National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins complained Tuesday that overzealous atheists are giving the U.S. public a false impression of the world of science, according to USA Today, which hosted a recent editorial roundtable with the director.
Collins made the comment in response to a question from USA Today regarding criticism from the U.S. scientific community that President Obama had appointed Collins, an evangelical Christian, to head a scientific agency.
According to a Thursday USA Today blog post on the conversation:
Asked about complaints from researchers such as Harvard’s Steven Pinker, over an avowed Christian heading a scientific agency, Collins said, “angry atheists are out there using science as a club to to hit believers over the head.” He expressed concern that prominent researchers suggesting that one can’t believe in evolution and believe in God, may be “causing a lot of people not familiar with science to change their assessments of it.”
Before heading the NIH, Collins headed the BioLogos Foundation, which is dedicated to “the integration of science and Christian faith.”
But he’s mostly well-known for his work and leadership of the Human Genome project.
The blog post doesn’t provide much more information about the substance of the conversation, but Collins’ comment is interesting in light of the polarized debates touched off by some of the issues that he’s in charge of steering at the NIH.
The most recent issue in the news is Wednesday’s development regarding NIH’s funding of research using embryonic stem cells.
A federal district court judge dismissed a suit that challenged the NIH’s funding of embryonic stem cell research on the grounds that it violated a 1996 law, and would crowd out funding for research into using adult stem cells.
As head of the NIH, Collins fought the challenge vigorously in court filings.
Many religious conservatives oppose the use of embryonic stem cells for research, but Collins noted in his conversation with USA Today that the thousands of frozen embryos used for the research are usually discarded by fertility clinics.
