Editor’s note: The Chasing Life With Dr. Sanjay Gupta podcast explores the medical science behind some of life’s mysteries, big and small. You can listen to episodes here.
(CNN) — Some believe there is a fundamental tension between religion and science, but Dr Francis Collinsa prominent scientist, former director of the National Institutes of Health and evangelical Christian, is not among them.
“The idea that there is an inherent and irreconcilable conflict between science and faith is not true, because I have experienced both of these worldviews since I was 27, and I have never found “A case where I couldn’t put them together,” Collins said Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, recently on his Chasing Life podcast. (Collins was Gupta’s professor of genetics at the University of Michigan Medical School thirty years ago.)
“I feel like as a believer who is also a scientist, science takes on a whole new wonderful aspect because you’re exploring God’s creation,” Collins said. And he should know it: while the director of National Human Genome Research Institutehe was instrumental in mapping the human genome – essentially writing the DNA instruction manual for human biology – for the human genome project.
“When you discover something that no human knew before, God knew it. And you just get a little glimpse into the mind of God,” he said. “It makes science a kind of form of worship, and the laboratory almost looks like a cathedral. I love it.
You can listen to the full podcast episode (with a bonus song) here.
Collins was not born into a religious tradition, but he came to it – first almost by accident, then after deliberate study.
He grew up in an intellectual family in which faith was simply not part of the conversation. “It wasn’t denigrated; it just wasn’t seen as relevant,” he said. “By the time I was an undergraduate and then a graduate student in chemistry, I was an atheist.”
He said he arrived at his atheism not “by careful analysis of pros and cons,” but rather by default.
All that changed during medical school.
“I had a patient who was an elderly woman in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. That’s where I trained,” he recalls. “She shared her faith with me every time she suffered from terrible chest pain due to her heart disease. And one day she turned around and looked me straight in the eye and said, “What do you think, doctor?”
The question blew him away.
“I realized I hadn’t thought about it at all. And she just asked me the most important question I’ve ever been asked in my life. And I’m a scientist, you know. I’m supposed to have reasons to make decisions about something really important, and I hadn’t done any of that,” he said.
What followed was a two-year journey “trying to understand how someone who is truly rational and thinking about science could actually accept the idea of God, which science cannot measure, and even a God who cares. Me?”
“It was an unexpected journey where I thought I would eventually strengthen my atheism and instead, kicking and screaming, become a Christian,” he said.
Collins was criticized during his career for his beliefs, perhaps most notably when President Barack Obama appointed him director of the NIH, but these initial concerns were not acted upon.
“Over the 12 years I’ve been in this position, those objections have become less important as people have asked, ‘OK, how does he do his job?’ Is he somehow smuggling in his religious perspective? No,” he said. “When you’re doing scientific work, science is the tool you’re going to use. This is how you will restate your arguments.
“You’re not going to suddenly say, ‘Well, if you look in the book of Matthew, chapter 25, you’ll see what the answer is here.’ I will do it for myself in my prayer life, but I will not do it in the context of a scientific discussion.
Collins’ faith in science has never wavered, but the same can’t be said for some Americans, especially during the pandemic. Changing data, lockdown restrictions that didn’t make sense in some parts of the country, misinformation and other factors have all led to a drop in confidence that scientists act in the best interest of the public.
“I was increasingly concerned about the way that truth, science, faith and trust – the traditional anchors for all of us – seem to be getting a little dislodged, and no more so than during Covid, when the most dramatic example, of course, was “The path to wisdom: on truth, science, faith and trust.”
“What a wake-up call to say that we have lost something really important here, in terms of our path to this path of wisdom, and also in terms of deciding what is true and who to trust and what is science, and where faith plays a role,” he said “I don’t know if we have figured out how this happened and what we could do to prevent it from happening again, because. distrust just seems to grow, not diminish.”
Here are four lessons Collins has learned about trusting science and public trust during the pandemic.
Misinformation and mistrust have undermined public support for vaccines.
“I think the development of these Covid vaccines in 11 months is perhaps the most important scientific achievement of humanity since we started recording these things,” Collins said, noting that by the end of 2022 , vaccines would have been available. saved at least 3 million lives in the United States And many others elsewhere.
“And yet (tens of millions of Americans) – good and honorable people, bombarded by all kinds of information and not trusting the sources of people like me, said: “No, thank you; I don’t want that.’
An analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 234,000 deaths could have been avoided between June 2021 and March 2022, when vaccines were widely available.
“In no way do I want to suggest that these (millions of Americans) are somehow guilty of this,” Collins said. “They’ve basically been victims, in my opinion, of a lot of missteps, misinformation and frankly disinformation (by) people who are looking to make money by convincing them that ‘No, you don’t need the vaccine because I’m going to sell it’. you this other thing.’
These concepts of knowledge and wisdom “blend together,” Collins said.
“Knowledge is the facts, the evidence, the information, the best you can muster, but they are often insufficient to help you make a decision,” he said. “For that you need experience, you need some sense of ideas and, oh, maybe a little common sense and a moral compass – what is the right thing to do? ”
When you add these elements – insight, common sense and morality – to knowledge, you get wisdom.
But wisdom can be elusive. “Right now, I feel like this road is quite difficult to travel. We are thrown into the ditch,” he said.
Collins said writing “The Road to Wisdom” made him think about what goes into public trust.
“In the area of trust, it seems that how we make decisions about trust depends on four things,” he said. “One of them is integrity: is this a source that I believe to be honest and open? Second: do they have skills? Do they really know what they are talking about? Have they done the work necessary to examine the complexity of the issue? And third, humility: is this a source that actually admits that there are things it’s not sure about and doesn’t try to extend its expertise in one area to all domains?
Almost everyone would agree with the first three, he said.
“But the fourth, which has now become very big, is: Is this source part of my bubble, is this part of my tribe? And therefore, I will let my guard down and accept what they say,” Collins said. “And that could be a good thing or a bad thing. Because facts don’t care how you feel. And a fact that comes to you from someone not in your tribe, and turns out to be true, is still something you should take into account and not dismiss simply because of its source.
Collins said we’ve lost some of that ability to discern facts from sources outside our bubble, which can mislead us.
Our future depends on restoring trust, he said.
“Science is a vital part of how we progress, and to the extent that people are less and less likely to trust it to help them thrive, then we will find it harder to thrive,” Collins said.
Regaining this trust in science will have to be a deliberate process.
“It involves a certain humility, a certain admission of things that have not gone as well as they should, a willingness to really listen, to understand the other points of view of people who have lost that trust and to try to understand what we could do to regain their trust,” he said.
Ultimately, Collins says he’s optimistic but also realistic that there’s still work to be done.
“I think it’s also a call to action for all of us to start re-anchoring ourselves in truth, science, faith and trust,” he said.
Listen to the full episode here and join us every Friday for a new episode of the Chasing Life podcast. Happy holidays until the next episode.