I'm finally getting around to making some headway into the massive reading ahead for me. Step one was putting the smallest book before me to rest this weekend: Francis Collins' "The Language of God."

The book doesn't seem to have taken off among Christian book circles and in reading it, it's unfortunately evident why that might be. Collins is a scientist by trade, and a notable one at that. He led the team that helped map the human genome. He also writes in this book that evolution and Christianity are not and should not be viewed as competing belief systems. He also refutes the Young Earth Creationist viewpoint in this book. But Collins is also a Christian of the evangelical stripe. And he covers his bases rather well in describing how one shouldn't rest their faith on those principles.

I have to admit that reading this is, in a sense, depressing for me. Depressing because, all throughout, Collins acknowledges the support those views have within Christian circles - and how particularly strong those views tend to be among evangelical Christian circles. His arguments along these lines are persuasive, but I guess I'd have to count myself as predisposed toward sharing them in the first place. Again, that's part of what makes the book such a depressing read. It seems no matter how compelling an argument might exist to the contrary, the more expansive breadth of Christian culture has proven far more difficult to break through.

Collins' larger point is that faith and science should not be viewed as competing entities and offers ample support for how they can be viewed not merely as supportive of each other, but Collins adds his argument that the practice of science should be seen as a form of worship. In this regard, it becomes an encouraging read (for me, at least) that there are people out there like Collins. He also lends a shout-out to the American Scientific Affiliation - a group of Christian scientists who explore the intersection of those two realms in far more detail.

Another side of Collins' book is as an apologetics read. I've written before about how I tend to not really find much interest these days in that topic. And perhaps that is reinforced by my lack of enthusiasm for reading through Collin's version as it's woven throughout the book. Collins does at least remind me of why I think I'm so down on apologetics lately. I think it's due to my view that the arguments that sway each of us are far more personalized than other topics for reading. I had this copy of the book with me while dining with our movie night group over the weekend. Invariably, I had a handful of people tell me about seeing Les Strobel, plugging his DVD on the Case for Christ as a means of demonstrating hipness with the topic. No offense to Strobel - I've seen interviews and his DVD does indeed seem impressive. But I still view it with all the excitement of procuring an encyclopedia. Great if you need one, and I highly recommend we all have a set somewhere. But the material that moves each of us, I believe, tends to be rather customized to our own unique situations in life. I say that not to dissuade anyone from picking up a book on the topic if they feel compelled to do so, but I'm just at a lull with that genre at this point. Is that being too pessimistic? I hope not. Apologetics are an important genre, I'm just not one to read a new book on the subject every month or so.

Where Collins touches on the more technical aspects of his trade, it tends to be limited in order to keep the book commercially palatable. I'll count it as a minor criticism that he doesn't elaborate more on those topics. The book only clocks in at 272 pages. Surely a few more could have been devoted to exploring the actual science that Collins is expert in while still keeping it aimed at a commercial audience. But maybe I should just turn that into a hope that Collins devotes another book toward the topic in greater detail for non-scientists like me.

For a free sample of Collins, there's this great Washingtonian article, this segment of a CNN interview with Collins, and a lecture audio from the ASA. I recommend them all.