testing, testing
I’m sure someone has made the point I’m about to make, but I haven’t seen it, so: in Sam Harris’s recent op-ed about President Obama’s choice of Francis Collins to head the National Institutes of Health, he makes it very clear that his only objection to Collins is the man’s religious beliefs. “Dr. Collins’s credentials are impeccable: he is a physical chemist, a medical geneticist and the former head of the Human Genome Project.” Yet the U. S. Constitution says that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” So the Constitution would have to be amended before decisions of this kind could be made on the grounds that Harris wants to employ. Harris would be happy with such an amendment, of course.
I believe that Harris primarily implied that, had he been elected President and thus had the DISCRETIONARY power to appoint whomever he liked to the post, he would not have chosen Dr. Collins for those reasons.
I’ve always understood the “religious test” clause to ban the proclamation of any official mandatory test that would demand of individuals to belong (or not belong) to a certain religious group. Or to be required to take an oath before taking the office saying that they were (or were not) members of a specific religion (or atheists). The idea was to prevent religious favoritism and the creation of the ‘state religion’.
But hey, does anyone honestly believe that the personal preferences (even regarding someone’s religious beliefs) do not come into equation with such appointments?
I mean this is different from saying that, let’s say, a Hindu would not be allowed to run for a public office because he/she was not a Christian.
— Marko · Jul 31, 02:10 PM · #
“his only objection to Collins is the man’s religious beliefs”.
Flatly false. His objection is to Collins’s expression of his beliefs, and especially the pseudo-scientific claims made by Collins as a result thereof.
— Francis · Jul 31, 02:38 PM · #
I’m sure someone has made the point I’m about to make
Mark Kleiman
— Brad · Jul 31, 02:44 PM · #
Thanks, Brad — I knew it had to be out there.
Francis, Harris could not be more explicit that he thinks Collins unqualified on the basis of his beliefs themselves, e.g.: “Why should Dr. Collins’s beliefs be of concern?” He knows about those beliefs because Collins has expressed them, but it’s not the expression that concerns him: it’s the beliefs. He says this repeatedly.
— Alan Jacobs · Jul 31, 02:54 PM · #
Perhaps Dr. Harris fears the science equivalent of this.
Eric Cantor, minority whip.
“WASHINGTON (JTA) — Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told Christian Zionists that U.S. policies in the Middle East must be “firmly grounded” in Judeo-Christian principles.
“Reaching out to the Muslim world may help in creating an environment for peace in the Middle East, but we must insist as Americans that our policies be firmly grounded in the beliefs of the Judeo-Christian tradition upon which this country was founded,” said Cantor (R-Va.), the House minority whip and the only Jewish Republican in Congress, in a speech to the Christians United For Israel annual conference in Washington.”
I, myself, am willing to see if Dr. Collins can keep it in his pants, unlike Mr. Cantor.
Dr. Collins positions on hESCR and ToE are quite unimpeacheable……in fact he refused to participate in Expelled, and was excoriated by the religious right as a traitor.
As long as Dr. Collins does not use his position to proselytize or suppress science, i see no reason to object to his appointment.
— matoko_chan · Jul 31, 03:15 PM · #
This would be the same Sam Harris who said “some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.”
At least the other New Atheists have something to offer….Hitchens is occasionally sensible on foreign policy, Dawkins has done some interesting scientific work, and Dennett is at least pseudo philosophical in his writing. Harris is such a pathetically weak thinker it’s almost embarrassing to read him.
— Jay · Jul 31, 03:57 PM · #
That’s a pretty cute argument, Jacobs, but doesn’t it cut both ways? The only reason Collins was appointed in the first place was because of his impeccable scientific and religious credentials. He’s hardly the nation’s most prominent geneticist, epidemiologist, or biologist; he’s simply the most prominent one known for being Christian, too.
Why doesn’t that constitute a religious test of office?
— Chet · Jul 31, 04:35 PM · #
I really don’t think this is about a belief in God per se. If you actually read the op-ed, Harris outlines his specific objects, most prominently the problem of evil. And the objection inherent in the problem of evil is not really about religious beliefs but rather about pure logic.
Francis Collins says God (A) causes all things (B): A causes B
It’s a pretty core rule of logic that if something C is a subset of another B, and A causes B, then A must also be the cause of C.
Yet Francis Collins says that evil, a subset of “all things,” is not caused by God. I don’t think I need to explain the problem here.
A scientist who refuses to acknowledge and react appropriately to very simple logical errors is questionable.
So this isn’t a pure religious test. A deist like Benjamin Franklin would pass this “test” quite fine, since they don’t believe the first arm of the problem (that god is the cause of everything). Rather, it’s the publicly acknowledged belief in logical impossibilities (A cause of B, C subset of B, A not cause of C) that disqualifies Collins.
— Joel Martin · Jul 31, 04:36 PM · #
All of that is irrelevant as long as Dr. Collins doens’t proselytize or let evangelical xianity inform his views on science.
He is an administrator not a testtube jockey or a labrat.
Obama already purged all the bioluddites off the Bioethics Council.
Trust that Dr. Collins is under scrutinity and he knows people will scream blue murder if he crosses the logic line.
If his schitck is proving science and religion can coexist peacefully, why would he EVAH fall into the trap of disproving that with suspicious [superstitious] actions?
— matoko_chan · Jul 31, 04:48 PM · #
From Collins’s speech at Berkeley, Slide 5:
A shaky syllogism, to say the least. Also, ‘side effect’ is a funny way of referring to a prime enabler of group survival, which is itself an enabler of gene survival.
Unfortunately, for us, the moral instinct is a parsimonious enabler of group survival, which means it can lead to significant errors like the ‘Milgram Effect’, the ‘Zimbardo Effect, ‘stupid taboo’ inertia, unhelpful stereotyping, clashing perceptions of injustice, unwarranted diffidence and the Hobbesian trap, etc. —- in addition to small-bore inconsistencies like the spotlight effect, the transparency effect, the Lake Wobegon effect, Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory, etc.
Also, I read Harris’ op-ed a different way. Rather than attacking the expression or the beliefs, Harris is attacking Collins’s justifications in a “does not follow” kind of way. I think that’s perfectly fine, since, while Collins’s actual beliefs shouldn’t be on trial, his ability to reason should be.
And his reasoning sucks, by the way, as does his book.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jul 31, 04:52 PM · #
KVS, does that flaw affect his ability to be an adminstator?
It is sort of like hiring a horsethief to guard horses i think.
Do you doubt that Collins will be extra-scrupulous in keeping his religion from bleeding into his job?
We all have cognitive biases, ya know.
— matoko_chan · Jul 31, 04:57 PM · #
Eh, I’ve always thought, since reading The End of Faith, that Harris is a bit of a douche. But he’s a scientist, and there’s many a scientist who feels that a belief in the certainty of a specific type of god is indicative of a mindset inimical to scientific endeavor. This is, I think, the crux of his objection to Collins. He could be right, or, like I believe of us atheists, have an imperfect view of the inner nature of that belief.
I don’t really understand why Harris — or even Hitchens, Dawkins, and Dennet — get lumped in as some sort of Grand High Poobahs of atheism. There’s many an atheist out there, like Colin McGinn or S.T. Joshi just to pull two random names out of my cranium.
— Erik Vanderhoff · Jul 31, 04:58 PM · #
Nah, I don’t think it’ll affect him in general, but it might on the margins. You never know.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jul 31, 05:00 PM · #
Erik, I think distrust is appropriate whenever you hear anybody argue that science implies God without mentioning the words “necessary leap of faith.”
That’s because, by that standard, science could be said to imply an infinity of concepts, the dread spaghetti monster being one of them.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jul 31, 05:04 PM · #
Yes, this is why I used the term “belief in the certainty of a specific type of god.” I was trying to be all-inclusive of Allah, Yahweh, Jesus, the Monkey Devils of Borneo, Zeus, and The Great Airborne Pastafarian, may His Noodley Appendages shelter and guide us, amen. For starters.
I am very sympathetic to such a view. But I also think that we, as atheists, lack an ability to totally comprehend the mindset of a sincere believer — just as they do ours. So, there’s a possibility — remote, given Collins’ own testimony — that his is at heart a sincere faith, predicated on the acknowledgment that the certainty of metaphysical belief is ultimately unknowable, and therefore not inimical to scientific research. Harris doesn’t really make that argument clearly, or allow for such a caveat, or even that he might be wrong.
— Erik Vanderhoff · Jul 31, 05:13 PM · #
They have popular books. That, of course, is enough to conclude that they’re every bit as fanatical about their beliefs as the 9/11 hijackers, the panoply of Christian martyrs, and the Buddhist monk who self-immolated to protest the war in Vietnam, combined.
— Chet · Jul 31, 05:14 PM · #
I am an otaku of Scott Atran.
In Gods We Trust is a wonderful book.
The science without the sneer-factor.
;)
— matoko_chan · Jul 31, 05:18 PM · #
One more thing, and I’ll leave the thread to others. It’s kind of a question for Alan, because his opinions on this subject are always noteworthy, but anybody can answer.
Question: Will you agree that science, insofar as it captures knowledge of physical process, rolls back the event-zones in which God is actively necessary as an explanation (necessary in a ‘here and now’, A-theoretical kind of way)? And if you do agree, can you then see how it might seem absurd for someone to say that modern science lends evidence for a Tinkering God (rather than a Creator God), which is what Collins is arguing?
Erik, I agree with everything but the last. I read Collins’s book, and while he feints in the direction of “metaphysical uncertainty” in a few places, his entire book militates against that uncertainty by presenting “evidence” that God — the New Testament God — really does care about us after all.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jul 31, 05:22 PM · #
Kristoffer, I am not at all familiar with Collins’ book, just testimony attributed to him in articles and such. Based on what testimony from him I had read, that’s why I stated the possibility was remote. I am, myself, not entirely certain I ascribe to the view that his certainty places a blinder on all aspects of scientific inquiry; I’ve seen quite level-headed and open-minded people all of a sudden become raging soldiers at the battlements of a dearly-held belief. If there are examples of how such certainty as his belief in a false god translates to a closed mind regarding even a specific area of research, I’d be very interested to see it.
— Erik Vanderhoff · Jul 31, 06:02 PM · #
Kristoffer, I’m not able to pursue this in any detail here, but I think it’s always a mistake for Christians to think of God as an “explanation” for anything, or a solution to any problems, or for that matter as a “designer.” As people who differ as radically as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Jerry Coyne agree, thinking in those ways is both bad science and bad theology. Science is the realm of explanation, or one of the realms. Deus est ubique conservans mundum is what I say.
— Alan Jacobs · Jul 31, 06:33 PM · #
I am, myself, not entirely certain I ascribe to the view that his certainty places a blinder on all aspects of scientific inquiry.
Nor me, though reading over my comments I can see how it might appear that way. For the record: I think he’ll be fine at NIH. I just think he’s been seduced by metaphysical optimism and theological enthusiasm, in a way unbecoming someone who holds himself out as a ‘man of science’ first and foremost.
‘Course, I have also been seduced once or twice in my life, just not in that way.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jul 31, 06:36 PM · #
As people who differ as radically as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Jerry Coyne agree, thinking in those ways is both bad science and bad theology.
Since ‘faith in something sacred and eternal’ is my biggest human failing, perhaps one of these days we can have a nice long conversation about how you manage to maintain it. If the stars align, maybe over a beer and full bellies at Highlands Bar and Grill (which on your recommendation I tried last time I was in Birmingham — oh my dear lord).
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Jul 31, 06:49 PM · #
“ I think it’s always a mistake for Christians to think of God as an “explanation” for anything, or a solution to any problems, or for that matter as a “designer.”
This would, in my experience, put you significantly outside the mainstream of Christian voices who have the means, will, desire, good/bad fortune to be able to put their views before the public.
— Tony Comstock · Jul 31, 07:07 PM · #
Kristoffer: Any friend of Highlands is a friend of mine.
Tony: There are no mainstreams I am not outside.
— Alan Jacobs · Jul 31, 11:26 PM · #
Alan: Would you be bothered by an Op-Ed saying that a creationist shouldn’t be appointed NIH director? Creationism is, by an reasonable definition, a religious belief, but surely it disqualifies someone from administering scientific research grants for the entire nation.
A major part of Harris’s objection is along these lines: Collins accepts the basics of evolution, but wants to believe that a lot of questions studied by psychology, neuroscience, and cosmology are actually impossible for science to answer, and are places where we need to invoke God as an explanation. Even if, in a certain sense, “science will never answer certain questions that science is working hard on” can be spun as a religious belief, it’s reasonable to expect the POTUS to use his discretion to not appoint people who believe that to such a high office. I say this even though I’d be against a formal test even for such a belief about science.
Admittedly, Harris might be opposing this nomination even if not for the crazier things Collins has said about science. Maybe he would say a few of the merely silly things Collins has said about religion disqualify him, and I would be against Harris if that were his position.
— Chris Hallquist · Aug 1, 09:39 AM · #
If religious convictions inform or empower professional/public decisions, how can we refrain? Sam Harris doesn’t (or shouldn’t) really care if Dr. Collins is a Christian, the only concern is with the standards/biases that Dr. Collins will apply to make decisons.
To flip this on its head, it seems grossly prejudicial to require conscientious war objectors to show “religious” credentials. The only things that society should monitor are the public consequences of private beliefs.
— wfrost · Aug 1, 01:03 PM · #
“To flip this on its head, it seems grossly prejudicial to require conscientious war objectors to show “religious” credentials. The only things that society should monitor are the public consequences of private beliefs.”
This has always been a source of irritation to me, that religion/religious convictions are automatically afforded a degree of degree of deference that beliefs/convicts arrived at by other means are not. I have some friends who are clergy and all have stories of being inappropriately deferred to a way that was embarrassing to them; all of them are conscientious about where and when they their vestments; and all of them have story about using their collars to gain an advantage or smooth over a situation in a way that might not be strictly kosher.
— Tony Comstock · Aug 1, 03:55 PM · #
You militant!
— Chet · Aug 1, 05:32 PM · #
Chris: A young-earth creationist holds religious views that conflict with several of the most basic procedures and findings of modern science, so yes, I would be deeply concerned if such a person were nominated to be NIH head, or another other position that evaluated scientific work. But Sam Harris admits that none of Collins’s beliefs are of this kind. Take a look at Collins’s resumé: if you didn’t happen to know what his religious beliefs were, you couldn’t begin to guess that he had them from his professional career. And if he didn’t have those beliefs — or had them but didn’t talk about them — nobody would be saying one single word in opposition to him. The one good thing Harris does is to admit that: he straightforwardly says that Collins is an outstanding scientist in every way. Because he really doesn’t have any other choice, does he? The record speaks for itself.
Tony: I totally agree. I don’t think “religion” should even be a concept in American law.
— Alan Jacobs · Aug 1, 09:04 PM · #
“Tony: I totally agree. I don’t think “religion” should even be a concept in American law.”
Round up Kate Marie and we can revisit that paper from the Notre Dame Seminary.
For myself, I’m thinking Lawrence v. Texas was rightly decided, but for the wrong reasons. The government amendment should have been the First, not the Fourteenth. Let’s hope it doesn’t make as much trouble as Roe.
My own predilictions and concerns aside, I look forward to the day with the faith football is more completely deflated. Mostly I blame your side, Alan; Jerry and the rest. Not that there wasn’t some cause for alarm, but people will tend to play anxiety for their advantage, whether it’s anxiety about Collin’s religeous beliefs, or my lack of them.
— Tony Comstock · Aug 1, 09:44 PM · #
But he wouldn’t have been shortlisted to head the NIH, either, which is why it’s a little absurd to complain that Harris’s position is an unconstitutional religious test – it was an unconstitutional religious test that got him in, in the first place.
— Chet · Aug 1, 09:52 PM · #
Everyone,
If you haven’t read Vox Day’s smack-down of Harris (and the rest of the “New Athiests”) then go download a free copy from his website and repeat after me: Sam Harris may be the stupidest public “intellectual” to ever occupy such a place in our society. Here is just a taste of Day:
“I’m not trying to convince you to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. I’m not even trying to convince you that religious people aren’t lunatics with low IQs who should be regarded with pity and contempt. But I am confident that I will convince you that this trio of New Atheists, this Unholy Trinity, are a collection of faux-intellectual frauds utilizing pseudo-scientific sleight of hand in order to falsely claim that religious faith is inherently dangerous and has no place in the modern world.
I am saying that they are wrong, they are reliably, verifiably, and factually incorrect. Richard Dawkins is wrong. Daniel C. Dennett is wrong. Christopher Hitchens is drunk, and he’s wrong. Michel Onfray is French, and he’s wrong. Sam Harris is so superlatively wrong that it will require the development of esoteric mathematics operating simultaneously in multiple dimensions to fully comprehend the orders of magnitude of his wrongness.”
Alan,
It seems strange to me that you would make such a sweeping statement as “but I think it’s always a mistake for Christians to think of God as an “explanation” for anything”. I suspect what you really meant to say was that we shouldn’t point to God every time we come across something we can’t explain in the natural world. But I assume that like me, you do believe in miracles and accept the fact that Christ performed miracles (in that sense, God is the explanation for why Christ was able to walk on water) and rose from the dead (again, tough to do without God).
— Jeff Singer · Aug 1, 11:32 PM · #
Not that my opinion should count for anything, but I’ve always had better luck understanding your Jesus/God as a question, which isn’t exactly the opposite of an answer, but a question is not an answer.
I walk on water almost daily. Great workout for quads, glutes and calves.
— Tony Comstock · Aug 2, 12:16 AM · #
Jeff, no, I really mean what I said: it is not the function of God to be the “explanation” of anything or the “solution” to any problem. (I’m paraphrasing Bonhoeffer in the latter third of the Letters and Papers from Prison.) To talk of God in such language is simply to grab the wrong end of the stick. (And Francis Collins tends himself to do this.)
— Alan Jacobs · Aug 2, 12:51 AM · #
Declaring God’s “function” must be that epistemological modesty I’ve heard so much about.
— Chet · Aug 2, 01:58 AM · #
Jeff Singer, Vox Day’s book is an offense against logic, rhetoric, and decency. It’s a collection of straw men, ad hominems, and insults with the occasional piece of theology thrown in (and given that theology is philosophy in reverse — a conclusion in search of its evidence — it directly undermines his pretense). He’s demonstrably not even read much of what he attempts to refute.
Even were his “book” totally correct, a man who proudly professes a willingness to slaughter children as proof of his submission to his god deserves no traffic to his site. Monstrous.
— Erik Vanderhoff · Aug 3, 05:08 PM · #
Alan, I popped in to make essentially the same point as Chris. I don’t think you addressed this in your response to him:
Collins accepts the basics of evolution, but wants to believe that a lot of questions studied by psychology, neuroscience, and cosmology are actually impossible for science to answer, and are places where we need to invoke God as an explanation.
If Collins asserts (as a central point of his argument for the existence of God) that evolution cannot explain human morality, that such explanations are in fact bad science, then surely he would push for the NIH to look very skeptically on scientists seeking funding to study that question.
— Michael Straight · Aug 4, 02:56 PM · #
Actually, I’d like to hear about not treating God as an explanation (linking to an explanation would suffice if you’d like). It’s a position wholly alien to my own (errr…to the one I think fits with religious beliefs that I don’t hold), but I’d like to better understand it. In particular, does it imply, as Singer suggests, that you don’t think that Jesus walked on water or was resurrected?
— Justin · Aug 4, 08:21 PM · #
Michael: I think I’d need to hear some specific examples before I could answer your question. “Explaining human morality” is pretty amorphous. However, many scientists have argued along these lines: what appears to be altruism towards strangers can be explained by factors X, Y, and Z in the history of humanity, factors that made altruism highly adaptive behavior. So that would constitute a least a partial explanation for some features of human morality. I take it, then, that the question is this: Would Collins’s professed religious beliefs make him hostile to research along these lines?
To that I would reply that Collins has many expressed opinions about scientific research, only some of which are religious. Why just ask about the religious ones? Has he expressed his view of the Gould/Eldredge theory of punctuated equilibria? If so, does that mean that he would be likely to be hostile to people who hold a different view?
And of course every other conceivable candidate for the NIH job would have his or her opinions on controversial issues. How skeptical should we be about their ability to be fair?
So to all this hand-wringing, I say again: look at the record. Francis Collins has held positions of administrative authority for a long time: what do the people who have worked with him and under him say about his fairness? The testimony seems to be pretty much universal, as far as I can see.
Justin: I can’t see how any could get from my comment about explanations to the idea that I don’t believe that Jesus was raised from the dead, but . . . my point (Bonhoeffer’s point) is this: if we say that we need God as an explanation for a miracle, for what we don’t understand and can’t explain, we are implying that we don’t need God as an explanation for how blood clots or why the sky looks blue or for anything else we think we have a good handle on. (The blueness of the sky is actually a tough one, but let’s set that aside.) Thus God is given a role as the custodian of the gaps in our knowledge, and is shunted aside when we think we have something figured out on our own. And that’s bad theology, I think. Better to see God not as an “explanation” or a “solution” but rather as the creator and sustainer of all that is, present in the ordinary just as much as in the miraculous.
Thus endeth the sermon.
— Alan Jacobs · Aug 4, 09:47 PM · #
“I know God is wise in all; wonderful in what we conceive, but far more in what we comprehend not: for we behold him but asquint, upon reflex or shadow; our understanding is dimmer than Moses’s eye; we are ignorant of the back parts or lower side of his divinity; therefore, to pry into the maze of his counsels, is not only folly in man, but presumption even in angels.” —Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici
— Tickletext · Aug 4, 10:43 PM · #
Alan: <i>A young-earth creationist holds religious views that [etc, etc] so yes, I would be deeply concerned if such a person were nominated to be NIH head…</i>
So you agree that religious views aren’t off-limits in these matters? If so, your original criticism of Harris is lazy nonsense. And your new criticism—that none of the alleged problems with Collins could be discerned from his resume—only works if you don’t count book-writing and foundation-running as part of a man’s resume.
— Chris Hallquist · Aug 5, 10:56 AM · #
Chris, it’s easy to make straw men if you take out the most important parts of someone’s statement and replace them with “[etc, etc]”. (a sure sign that someone’s not arguing in good faith.)
— Alan Jacobs · Aug 5, 12:49 PM · #
With the thoughts you’d be thinking, you could be another Lincoln.
— Tony Comstock · Aug 5, 01:23 PM · #
I got that out of it because I’m a philosopher, and what you said implied it ;).
Really, it’s a matter of stress. If I read you right, you say “don’t treat God as the explanation” meaning “don’t limit your view of God to a putative explanation of what we take ourselves to be incapable of explaining.” But if God were the creator and sustainer of the world, somehow active in all that happens, it would be literally true that he was the explanation of all those things. Of course, I find the idea of a sustainer of things to be a bit obscure, so I can’t be confident that I’m reading this right. But if X sustains Y in any sense, you’ll usually say that X is (a part of) the explanation of Y’s existence.
— Justin · Aug 6, 03:55 AM · #
Sorry, I should say that when I asked the original question, I had Terry Eagleton’s essay on Dawkins, which breezily runs through a bunch of things that God is not, while sort of cavalierly assuming that the things he said made sense (though that could be a case of a bad explanation, vacuous underlying ideas, or my poor comprehension).
— Justin · Aug 6, 04:06 AM · #
Don’t we understand, though, that to believe something religiously is a different beast than mere belief? I may believe that “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” is a poem about Santa Claus, not death; to say that I “believe” it, though, means I could be convinced by evidence to the contrary.
But if I say that my religion causes me to believe that to be a poem about Santa Claus, isn’t that something else? Haven’t I now said that I’m unamenable to contrary evidence, no matter how compelling? That, indeed, another person would be downright rude to attempt to contradict my belief? (That is, I believe, your position on the legitimacy of attempting to factually contradict someone’s religious belief, is it not?)
Isn’t that why Harris pulls out these specific religious beliefs? Because, being religious, they are more likely to represent areas where Collins will brook no disagreement?
— Chet · Aug 6, 05:38 PM · #
Um, what? It’s amazing that an educated adult could write something like this. You really don’t know why the sky is blue?
— Chet · Aug 6, 05:39 PM · #
I would assume it’s a shorthand way of adverting to worries about why the experience of seeing blue is the way it is, or alternatively, how the activity in our brain adds up to the experience of color. Qualia and all that, y’know.
— Justin · Aug 7, 02:00 AM · #
That didn’t work right… Here was the comment I tried to post:
Let’s try this again: “A young-earth creationist holds religious views that conflict with several of the most basic procedures and findings of modern science, so yes, I would be deeply concerned if such a person were nominated to be NIH head, or another other position that evaluated scientific work.”
So you agree that religious views aren’t off-limits in these matters? If so, your original criticism of Harris is lazy nonsense. And your new criticism—that none of the alleged problems with Collins could be discerned from his resume—only works if you don’t count book-writing and foundation-running as part of a man’s resume.
Happy now?
— Chris Hallquist · Aug 9, 11:37 AM · #