To the Editor:
Re “Top Geneticist Named to Lead Health Agency” (news article, July 9):
The nomination of Dr. Francis S. Collins to lead the National Institutes of Health is a boon to the scientific endeavor, and also to a better public understanding of religion.
Dr. Collins is an evangelical Christian who is indeed quite vocal about his faith, for example in his recent book, “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.” This should not be fuel for his critics, however, but an additional reason Dr. Collins is a brilliant choice.
According to the Pew Forum’s 2007 Religious Landscape Survey, evangelical Christians make up 26 percent of Americans, the largest single religious group. It is crucial that these Christians see a public figure who can be a solid scientist and a solid Christian and who perceives no contradiction in those roles.
Perhaps it is even more crucial that other Americans are forced to rethink some of their stereotypes about religious affiliation.
Dena S. Davis
Cleveland, July 9, 2009
The writer, a professor of law at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, was a visiting scholar at the National Human Genome Research Institute in 1998-99, while Dr. Collins was director.
Note from KBJ: Here is the key paragraph from the New York Times story to which the letter writer links:
There are two basic objections to Dr. Collins. The first is his very public embrace of religion. He wrote a book called “The Language of God,” and he has given many talks and interviews in which he described his conversion to Christianity as a 27-year-old medical student. Religion and genetic research have long had a fraught relationship, and some in the field complain about what they see as Dr. Collins’s evangelism.
What in the world does Dr Collins's religiosity have to do with his scientific work? Either he's a competent scientist or he's not. If he is, then his religious beliefs are irrelevant. If he is not, then that, and not his religious beliefs, should be the basis for opposing him. Imagine the outcry if the nominee for this position were opposed on the ground of being a homosexual. Why is anti-religious bigotry treated so differently from bigotry against homosexuals?
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 