Can a lifetime devoted to science lead someone to God? For oncologist Dr. Thomas Collins, the answer is yes.

Speaking with Drew on The Drew Mariani Show, Dr. Collins shared his remarkable journey from agnosticism to Catholicism while working daily among cancer patients, suffering, and death. Though baptized Baptist as a child, he admitted he lost his faith as a teenager and spent years focused entirely on medicine and scientific achievement.

“I just felt like it was all Santa Claus, basically,” he said of religion during his younger years.

Driven by intellectual curiosity, Dr. Collins pursued oncology because of its complexity and promise. Yet over time, the suffering of patients began to soften what he described as a once “cold” outlook on life.

Then came a moment he could never explain away.

While discussing molecular biology research in a lab, an unexpected thought pierced through his skepticism: “Isn’t this a little too amazing to have just happened?”

“That voice hit me like a hammer,” he recalled. “It woke me up.”

That experience launched a deep search for truth through philosophy, theology, and eventually Christianity. But Dr. Collins says it was more than intellectual arguments that changed him. The love of his wife, the birth of his children, beauty in nature and music, and especially the witness of patients suffering with grace all pointed him toward God.

One patient even asked him directly if he was a Christian. Another later gifted him a copy of Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis after discerning through prayer that he should do so.

Through those encounters, Dr. Collins came to believe that human love, beauty, and suffering are not meaningless accidents, but signs pointing toward God Himself.

As Drew reflected, those experiences reveal “the good, the true, and the beautiful” reflections of the Creator drawing souls back to Him.

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