Please note. This post may make some of my Christian friends uncomfortable. The views I express here are my own personal doubts and conclusions. I do not claim they are right and that your beliefs are wrong. They are simply what I currently find myself believing. Please be gentle in the comments, whether you are Christian, atheist or anything in between.

When people first discover I am a christian their reaction is almost universally the same - “how? He strikes me as such a sensible, intelligent bloke.” Although my wife would challenge the claim whether I am either sensible or intelligent, the interesting point here is the assumption that if you decided to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ you essentially kiss goodbye to your brains.

Rigorous re-examination has served me well

In fact for me personally a continual and rigorous reevaluation of what I believe is an essential component of following Christ. I cannot simply follow with ‘blind faith’. Rather, my faith is built on historical, scientific and philosophical considerations that needs to be considered in the light of latest understanding.

In the past this approach has always served me well. Looking at other religious faiths and the areas where science and faith supposedly clash has always helped to strengthened rather than undermine my faith.

Was I believing a fairytale?

However, more recently my process of re-examination has begun to undermine my belief in the existence of any God whatsoever. Interestingly I have remained convinced that if a God did exist it would be through the teachings of Jesus that I would get the best glimpse of Him. However, somehow the whole scenario was beginning to feel weak, more like a powerful moral story than a statement of truth.

A problem of upbringing

In hindsight I think that my primary difficulty was a belief that to ‘follow Christ’ involved accepting certain truths instilled in me by my evangelical background. Although I have nothing but respect for those that introduced me to my faith, I find that increasingly the ‘wing of the church’ with which I am associated holds various beliefs with which I am uncomfortable.

For example I have always struggled with the idea of a 7 day literal creation and totally rejected the idea that the earth is only 10,000 years old. I also found myself extremely uncomfortable with the more extreme beliefs I see in regards to subjects like homosexuality, abortion and stem cell research.

Over the last year as I have discussed and researched more into a range of topics from evolution to human psychology I found myself departing ever further from views generally held within the evangelical movement.

However, please do not misunderstand me. This is not a problem with my current church. The church which I attend holds a vast range of beliefs on all of these issues and is very accepting of anybody (whether they have any kind of faith or not) who walk through the door. The problem is that often those with the more extreme points of view are the more vocal. You can quickly end up feeling that if you do not share these views you are in some way a wishy-washy christian.

The fundamentalist atheist

Things were made worse by the new strain of what I like to refer to as ‘fundamental atheism’ spurred on by the likes of Richard Dawkins. These people will argue aggressively against my beliefs using science as a weapon to imply I am a moron for believing anything but their particular brand of atheism.

I quickly came to feel isolated from the Christian community. I seemed to share so few of their beliefs that I began to wonder at the very existence of God. Perhaps I wasn’t a christian after all.

Fortunately, my stubborn attitude did not allow me to give up at this point. Instead of running away from these doubts I decided to confront them head on. In particular, I wanted to delve deeper into the apparent conflicts between modern science and the christian faith.

The language of God by Francis Collins

After reading various material challenging principles of creationism and intelligent design, I stumbled across a book called “The language of God” by Francis Collins.

What grabbed my attention was the fact that Francis Collins heads the human genome project. Here was a man who heads the project which is the poster child for evolutionary theory and yet (as the book explains) is a Christian.

This peaked my interest for two reasons. One, I had grown up in an evangelical tradition that has always been extremely suspicious of evolutionary theory and two, Francis was obviously an incredibly intelligent person. How did he maintain his faith in face of such opposition and supposed evidence to the contrary?

In fact I was to discover he doesn’t. He fully accepts evolution and indeed all aspects of generally excepted scientific theory. What is amazing is that when he painstakingly examines each area of supposed conflict between faith and science, he finds no conflict. Admittedly he interprets scripture in a way many fundamentalists would find unacceptable (for example he does not read the genesis story as a literal scientific account). However, for me every word he wrote resinated.

Listening to him read (I was listening to the audiobook) I felt a weight of dogma being lifted from my shoulders while at the same time creating a renewed realization that a belief in God is not just defensible, but that a belief in no God is an extremely difficult (if not impossible) position to maintain.

I hated the thought of losing my faith. It was not something I wanted but with no alternative way of marrying what I felt in my heart and reasoned in my head, I was beginning to see no choice. However, Collins has opened by eyes rooting his faith as he does not just in current scientific knowledge but in scripture and in 2000 years of Christian teaching. For example I found it interesting to discover that the current interpretation of Genesis (literal 7 days etc) has mainly arisen as a reaction to Darwinism. As early as 400AD most Christians didn’t treat this as a historical account.

Science shows how amazing God is.

For me his book has changed everything. It is a compelling argument for the existence in a God and the truth of the teachings of Jesus. However, more than that it is a faith unafraid of scientific discovery. In fact, as he examines the complexity of the world in which we live it has left me wondering all the more at the grandeur of a being that could put this entire process in place. A being that exists outside of the laws of space and time and so unconstrained by linear thinking.

If you are a christian…

If you are a Christian, I would sincerely encourage you to read this book. I am sure it will broaden your horizons and hopefully show you that you do not need to fear the exploration of science. After all if God is real as we suppose, what is science going to find other than more evidence of his handy work?

If you do not believe in a God…

If you do not have a belief in God and in particular if you are left wondering how any sane person can believe in God (let alone the Christian God) then I encourage you to read this book too. You will discover that a lot of the things you think a christian is required to believe is actually baggage you can leave behind. Believing in God does not mean you have to reject well established scientific theory or indeed kiss goodbye to your brains.

Buy “The Language of God” now, you won’t regret it.