Expelled

I had heard about Ben Stein's film Expelled months ago and at the time it didn't excite me all that much. The evolution/creation debate is one I like to stay away from as I think there are often many questionable assumptions on both sides and both sides tend to be so dismissive of the other. I also think it's something people get too heated about and something that can turn into too big of a distraction for Christians. I actually debated with a guy once who was convinced that when we're trying to preach the Gospel to an unbeliever the first thing we must do is to convince them that Young Earth Creationism is true. Being far from a Young Earth Creationist myself I was unconvinced, and I argued that the first thing we need to do in preaching the Gospel is to make people aware of their sin and guilt before God so that they can actually come to Christ for salvation from the hell that we all deserve. When it comes to origins, I'm happy to be in the company of Augustine and Origen in not believing in the necessity of taking the days of Creation to be seven literal 24-hour days. Those two great interpreters were writing long before anyone dreamed up materialistic evolution or theological liberalism so no one can accuse either of them of having their minds poisoned by either of those evil and false ideologies. So I was skeptical about Expelled but in the end I thought it was an excellent and important film for our time. Stein doesn't concentrate so much on the intricacies of the scientific side of the debate, although there is an excellent illustration of the complexity of the cell and a good analysis of the unlikelihood of some sort of life arising spontaneously from some kind of primordial goo. What I really appreciated about the film was the more philosophical side, especially the interviews with Richard Dawkins and various scientists and proponents of Intelligent Design. I think Stein was also correct to warn of the evils that can be brought on by a fundamentalist secularism. The last interview of the film was the most powerful to me where Richard Dawkins, the great and militant Atheist, comes off as a weak, angry and irrational little man who will embrace any theory, no matter how far-fetched as long as he can deny God any part in the creation and development of the universe. So I would recommend Expelled to people all along the spectrum of belief concerning the origin of the universe. I think in some ways Stein's documentary is a good counterbalance to the rising militant Atheism and Secularism that we see in Western societies.

The Language of God

Francis Collins’ The Language of God has been high on my list of books to read since I heard of its publication in 2006. Collins is the head of the Human Genome Project, a distinguished scientist and an Evangelical Christian. While I was in Kentucky, visiting my friend David Goran and his wife in Versailles, Dave gave me his copy of the book. Like me, David got his undergraduate degree in a biology-related field so it is not surprising that he also appreciated the book. I read the book in a couple of sittings between Kentucky and Washington. The Language of God is Collins’ testimony of his coming to faith in Christ but it is also a treatise on faith and science and how they should relate. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and whole-heartedly agree with Collins’ view that faith and science both have the same goal of truth and the two therefore should not be in conflict. Not only did I appreciate the story of Collins’ spiritual journey but I was fascinated by the more scientific side of the book. I really enjoyed the story of the Human Genome Project and Collins’ writing on the origin of the universe and on the theory of evolution. Collins’ view of theistic evolution will be controversial to many Bible-believing Christians, but he does an impressive job of presenting his view and arguing for its compatibility with respect for the authority of Scripture. As a Bible-believing Christian and a scientist I also have struggled with how I should understand the evidence and the overwhelming consensus of biologists with respect to the origin of species. I can’t say that I have arrived at a totally satisfying synthesis yet but I appreciate the conclusion that Collins came to and I am certainly leaning in that direction with respect to my own views. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has struggled with reconciling the truth revealed in Scripture with the truth that God has allowed us to discover using our scientific abilities.