Hey,

welcome to episode 200 of the Meer Christians podcast.

I'm Jordan Rayner.

How does the Gospel influence the work of mere Christians, those of us who aren't

pastors or religious professionals, but who work as blacksmiths, economists, and landscapers? That's the question we explore every

week and today I'm posing it to Dr. Francis Collins, widely regarded as one of maybe the most significant scientists alive today.

Most recently, Dr Collins served as the Director of the National Institutes for Health.

He's the only presidentially appointed NIH director to serve in more than one administration,

let alone three.

And it was at the NIH that Dr. Collins directed

research and development for the COVID-19 vaccine.

Before that, he led the Human Genome Project, one of the most significant

scientific achievements of all time.

Dr Collins and I finally sat down to talk about his remarkable response to death threats from so-called

Christians during the pandemic. We talked about the theological roots of many Christians dismissal of science, and we talked about a book that Dr. Collins

surprisingly informed me that he's working on his first book in nearly 20 years

specifically for you fellow believers. Trust me, you are not going to

want to miss this phenomenal episode with Dr. Francis Collins. Dr. Collins, welcome to the mere Christians podcast.

I'm really glad to join you Jordan I know we've

been trying to set this up for quite a few months and today it's finally happening.

It's finally happened you've been a little busy. Just a little. A little busy. I got to say one of the only great things that came out of this pandemic was you and the great theologian, N. T. Wright, playing your rendition of the Beatles yesterday on YouTube. What the heck is the story here? How did this happen?

Well, I am very fortunate to have gotten to know Tom Wright or N.T as his writing name over the course of the last 10 years as part of this important discussion about how science and faith actually can speak positively to each other, which has led to the formation a few years ago of Bylogos Foundation.

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