Thursday, June 18

Dr. Francis Collins, on Charlie Rose, talking about the existence of God

"faith is in fact the most rational of all choices, when you consider, look at the spectrum between atheism and belief, let me tell you why- imagine this table represents all of the knowledge that ever has existed or will exist in the universe. and then ask any individual where in that table is your own personal knowledge right now and even the most confident of us will draw a tiny little circle. now suppose the knowledge of the existence of God is outside your circle. how then could anybody, who is not a wacko, say, 'I know there is no God.' is that not the most irrational position, does that not require the greatest faith of all?. I would argue that already in our little circle there is evidence of the existence of some supernatural being. the big bang for instance, did the universe create itself? I don't see how that could happen. something outside of nature, presumably, had to preside over the creation of something out of nothing. and when you look at the way the universe is tuned, where all of these constants are precisely having the value that's necessary for matter to coalesce and for life to be possible it's almost impossible that such a thing would have happened, the probabilities are infinitesimal. sorta makes you wonder. even Stephen Hawking, who did not come at this exactly as a believer, writes in his book A Brief History of Time, 'this has religious significance.' and it does. so you can look at the logical evidence and bring yourself right up to the cliff's edge of saying 'it makes sense that there is a God.'"

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