Francis Collins is both a renowned geneticist and an evangelical Christian. All of which led him to develop The BioLogos Foundation, dedicated to helping evangelicals come to terms with science without losing God in the process. Time magazine published an interesting summary article on the effort as well.

In looking through the site, Collins does a pretty good job of helping bible literalists come gently in from the edge without falling. And he does a nice job of not polluting science in the process. He basically employs a “God is in the gaps” approach. This allows for the possibility that God created the big bang and set the universe in motion as well as the interesting twist that God is responsible for making quantum behavior deterministic. In this way, he allows for God’s active participation in the world, albeit through subtle and undetectable ways.

The scientist in me is more than satisfied with the approach. However, the reality of science is that while there are always gaps, the gaps keep shifting and changing. For example, right now science can’t explain what created the big bang. That’s a gap that God can fill. However, there are theorists working on possible explanations, and it is likely that at some point science will push the envelope back to the other side of that event horizon. Undoubtedly, that will leave yet another mystery at an earlier point in time, and God may fill that gap as well, but science does have an annoying habit of pushing God around as it progresses.

It seems that this shifting view of God’s involvement may be troubling to the crowd who already exhibits a tendency to be very literal and concrete. Although I suppose this is a one step at a time type therapy. Moving evangelicals away from the view that science is out to destroy their God and getting them acclimated to a 14 billion year old universe would be a huge step. One that I fear may still big a bit too big for many of them to make.

I like Collin’s assertion that, “Evolution gives us the ‘how,’ but we need the Bible to understand the ‘why’ of our creation.” I think maybe this is the key delineation between science and religion. Science can’t ever intrude upon the question of “why.” And ultimately, the bible is never going to be able to reconcile the question of “how” with science. So maybe they should each stick to their own domains and call it a day.