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Harvard’s Steven Pinker declared that Collins is “an advocate of profoundly anti-scientific beliefs.” Other leading scientists said far worse. Why? As The New Yorker reports this week, Dr. Collins is “a believing Christian.” As writer Peter J. Boyer explains, “The objection to Collins was his faith—or, at least, the ardency of it.

Even with all of Francis Collins’ achievements, qualifications, and experience, the bare fact that he is a “believing Christian” is enough to draw the active opposition of many in the scientific establishment. Just being a “believing Christian” is reason enough for suspicion, condescension, and opposition from many. Even when Francis Collins presses his case for evolution, he is dismissed by many scientists simply because he believes in God. In other words, when we are told that we have to accept and embrace the theory of evolution in order to escape being considered intellectually backward, remember the opposition to Francis Collins. It just doesn’t work. When Collins’ elevation to the NIH post was announced, evolutionary scientist P. Z. Myers lamented, “I don’t want American science to be represented by a clown.” This is the predicament of those who argue that evangelicals must accept some form of theistic evolution — the guardians of evolution still consider them clowns.

any self-replicating mechanism must exhibit a definable minimal level of complexity, let alone the necessitude of functional, and thus sequence specific DNA and protein molecules. As theoretical biologist Howard Pattee explains in his The Problem of Biological Hierarchy: “There is no evidence that hereditary evolution occurs except in cells which already have…the DNA, the replicating and translating enzymes, and all the control systems and structures necessary to reproduce themselves.” In order to invoke a materialistic pathway which can account for the origin of specified information in DNA, the naturalist must invoke a process that itself depends upon pre-existing sequence specific DNA molecules. Yet, the origin of these molecules is precisely what the thesis seeks to explain.

the formation of the first RNA molecule would have necessitated the prior emergence of smaller constituent molecules, including ribose sugar, phosphate molecules and the four RNA nucleotide bases. But both synthesising and maintaining these essential RNA molecules (particularly ribose) and the nucleotide bases is profoundly problematic to perform under realistic prebiotic conditions.

Theological arguments — by their very nature — cannot be defended as a scientific statement, and thus ought to be given no place in scientific discussions regarding evolution.

There are many biologists and philosophers of science who are highly scientifically literate who question certain aspects of the theory of evolution

the data at the crime scene usually can't tell us very much about that intelligence.

the tools of natural science are useless to determine the "I.Q." of the intelligence, the efficiency vs. the emotionalism of the intelligence, or the motive of the intelligence. That data, analyzed by only the tools of natural science, often cannot permit the investigator to construct a theory of why the perpetrator acted. The mental and conscious processes going on in the criminal's mind are outside the scope of the sciences of chemistry and physics. Thus it is obvious that scientific methods can lead to the conclusion that an intelligence did something, even if those same methods cannot tell you who specifically did it, or why they did it.

"the purposes and intentions of God, if there is a god, and the nature of his will, are not possible subjects of a scientific theory or scientific explanation. But that does not imply that there cannot be scientific evidence for or against the intervention of such a non-law-governed cause in the natural order" (p. 190).

I wanted them to understand it as an explanation for the natural world

the great unifying principle of my discipline

wallowing in self-inflicted ignorance

weird fantasies

As Hagerty reported: “Schneider, who taught theology at Calvin College in Michigan until recently, says it’s time to face facts: There was no Adam and Eve, no serpent, no apple, no fall that toppled man from a state of innocence.”

“Evolution makes it pretty clear that in nature, and in the moral experience of human beings, there never was any such paradise to be lost. So Christians, I think, have a challenge, have a job on their hands to reformulate some of their tradition about human beginnings”

They argue that science is unable to resolve the question of Adam and Eve as a whole, but they write: “All science can say is that there was never a time when only two people existed on the earth: it is silent on whether or not God began a special relationship with a historical couple at some point in the past.”

Evidence of the Spirit at work is the only true measure we have of our theology; all other measures, including whether it fits our carefully-reasoned arguments of who is in and who is out, are vanity.

that’s like saying the vast majority of astrologers are in agreement with the fact that astrology works.

The theory is that consciousness, in some way we don’t totally understand, survives bodily death. Now, that’s well-constructed. It’s not totally framed up in scientific terms but it’s an important theory because it contradicts the prevailing materialistic explanation of consciousness, which is pretty much nonexistent because consciousness is something we’re grabbing at. So to say that consciousness in some way we don’t understand seems to survive bodily death, I don’t know why that violates some sacred creed of science.

If we’re going to play the expert game, it’s too easy. That’s one of the things that I get into in the book. Almost for any position whatsoever, no matter how far out it is, you will find somebody with a PhD. or an MD that is willing to defend that position. But that’s not the way science works. I mean, you can find scientists who deny climate change. You can find scientists who deny evolution. You can find scientists…

Galaxies are thought to develop by the gravitational attraction between and merger of smaller 'sub-galaxies', a process that standard cosmological ideas suggest should be ongoing. But new data from a team of scientists from Liverpool John Moores University directly challenges this idea, suggesting that the growth of some of the most massive objects stopped 7 billion years ago when the Universe was half its present age.

How galaxies form and then evolve is still a major unanswered question in astronomy.

conventional simulations of the evolution of the Universe predict that BCGs should have at least tripled in size over that time.

Genomes are littered with nonfunctional pseudogenes, faulty duplicates of functional genes that do nothing, while their functional cousins (the word doesn't even need scare quotes) get on with their business in a different part of the same genome.

Once again, creationists might spend some earnest time speculating on why the Creator should bother to litter genomes with untranslated pseudogenes and junk tandem repeat DNA.

recent results are challenging this moniker; indeed, some pseudogenes appear to harbor the potential to regulate their protein-coding cousins. Far from being silent relics, many pseudogenes are transcribed into RNA, some exhibiting a tissue-specific pattern of activation. Pseudogene transcripts can be processed into short interfering RNAs that regulate coding genes through the RNAi pathway. In another remarkable discovery, it has been shown that pseudogenes are capable of regulating tumor suppressors and oncogenes by acting as microRNA decoys.