- Video
- 7 min 5 sec
- Level: all audiences
Dr. Francis Collins is a prominent scientist who is a Christian. He has been at the forefront of the world’s most advanced biomedical research. He led the Human Genome Project and was the longest-serving director of the National Institutes of Health. In this 2024 interview about a new book, he draws on his career to focus on what he sees as the core pillars of wisdom during a time of deep polarization. He also talks about Genesis, St. Augustine, and whether there is such a thing as objective truth.
Collins states that,
For me, science is a detective story. It’s trying to understand how things work. And you do experiments. And, sometimes, they take you down a blind alley and you’re like, oh, darn, that wasn’t it. And, eventually, you come up with a solution. And then it’s something that’s satisfying. It’s beautiful. And if you’re a scientist who’s also a believer, you just got a glimpse of God’s mind. In that regard, I think of a laboratory as a cathedral also, and science is kind of a form of worship, if you want to put it in those terms.
