So I would not say I was an ecstatic convert. I was very much, as Lewis was, a bit dejected about the whole thing.

I guess at that point, as a new believer, I had the sense that I had to fix all of those imperfections to become acceptable. This was before I really figured out that even though I’m imperfect and God is perfect, the person of Jesus Christ is that bridge that brings us together. That took me a long time to begin to really absorb, accept and fell comforted by.

Now, you describe a very intellectual process that led you to change your worldview. What about the emotional aspect of what happened on that day, and thereafter?

COLLINS: Well, this all came at an interesting time. I came to this belief at age 27, when I was a medical resident. I was already convinced that the area I wanted to work in was medical genetics, or the way in which heredity influences disease. Some would say that this would be the most godless of all possible disciplines, because if misused, it tends to take the wonders of humanity and reduce it to the language of DNA. Certainly, to many outside perspectives, the idea of both starting down a path towards that branch of science and becoming a convicted believer didn’t seem very compatible. I think they have turned out to be intensely compatible, but at the time I wasn’t so sure. I wondered,”Is this going to lead to some explosion within me? Am I going to find that there are parts of me that are at war?”

It took me a while to get comfortable sharing this experience with other people in science. I was happy to talk about it with my family and with other people who were not in the scientific arena. But like most scientists, I had this fear that having accepted something in the way of a spiritual worldview, I would be perceived as having gone a bit soft, that this was not compatible with the rigorous ”show me the data” attitude that a scientist is supposed to have.

True, there will never be a scientific proof of God’s existence. Science explores the natural, and God is outside the natural. So there is no substitute for making a decision to believe, and that decision will never be undergirded by absolute data-driven proof.

Edited and Reprinted from The Question of God website (www.pbs.org/questionofgod ) by permission

Picture of Francis Collins courtesy of the National Human Genome Research Institute. Copyright © 2004 WGBH Educational Foundation