Some of the nation’s leading journalists gathered in Key West, Fla., in May 2009 for the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life’s Faith Angle Conference on religion, politics and public life.

Francis S. Collins, the former director of the Human Genome Project, discussed why he believes religion and science are compatible and why the current conflict over evolution vs. faith, particularly in the evangelical community, is unnecessary. Collins, an evangelical Christian, talked about his path from atheism to Christianity and his belief that science provides evidence of God. He cited the Big Bang theory and the fact that the universe had a beginning out of nothing. He added that the laws of physics have precisely the values needed for life to occur on earth and argued that would seem to point to a creator.

via pewforum.org to READ

Pew has published the transcripts from its recent Faith Angle Conference on religion, politics, and public life. Among the participants is Francis Collins, newly appointed to lead the National Institutes of Health.

Other participants were Fred Barnes, Jonathan Karl,Michael Cromartie, Barbara Bradley Hagerty, Kathleen Parker, Ross Douthat, David Van Biema, E.J. Dionne, Michael Gerson, Dan Gilgoff, Naomi Schaedder Riley, Claire Duffy, Claire Brinberg, Daniel Burke Reihan Salam, and Adrian Woolridge.

I'll be copying the entire transcript and reading it again.

"Barbara Bradley Hagerty, the religion correspondent for National Public Radio, discussed how the brain reacts to spiritual experiences. She talked about the current debate over whether transcendent experiences are merely physiological events or whether they reflect encounters with another dimension. Bradley Hagerty said she believes that “God is a choice,” that people can look at scientific evidence and conclude that everything is explained by material means or that they can look at the universe and see the hand of God. "

That of course, is the choice that I have made and Collins has made.