Are There Two Kinds of Truth?

The website Big Think hosts videos and blog posts from thinkers about big ideas, such as space exploration, genetics, virtualization, and other topics. Now, Big Think has interviewed a series of people hostile to biblical creation, such as Bill Nye and atheist Lawrence Krauss.

Adding to their voices is Dr. Francis Collins, a professing Christian, the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the founder of the theistic evolution group BioLogos. In a short blog post titled “We Need Two Kinds of Truth: Why I Don’t Want Science or Religion to Win,” Dr. Collins doesn’t directly speak against biblical creation, but he certainly hints at it and confuses evolutionary historical science with operational (observational) science.

He writes, “If I am asking a scientific question, it’s the tools of science I should be using and not assuming something supernatural happened in the test tube at that moment.” Of course, here Dr. Collins seems to be referring to observational science, which is testable, repeatable, and observable. Creation scientists don’t approach work in a lab from the distorted perspective Dr. Collins presents.

But Dr. Collins references the so-called conflict between science and religion. And really, the only conflict is between millions of years and evolutionary ideas with the clear words of Scripture. And the science used to study our origins is historical science and it’s not repeatable or observable. So whether the scientist is an evolutionist or a creationist, that researcher still has faith in a certain set of beliefs, known as a worldview.

So what does Dr. Collins say about this?

I think it would diminish the hostilities . . . if more scientists were, in fact, willing to stand up and say that faith and science need not to be in conflict because . . . it’s apparent to some people that we are having more of a cultural war—a war that seems to imply that some worldview needs to win and some world view needs to lose.

What he means by “science” is usually man’s historical science. But this is a battle of the biblical worldview against the secular humanist worldview. And you see, our worldviews color how we understand much of the world around us, including origins. Sadly, Dr. Collins doesn’t seem to understand that perspective. In fact, he claims that “we need both kinds of world views,” apparently considering “science” to be its own separate worldview, rather than realizing that it’s really God’s Word (the Bible) versus man’s word (millions of years and evolution).

I urge you to pray for Dr. Collins, that he would repent and return to the authority of Scripture on creation. We don’t have to doubt our origins, because God has given us an eyewitness account of what happened in the beginning—no evolutionists can produce such an account. I also encourage you to order a copy of my newest book Six Days: The Age of the Earth and the Decline of the Church (so that you’ll be equipped to respond to those claiming that God’s Word in Genesis can’t be trusted. Also, The New Answers Book 4 has a chapter on the so-called conflict between science and the Bible.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying, Ken