Quote by Francis S. Collins

““What, to use Noble Laureate Wigner's classic phrase, accounts for the 'unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics'?””

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“Science is progressive and self-correcting: no significantly erroneous conclusions or false hypotheses can be sustained for long, as newer observations will ultimately knock down incorrect constructs. But over a long period of time, a consistent set of observations sometimes emerges that leads to a new framework of understanding. That framework is then given a much more substantive description, and is…

Francis S. Collins

“Yeah, it’s true we’re all dealt a set of cards. But it’s also true that it’s up to us to figure out how to…

Francis S. Collins

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“I was vaguely aware that same of those around me thought that this pairing of explorations was contradictory and I was headed over a…

Francis S. Collins

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“In that context, I find theistic evolution, or BioLogos, to be by far the most scientifically consistent and spiritually satisfying of the alternatives. This position will not go out of style or be disproven by future scientific discoveries. It is intellectually rigorous, it provides answers to many otherwise puzzling questions, and it allows science and faith to fortify each other…

Francis S. Collins

“At this point, godless materialists might be cheering. If humans evolved strictly by mutation and natural selection, who needs God to explain us? To this, I reply: I do. The comparison of chimp and human sequences, interesting as it is, does not tell us what it means to be human. In my views, DNA sequence alone, even if accompanied by…

Francis s. Collins

“Will we turn our backs on science because it is perceived as a threat to God, abandoning all the promise of advancing our understanding of nature and applying that to the alleviation of suffering and the betterment of humankind? Alternatively, will we turn our backs on faith, concluding that science has rendered the spiritual life no longer necessary, and that…

Francis S. Collins

“As the leader of the international Human Genome Project, which had labored mightily over more than a decade to reveal this DNA sequence, I stood beside President Bill Clinton in the East Room of the White House... Clinton's speech began by comparing this human sequence map to the map that Meriwether Lewis had unfolded in front of President Thomas Jefferson…

Francis S. Collins

“...to apply scientific arguments to the question of God's existence, as if this were somehow a showstopper, is committing a category error.”

Francis S. Collins

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“while the long history of religious oppression and hypocrisy is profoundly sobering, the earnest seeker must look beyond the behavior of flawed humans in order to find the truth. Would you condemn an oak tree because its timbers had been used to build battering rams? Would you blame the air for allowing lies to be transmitted through it? Would you…

Francis S. Collins

“There are many subtle variants of theistic evolution, but a typical version rests upon the following premises: The universe came into being out of…

Francis S. Collins

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“Faith and reason are not, as many seem to be arguing today, mutually exclusive. They never have been. The letter to the Hebrews in…

Francis S. Collins

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“In this modern era of cosmology, evolution, and the human genome, is there still the possibility of a richly satisfying harmony between the scientific…

Francis S. Collins

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