Francis Collins Quotes

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.

Philosophy is empty if it isn't based on science. Science discovers, philosophy interprets.

Science provides a much more satisfactory way to seek answers than does any religion.

It is science, and not religion, which has taught men that things are complex and difficult to understand.

Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myth.

I cannot live on myths; somehow, science convinces me more easily. I am prone to lean towards science, ethics, and philosophy rather than myth, religion, and rituals.

I have said that science is impossible without faith. ... Inductive logic, the logic of Bacon, is rather something on which we can act than something which we can prove, and to act on it is a supreme assertion of faith ... Science is a way of life which can only fluorish when men are free to have faith.

If there is any consistent enemy of science, it is not religion, but irrationalism.

The scientist believes in proof without certainty, the bigot in certainty without proof.

Science is not wisdom.

There is a tradition of opposition between adherents of induction and of deduction. In my view it would be just as sensible for the two ends of a worm to quarrel.

If faith is a valid tool of knowledge, then anything can be true 'by faith,' and therefore nothing is true. If the only reason you can accept a claim is by faith, then you are admitting that the claim does not stand on its own merits.

Science was born as a result and consequence of philosophy; it cannot survive without a philosophical base. If philosophy perishes, science will be next to go.

I believe that through its rational evaluation of truth and indifference to personal belief, science transcends religious and political divisions and so does bind us into a greater, more resilient whole.

God forbid that Truth should be confined to Mathematical Demonstration!

The alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind

I'm not a religious man... I find I am a fan of science. I believe in science. A humility before the facts. I find that a moving and beautiful thing. And belief in the unknown I find less interesting. I find the known and the knowable interesting enough.

Truth has nothing to do with the conclusion, and everything to do with the methodology.

If facts, logic, and scientific procedures are all just arbitrarily "socially constructed" notions, then all that is left is consensus--more specifically peer consensus, the kind of consensus that matters to adolescents or to many among the intelligentsia.

The method of science is tried and true. It is not perfect, it's just the best we have. And to abandon it, with its skeptical protocols, is the pathway to a dark age.

One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment.

Every science in a certain degree starts from faith, and, on the contrary, faith, which does not lead to science, is mistaken faith or superstition, but real, genuine faith it is not.

I think that the issues we have with science these days are not restricted to what's happening with respect to religion. There are a lot of very religious scientists around.

Without a commitment to science and rationality in its proper domain, there can be no solution to the problems that engulf us. Still, the Yahoos never rest.