God, science: incompatible?
Steve Martaindale

Steve Martaindale is a self-syndicated columnist. Write him at penmanmail-steve@yahoo. com.

Startling news from the Times Online out of London ... it seems that some people believe science and God can co-exist.

You don't say.

The story outs Francis Collins, director of the U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute and leader of the team that cracked the human genome. Not only does he say that science can bring mankind closer to God, but he adds that he believes in miracles.

Somebody get the smellin' salts for Granny.

Actually, his announcement is not groundbreaking. The article goes on to mention that perhaps our greatest scientific minds - Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, for example - made the observations that something as orderly as the universe must have had a creator.

Indeed, science and religion are not mutually exclusive. Many claim them to be incompatible, partly out of narrow thinking, I believe, but more likely out of the need to have an identifiable "devil" to rail against.

"Do you know what they're teaching your children?" one might bellow. "These 'educated' people are telling them that God did not create the universe, this world or even your own child."

With the exception of the occasional bad teacher, no. They are teaching what science has discovered about how the universe began and how man came together and developed. It is up to the parents and church to instruct that God was and is behind the science.

A wonderful, late pastor of mine put it another way, one I have quoted often, probably here: "You don't have to leave your brains outside the church."

The Rev. William H. Foster was a large, strong man, a physical appearance that served well to personify his solid beliefs. He knew good and well that God created the universe.

However, he was also a trained geologist. He knew ... and I hope I am doing him justice here ... that there are now discernable facts about the origin of the planet that may not have been explainable to people of Old Testament times.

While we are nowhere near knowing everything, we should know enough now to understand that we do not understand it all.

Could God have developed man through evolving species? Sure. Did he? I do not know, but he certainly could have.

I remember a song of some 40 or so years ago, titled "Evolution and the Bible" that attempted to widen the divide between science and religion, implying people of science believe "we've still got relatives swinging in a tree."

Do I have a problem with God working through various life forms before creating us? Absolutely not. What separates us from the apes isn't so much biology as the fact that God chose humans as his children. By the way, do I have a problem with the possibility that God developed a universe, a world, various life forms and then ... pow ... he created man? No, I do not, because I don't know for a fact how we came into being.

I figure, sometime in the great hereafter, I'll be able to sit in on a community education course and get all of those things explained to me.

Perhaps, Francis Collins will be teaching the course.