Dr. Francis Collins explores his faith and science in new book, 'The Road to Wisdom'

Dr. Francis Collins 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. He is drawing on his career to focus on what he sees as the core pillars of wisdom during a time of deep polarization. Geoff Bennett sat down with Collins to discuss his book, “The Road to Wisdom.”

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Geoff Bennett: For decades, Dr. Francis Collins has been at the forefront of the world’s most advanced biomedical research. He led the Human Genome Project and then went on to become the longest-serving director of the National Institutes of Health, where he oversaw the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Collins has since retired, but is now drawing on his groundbreaking career to focus on what he sees as the core pillars of wisdom during a time of deep polarization.

He sat down recently to discuss his new book, “The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust.”

Dr. Francis Collins, welcome back to the “News Hour.”

Dr. Francis Collins, Former Director, National Institutes of Health: It’s great to be here in your beautiful space.

Geoff Bennett: Oh, thank you.

You said your goal in writing this book was to turn the focus away from hyperpartisan politics and back to what you see as the most important sources of wisdom truth, science, faith and trust. How did you settle on those four as the most important sources of wisdom?

Dr. Francis Collins: Well, Geoff, I spent a lot of time in the public eye as NIH director and before that the leader of the Human Genome Project.

And I have this vision of how science and truth can bring us into a place of less suffering and more flourishing. But I couldn’t help but notice in the last few years that we seem to have kind of lost our way in some of these aspects. We don’t seem to agree about what objective truth is all about, or even whether there is such a thing.

Distrust of science has grown, even as science has been delivering some amazing things in the course of the last few years. Faith, which ought to be a foundation we could anchor ourselves on at difficult times, seems to have also been readily pushed aside by politics, even in our churches.

And a lot of the problem is, we haven’t really figured out, how do we decide who to trust? How do we anchor ourselves in sources that are actually reliable, as opposed to whatever else is coming at us?

You put those four together and you have got something pretty reliable, even a road to wisdom, which is not just knowledge. It’s also understanding, it’s a moral framework.

But our road to wisdom right now feels like it’s got a whole lot of bumps, and I have hit a few myself. I want to be clear about this. I’m on this road too, and occasionally I find myself in the ditch. But it feels like we really need to re-anchor ourselves in those four things, truth, science, faith, and trust, so that we have a better chance to move our society forward, because I think we’d all agree it’s not looking so good right now with all the polarization and the cynicism and the hyper-partisanship.

Geoff Bennett: On the topic of faith — this is a central theme in the book, the compatibility, as you see it, of science and faith.

You present a harmony between the two, which is interesting, because the common perception is that faith and science are inherently incompatible.

Dr. Francis Collins: That is a common perception. It’s unfortunate that it is. And it’s a fairly recent American emphasis.

It was not always so. People doing science in the 16th and 17th century were almost all believers, who saw science as a means of investigating God’s creation and being able to be even more worshipful as a result.

But, somehow, in our culture, we have the idea that science and faith are in some sort of irreconcilable conflict. I did not grow up a person of faith. I became a Christian at age 27, and people said, well, you’re a scientist. Your head’s going to blow up because these things are just not going to work out together.

I have never encountered a situation where I see it that way. Science is great at answering those how questions, and if you want to know how something in nature works, use science. But if you want to know why, why am I here, why is there something instead of nothing, science doesn’t have much to say there. Faith has a lot to say.

Geoff Bennett: Well, you write about your personal journey in the book. You say that you once thought atheism was the only rational option for a thinking person.

What, for you, changed?

Dr. Francis Collins: I really had to look at what my basis was for that claim, because I hadn’t spent much time investigating it.

And the more I began to look at how people have stepped into belief, instead of atheism, I realized there’s a lot of rational arguments there that I had ignored. The whole argument about the fact that there is something, instead of nothing, there was the Big Bang. Out of nothingness, a universe was created, a universe that follows exquisite mathematical laws and has fine-tuning in those laws to make it interesting for something to happen.

You can’t look at that and not marvel at it and not come to the conclusion, seems like there’s an intelligence behind all of this, an amazing physicist, mathematician. But then I also had to struggle with the moral law, good and evil.

For an atheist who’s really strict about their atheism, that’s a big problem. Is that just something that we have been hoodwinked into by evolutionary constraints, that we think there is such a thing as good and evil, but there really isn’t? I don’t know very many people who are comfortable with that.

Geoff Bennett: Have your scientific and spiritual world views ever clashed?

Dr. Francis Collins: Not in a way that I couldn’t figure out how to resolve.

There are certainly times where, on the surface of it, it seems like there is an issue here. And, obviously, the one that I think causes a lot of trouble for people of faith is origins. Where do humans come from? As a scientist, especially one who studies DNA, I can tell you that we humans are part of a remarkable tapestry of evolutionary connections between lots of other organisms.

We’re part of that. We’re not separate. And yet, at the same time, Genesis 1 and 2 talks about the special relationship that God has with his people, between Adam and Eve and thereon.

So how do I put that together? I think it’s entirely possible to do so if you don’t insist upon an ultra-literal reading of certain scriptures, like Genesis 1 and 2. And go back to St. Augustine in 400 A.D. and he would have warned us against such literal readings as not being required by the words of the Scripture and potentially putting you in a circumstance of making faith look silly by claiming that one interpretation has to be right and then finding out it doesn’t fit.

Geoff Bennett: How has your faith influenced your approach to scientific inquiry?

Dr. Francis Collins: I think it has added a dimension to it.

For me, science is a — it’s 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.

Geoff Bennett: Dr. Francis Collins.

The book is “The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust.”

Thanks so much for being here. We appreciate it.

Dr. Francis Collins: Wonderful to be with you.