Plebe

A Physics instructor friend who is no longer a believer had a look at this thread and surprisingly had some familiarity with Dr. Collins' work.He and I both agree that his 'compartmentalizing' does not leave him 'off the hook' with respect to his implied belief in church doctrines. As you can see, my friend clarifies this and even goes so far as to infer Dr. Collins' implied 'Intellectual fundamentalism' with a comparison to the way he formerly reconciled his old belief system when he was a believer.
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I have always agreed with Dr. Collins that the bible is not a science book (even in my most fundicostal charismatic days). god could have "created" the universe in any which way. Since there is so much support for evolution, I always accpted that god used that process. Collins criticizes the fundies for treating the bible too literally and not realizing that it has many authors. So Collins is off the hook in terms of science. However, he is not off the hook on his implied belief in the traditional doctrines of the church. Most of those doctrines can be tossed out by arguing that the bible should not be taken literally (considering translation difficulties, pagan themes, contradictions and immoral stories like the flood). So yes, Collins is only taking the bible nonliterally in terms of science but not in terms of the doctrines. In my eyes this is compartmentalizing. I would therefore not consider Dr. Collins a liberal christian at all. He is very much like the intellectual evangelical fundie I used to be. Liberal christians treat the bible nonliterally both in terms of doctrine and science.