Join other Peace members to attend “Allies, Not Enemies” lecture presented by Francis Collins at St. Philip the Deacon Lutheran Church, Thursday, April 16, 7:00pm. We’ll carpool from Peace at 5:45pm. There is no cost for this event. Sign up at the information kiosk or here to be added to the list.
Read on below for more about Mr. Collins and his lecture.
Francis Collins is an American physician-scientist who discovered the genes associated with a number of diseases and led the Human Genome Project. He served for 32 years at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and as director from 2009 to 2021.
Collins most recent book is The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust (2024). In this book, Collins writes about how the divisiveness in the country, driven largely by our politics, is warping our thinking, driven by false information that fuels hatred and mistrust. He believes, though, that all is not lost. His new book, The Road to Wisdom, is his blueprint for finding common ground. He joins us to describe how valuing truth, science, faith and trust are not incompatible and why wisdom involves experience, common sense, insight and morality.
As the COVID-19 pandemic revealed, we have become not just a hyper-partisan society but also a deeply cynical one, distrustful of traditional sources of knowledge and wisdom. Skepticism about vaccines led to the needless deaths of at least 230,000 Americans. “Do your own research” is now a rallying cry in many online rabbit holes. Yet experts can make mistakes, and institutions can lose their moral compass. So how can we navigate through all this?