Being an atheist I purchased both, The Language of God and The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel, because I wanted to read an intelligent argument for god. The only argument either had, was something had to create the universe; therefore, god.... Most interesting, neither one ever brought up anything else for an argument i.e., no arguments from the bible itself. I suppose they tried arguing the best they could, with what little material they had to work with.

Excellent synthesis of science and religion. While Collins believes that evolution is the only explanation for our origins, he argues that evolution does not exclude God - it is God's method for unfolding the wonders of the universe.

A pre-eminent scientist describes his sincere faith in God which will serve to bolster the faithful or will not convince any sincerely disbelieving scientist.

I read this book as a companion to Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, because I wanted to get different views from scientists on religion (and Dawkins definitely calls for a differing view!). In all, I found this book scientifically interesting and philosophically/theologically disappointing.

If you want a quick overview of Collins' views, watch this short video or this long video.

I will also summarize his views, with personal commentary.

1. Science

Collins is a scientists who knows what he's doing. He doesn't buy into any of these anti-evolutionary theories, such as creationism or intelligent design. In a few chapters towards the end of the book, he completely refutes both of these pseudoscientific theories. "If God created the universe, and the laws that govern it, and if He endowed human beings with intellectual abilities to discern its workings, would He want us to disregard those abilities?" (153)

Chapter three discusses some cosmological theories which point to the existence of God. Collins reviews the anthropic principle (the theory that any planet which could sustain life as we know it is EXTREMELY improbable) and says that this shows a God who directed natural laws to occur in ways that led to our existence. He says that God has the ability to guide these natural laws, and miracles may happen very rarely but not with any regularity, because if they did then we would lose faith in natural laws and science.
(Also, I dislike Collins' reading of Hawking's Brief History of the Universe. He quotes Hawking out of context in a way that makes Hawking sound religious.)
The most sensible interpretation of the anthropic principle - that the universe is improbable but we only know this one because we are in it - isn't seriously tackled by Collins. Of COURSE it is improbable that we are here. But if the universe wasn't just right, we wouldn't be here anyway to observe it. We're either insanely lucky or the multiverse hypothesis is true. But Collins thinks this points to a Creator who fine-tuned the universe.

2. Rejection of Atheism

Collins grew up in a household without religion. He describes this as atheist, but he was not an atheist in the Dawkins sense - he had merely never thought about religion much. However, after becoming a doctor and confronting issues of mortality and seeing how Christian faith made his patients handle horrid medical treatments with grace and calmness, he decided to convert. After reading C. S. Lewis, he became convinced that God exists.

He makes some odd leaps of logic - for example, he rejects agnosticism and deism out of hand, and even hints that atheism leads to immorality (42). In his discussion of atheism, he does distinguish between strong and weak atheism, but explicitly states that he will only discuss strong atheism. He calls Dawkins a strong atheist (he's not!) and proceeds to refute Dawkins' atheist arguments, or at least call them irrelevant. He even calls atheism "blind faith." Yeah, riiiiight.

3. Philosophical and Theological Views

A confession: I can't take any Christian apologetics based on C. S. Lewis seriously. Mere Christianity was a disappointing book.

I knew this book was going downhill when Collins brought in Lewis' idea of the Moral Law, which basically says that our universal human sense of right and wrong point to a Creator who put them in us for His purpose. This is a weak inductive argument, yet Collins even says that he doesn't know of any good refutations to it.

Sadly, it's obvious that Collins is ignorant of even elementary philosophy of science. I was looking for more abstract discussion of what science and religion are, how their epistemological methods differ, and why they will never collide. Instead, I got a stopgap measure: sure, Collins can reconcile his faith and his science NOW, but what if new evidence is discovered that strongly refutes one of the central tenets of his faith?
A god-of-the-gaps fallacy is when any gap in scientific knowledge is taken as proof for the existence of God. These are pathetic inductive arguments that are discarded after science makes more progress. The irony is that Collins spends a few pages elsewhere in the book discussing god-of-the-gaps arguments and why they are fallacious, but the Moral Law is this type of argument. New discoveries in evolutionary psychology provide good reasons for our moral sense: it's the optimal thing for our species.
(Here's some more good commentary)

Oh, and he lists Lee Strobel's Case for Christ in the footnotes, which makes me sad.

Sam Harris wrote a polemic, rabid review of the book too.

In sum, Collins has written a conciliatory book for Christians about the creationism/ID/evolution debate and the value of science, but it is not convincing to an atheist. He writes with the respectful, touchy-feely tone of many religious authors. Instead of providing deductive evidence for his claims of God's existence, he merely provides a lot of facts that make it possible, or can be reconciled with it. However, I would at least recommend the parts on the Human Genome Project and biology in general (chapters four and five), which are very interesting. ( )

Somehow, this book delivered what I wanted, without my knowing or expecting it. I am personally more interested in the debate between theology and science than I am in either of the two, and that is pretty much what this book delivers, a lot of debate.
The author will nominate several arguments. Most of them you have already heard before. He will tell you that certain thing you have heard are false, and other aren't.
He tells you how faith and religion can co-exists peaceful. And this is probably the missed point.
Collins suggests a religion crafted in science, which is nothing too shocking.
But in it, and this is what I enjoyed, he details many of the points and counter points we hear in the debates of this subject. And he informs us on his opinion, based on the facts he has, of how accurate these notions are.
I would like to bring up one point that, in following arguments along these lines I have noticed. Science requires as much faith as, well, faith. A lay person who chooses to believe science whole-heartedly and discard religion can more than likely not prove evolution or genetic theory if they were forced to. They probably have not read Darwin's books, nor gone out and done the research for any of the things they claim to believe. Which makes it is as faith based as any other religion. The books change, is all. ( )