The American Spectator

This review appears in the October issue of The American Spectator. To subscribe, click here.

p> strong> em> The Language of God : br> A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief /em> br> by Francis S. Collins br> (Free Press, 304 pages, $26) /strong> /p>

RECENTLY ASTROPHYSICIST and stalwart Darwin-defender George Coyne lectured before the largest scientific organization in the world, the American Association for the Advancement of Science. As he railed against biological arguments for intelligent design (ID), I wondered what Coyne thought of the now-mainstream design arguments in his own field.

Luckily Francis Collins, who led the race to map the human genome, rose to the microphone and broached the subject for me. Collins probed Coyne as to why gravity is so “finely-tuned.” That is, if the force of gravity was a tiny fraction smaller (one part in 10 to the 14th power) the universe would have kept expanding without forming galaxies (and thus we would not be here); yet if gravity were the same tiny fraction greater, matter in our universe would have glommed together and not expanded outward to form galaxies, stars, and planets (and thus we would not be here). And gravity is only one of many instances of fine-tuning. What Collins wanted to know was whether Coyne thought this evidence suggested luck or design.

It was a thoughtful question, but Coyne evaded it, saying it was not really a scientific issue. I left feeling unsatisfied-like Whitman after hearing the learned astronomer-and I suspected Collins did too.