Harris presents a series of juxtaposed paraphrases of Collins’ beliefs which are supposed to strike us as inconsistent. The first:

Dr. Collins has written that science makes belief in God “intensely plausible” — the Big Bang, the fine-tuning of nature’s constants, the emergence of complex life, the effectiveness of mathematics, all suggest the existence of a “loving, logical and consistent” God. But when challenged with alternative accounts of these phenomena — or with evidence that suggests that God might be unloving, illogical, inconsistent or, indeed, absent — Dr. Collins will say that God stands outside of Nature, and thus science cannot address the question of his existence at all.

It is of course not inconsistent to suppose that some things about God are explicable and others are inexplicable. Perhaps Collins is sloppy in the way he phrases his answers to questions, but it doesn’t take a PhD in philosophy (or a BA in philosophy) to realize that, say,  the “skeptical theist” or “cognitive limitations”  response to the problem of evil does not logically exclude, say, a probabilistic cumulative case argument for God’s existence. When someone (like C.S. Lewis) is not a professional analytic philosopher of religion, we must be especially careful to interpret their arguments charitably – that is, to read and present them in their strongest formulations.

The second example:

Similarly, Dr. Collins insists that our moral intuitions attest to God’s existence, to his perfectly moral character and to his desire to have fellowship with every member of our species. But when our moral intuitions recoil at the casual destruction of innocents by, say, a tidal wave or earthquake, Dr. Collins assures us that our time-bound notions of good and evil can’t be trusted and that God’s will is a mystery.

It is unclear even what Harris is thinking in this paragraph. Surely our human moral intuitions are consistent in all the judgements in question, and Collins would not call death-by-tidal-wave good. While the phrase “God’s will is a mystery” has become a boring cliche, it is surely correct that we should consider mysterious apparently evil actions or allowances by a being we otherwise have strong reason to call good, who is furthermore (both by definition and in our subjective experience) possessing of cognitive powers vastly beyond our own.

Like atheists concerned about the Virgin Birth destroying medical science, Harris is afraid of the practical implications of Collins’ religious beliefs. Says Harris, “If we must look to religion to explain our moral sense, what should we make of the deficits of moral reasoning associated with conditions like frontal lobe syndrome and psychopathy?” But (as far as I know) Collins does not deny the realities of, say, abnormal psychology. Rather, he accepts what is usually called “The Moral Law Argument,” famously formulated in popular fashion by C.S. Lewis. But this is a philosophical argument suggesting that if our moral intuitions are correct, then we might have a good philosophical argument for there being a God. The best charitable and rigorous formulation of The Moral Law Argument is by Erik Wielenberg in his book God and the Reach of Reason: C.S. Lewis, David Hume, and Bertrand Russell. This argument does not in any way undercut contemporary psychology.

Harris doesn’t like that Collins doubts science’s ability to answer humanity’s “most pressing questions.” But isn’t it obvious that Collins has ethical and spiritual questions in mind? At worst, Collins’ observation is just trivial (i.e. if you accept his arbitrarily preferred questions, then it is immediately obvious science doesn’t answer them). But Harris finds ways of objecting to even the most harmless sentiments when they come from religious people:

After all, understanding human well-being at the level of the brain might very well offer some “answers to the most pressing questions of human existence” — questions like, Why do we suffer? Or, indeed, is it possible to love one’s neighbor as oneself?

His first example is just off the mark, since theology asks questions about suffering given whatever are the various immediate physical and psychological causes. His second question, a little smarter, would really be an example of science showing that one of Collins’ “most pressing questions” is actually incoherent or irrelevant, i.e. if we can’t love our neighbor as ourself, then it doesn’t make sense to obligate us to do so.

Harris closes with the melodramatic question, “Must we really entrust the future of biomedical research in the United States to a man who sincerely believes that a scientific understanding of human nature is impossible?”

First, Harris is being fear-mongering and sensationalist, as Collins does not and will not control “the future of biomedical research in the United States,” since Collins’ office is neither eternal nor omnipotent. But even if it was, Harris is sloppy with the term “human nature.” Chances are, Harris and Collins agree on just about every relevant scientific question, with Harris thinking these agreements have a certain completion to them, needing no further analysis. Collins, however, thinks there are deeper questions and deeper realities to be considered. It’s clear, to me at least, that Harris and Collins will use the very term “human nature” in different ways.

Krauss admits that moving from “atheism of science” to “general atheism” is a “leap” and “not unimpeachable.” Yet is is “certainly rational.”

But I cannot see how God’s absence in a scientific experiment lends any credence to a general atheism. First, there are no good reasons to think that God would interfere with scientific experiments. I am aware of only one case where anyone has argued to the contrary: Richard Swinburne thinks God would not respond to studies or experiments designed to test the effects of prayer. But of course these investigations do take theological categories into account.

The second, and to me more significant reason to reject Krauss’s assertions is that they mean almost every activity justifies general atheism, including several religious activities. For example, probably no culinary arts schools operate under the assumption that God will interfere with culinary activity (although such assumptions might make television shows such as Iron Chef even more mesmerizing than they already are). Indeed, assumptions of divine interference would make cookbooks quite useless.

Religious charity operates under the assumption that, for example, God will not strike airplane pilots dead while flying shipments of food. And a host of other assumptions about God’s noninterference.

Perhaps Krauss’ argument reduces to an argument from the regularity of nature. If God exists, we’d expect nothing to make very much sense, or work very well. But that seems not only to lack justification, but to be contrary to what many theologians think theism entails.

Krauss then goes in another direction, without realizing it, talking about how various miracle claims, which may vary in doctrinal significance, are contary to specific scientific assumptions and beliefs. But it seems to me that even if it is the case that Jesus was born from a virgin, indeed miraculously, this would change zero things about medical practice. But then I’m not a doctor.