"The Language of God" a poor argument indeed

In my continuing quest to make sense of the world around me, I have decided to read materials from potentially rational people on the other side of the fence. I am an atheist who believes in the power of logic, reason, and the human mind. I read books like "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins and just confirm what I already know. Dawkins merely provides me with ammunition to back up my arguments with those who continue to place their belief in magical thinking.

All good skeptics consider the foundation of their understanding to be the scientific method. The scientific method is a naturally balancing way to discover the truth about our world. It allows us to make predictions, test those predictions, and then either discard them or give them a little bit of merit in order to open the door for further testing. The predictions that don't hold up to repeated testing will eventually be discarded and we will be left with the best explanation of the situation... so far.

The scientific method is constantly self-checking and self-correcting. The law of gravity will only hold its place as a law until somebody comes along with a better (usually simpler) explanation. Everything is subject to re-examination.

In this spirit, I am currently trying to read texts that counterbalance the radical skeptical positions of people like Richard Dawkins. Admittedly I have just begun, but already I am completely astounded as the lack of quality material that is available.

"The Language of God" by Francis S. Collins was a promising start. Collins happens to be the head of the Human Genome Project, an eminent scientist working within an area of science that would appear to generate a fountain of information neatly fitting into the worldview of atheists everywhere.

In his book, Collins urges us all to take a step back and re-examine the war. Why are we fighting? Is there really a problem here? Collins doesn't think so. He firmly believes that religion and science are fully compatible. As an aside, skeptics have often wondered aloud why true-believers don't simply fold evolution into God's Plan as they have so many other things. Why fight it so adamantly with Intelligent Design when they can simply say, "Yeah, evolution works, but it was God's Plan all along"?

But that's also one of the main reasons skeptics dislike religion in the first place. It's just too easy to say "God made me do it" or "that's what God intended"... and that's really no explanation at all. One might as well say, "a leprechaun made me do it." We live in a strange world where the leprechaun argument won't work in court, but the God one just might.

But as is typical in this space, I digress. Back to Collins and his book. I'll just lay it out here. I wanted to enjoy "The Language of God" as a rational argument from the other side... but I couldn't get past the Introduction.

Merely 6 pages into the book, Collins makes such a staggeringly huge logic blunder that I am considering abandoning the rest of the book. He states very clearly the main argument of the book, and it is that very argument that is logically flawed.

It's as if I wrote and book and began by stating, "We all know that 2 + 2 = 5, therefore I present this book." Any rational person would say, "Wait a minute! You say that 2 + 2 = 5. We can't just ignore that. You need to prove to us why that works before we can proceed." If the author refused, you may understand how the rest of the book can be called into question.

I will quote from pages 5 and 6 of "The Language of God":

Did you spot the problems? There are a number of them.

1) Inexplicably, Collins evokes "non-overlapping magisteria" as his central premise less than 1 paragraph after he dismisses it!

2) Logical Flaw - Unstated Major Premise: Collins states that science deals with the natural world and God deals with the spiritual world. This rests upon an ENORMOUS unstated premise... that a "spiritual world" is a real thing and that it exists! 2 + 2 = 5!

As a scientist, Collins should know that he cannot proceed any further until he proves beyond a reasonable doubt that a "spiritual world" is an actual thing that we should even care about. Collins might well have said, "science deals with the natural world and God deals with Unicorn Planet."

Sigh... what do I do? I suppose I should continue with the book, but I have little expectation that Collins will provide proof of the existence of a spiritual world. After all, he need only do that and avoid writing the book in the first place! Problem solved. War over.