I first heard of Francis Collins in Michael Shermer's The Believing Brain , where his faith journey served as a contrast for Shermer's own journey from evangelical Christianity to atheism. The Language of God is Collins' own telling of that story, along with his reflections on the relationship between science and faith. Collins is famous for his role as the director of the Human Genome Project, in which a host of geneticists pooled their efforts to develop a complete map of the human genome. He is also a committed evangelical Christian, and this makes him something of a poster boy for the idea that Christianity and science can be compatible. After all, if such a distinguished scientist is also a believer then faith must be smart. The Language of God opens with his own description of his conversion. Brought up in a non-religious household, he more or less drifted into atheism as the default option for a budding scientist, before his switch to medicine brought him i
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson