President Obama Picks Born-Again Christian to Head NIH

07-09-2009
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Let's get straight to the point. President Obama has nominated a born-again Christian to head up the National Institutes of Health. For all you atheists, secular liberals or scientists, I'll give you a moment here to run for the Pepto-Bismol or the Tylenol. But you heard it right. Collins used to be an atheist but gave his life to Jesus at the age of 27 after setting out to confirm his atheist views. He couldn't. The compelling case for Jesus was too much.

The Brody File has a lot of coverage on this so hang with me here on this post. First, get the details here from The New York Times.

Also, you have to watch this story below. CBN News interviewed Collins two years ago. He talks quite a bit about his faith. (it's about 1:45 into the piece)

Also, you have to read the following below. Collins talks about how he gave his life to Christ.

I had always assumed that faith was based on purely emotional and irrational arguments, and was astounded to discover, initially in the writings of the Oxford scholar C.S. Lewis and subsequently from many other sources, that one could build a very strong case for the plausibility of the existence of God on purely rational grounds.

My earlier atheist's assertion that I know there is no God emerged as the least defensible. As the British writer G.K. Chesterton famously remarked, Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, for it is the assertion of a universal negative; But reason alone cannot prove the existence of God. Faith is reason plus revelation, and the revelation part requires one to think with the spirit as well as with the mind. You have to hear the music, not just read the notes on the page. Ultimately, a leap of faith is required. For me, that leap came in my 27th year, after a search to learn more about God's character led me to the person of Jesus Christ. Here was a person with remarkably strong historical evidence of his life, who made astounding statements about loving your neighbor, and whose claims about being God's son seemed to demand a decision about whether he was deluded or the real thing. After resisting for nearly two years, I found it impossible to go on living in such a state of uncertainty, and I became a follower of Jesus.

So, some have asked, doesn't your brain explode? Can you both pursue an understanding of how life works using the tools of genetics and molecular biology, and worship a creator God? Aren't evolution and faith in God incompatible? Can a scientist believe in miracles like the resurrection?

Actually, I find no conflict here, and neither apparently do the 40 percent of working scientists who claim to be believers. Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.

But why couldn't this be God's plan for creation? True, this is incompatible with an ultra-literal interpretation of Genesis, but long before Darwin, there were many thoughtful interpreters like St. Augustine, who found it impossible to be exactly sure what the meaning of that amazing creation story was supposed to be. So attaching oneself to such literal interpretations in the face of compelling scientific evidence pointing to the ancient age of Earth and the relatedness of living things by evolution seems neither wise nor necessary for the believer.

I have found there is a wonderful harmony in the complementary truths of science and faith. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. God can be found in the cathedral or in the laboratory. By investigating God's majestic and awesome creation, science can actually be a means of worship.

Watch him talk about his faith here. (it's about 3:50 into the clip)

There's no firm evidence to suggest that President Obama made this pick as a sort of olive branch to Evangelicals but that really doesn't matter. The fact of the matter is that you can expect the Collins pick to be very well received by the Evangelical community. Collins wears his faith on his sleeve and not ashamed about it and that plays well with Evangelical leaders.

 While some may take issue with his theories on evolution and how they may not relate to a literal six day creation, the bottom line here is that the Collins pick will go down as positive mark on the Evangelical checklist.

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