Review of Language of God by Francis S. Collins

Ok no offense to Francis S. Collins, but this book just isn't good. At least I was bored. Mostly because he didn't come up with anything new. I have read all this before and by more intuitive and enlightened authors such as Thomas Paine and C. S. Lewis. Even Dan Brown had a go around on Science and Faith coexisting harmoniously or even using science as evidence of a God in his book Angels and Demons. In fact the best parts of this books are quotes from other writers, of which there are many. His whole premiss for the existence of God is human's Moral Law. That section of the book was written like a high school paper on Lewis's books about moral law. It was like blah blah blah... Lewis quote... blah blah blah... Lewis quote... blah blah blah.

Not that I blame Collins. Lewis has a unique understanding of Christianity. One that is unparalleled by any other writer in my experience. He also is talented in explaining ideas, concepts, theories, questions, etc.... that have baffled all others, in a way that makes complete sense you then feel stupid to not have thought about it that way before.

My favorite Lewis quotes from Collin's book are:

"Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." - C. S. Lewis (referring to the universal longing for God among humans)

"But supposing God became a man- suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God's nature in one person- then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can do it only if He becomes man. Our attempts at this dying, just as our thinking can succeed only because it is a drop out of the ocean of His intelligence; but we cannot share God's dying unless God dies; and He cannot die except by being a man. That is the sense in which He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all" - C. S. Lewis (if you understand that your first go around I commend you)

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. he would either be a lunatic- on a level with a man who says he is a poached egg- or else He would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

- C. S. Lewis