Francis Collins and Guillermo Gonzalez

Not only has Guillermo Gonzalez gotten praise from Owen Gingerich and Simon Conway Morris, but he gets support from the writings of Francis Collins as well. Many people do not realize that Collins believes that the fine-tuning of the universe is scientific evidence of intelligent design. Even though Collins does not call it "intelligent design" in his book, he makes most of the same arguments as Gonzalez.

For more, take a look at Jonathan Witt's review of Collins' book The Language of God. Here is a portion:

The mainstream media have emphasized two aspects of the book: Its insistence that Darwinism is no threat to Christianity, and its argument that Darwinism better explains a range of physical evidence than either creationism or intelligent design. What has gone begging for ink, however, is a feature of the book hidden in plain sight: Francis Collins makes a scientific case for intelligent design.

According to the theory of intelligent design, which extends from the origin of matter to the origin of mind, an intelligent cause is the best explanation for certain features of the natural world. In chapter nine Collins argues against intelligent design in biology, and this the media have picked up. But in chapter three, “The Origins of the Universe,” he argues that an intelligent cause is the best explanation for certain features of the natural world, in this case, features that existed before the origin of life.

. . .

His appeal to the Big Bang and the fine-tuned cosmos form two of his key design arguments. (The third, discussed below, looks at the moral law found across cultures and the fact of human altruism, features that Darwinism fails to explain but which are explained well by the claim that humans were created in the image of God.)

In our present intellectual climate, where scientists have been harassed and even fired for advocating intelligent design, and the idea is routinely attacked in news stories and the popular books of writers like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, the fact that the head of the Human Genome Project makes a scientific case for intelligent design should stand out before all the others.

It certainly looks like Francis Collins would have been one of the people targeted by Hector Avalos and his McCarthy-like statement. It also looks like Francis Collins would have had a hard time getting tenure at Iowa State University.