Re: [asa] The Criticism Begins

Incidentally, for anyone who was wondering if Dawkins actually had a
reaction to Collins' appointment, apparently the maintainer of the blog at
http://starcourse.blogspot.com/ managed to find his reaction. I've followed
this blog for a while now, as the blogger has cooperated with John
Polkinghorne on his Q&A page along with some of his books, and he often has
some interesting insights. Anyway, here's Dawkins:

"I know we are all supposed to say it doesn't matter how ridiculous
somebody's beliefs are, so long as he leaves them at home and doesn't thrust
them on other people. This is often said of teachers. For example, it
doesn't matter if the science teacher believes the world is 6,000 years old,
so long as he tells the children the scientific estimate is 4.6 billion. But
I can never be quite happy with this. Surely the fact that somebody believes
really dopey things tells you he isn't INTELLIGENT enough to teach, even if
he keeps his stupid beliefs out of the classroom.

Now, Francis Collins is a very nice man, he doesn't SEEM stupid, and I think
Bill Maher was mistaken when he told me, on television, that Collins
believes in a talking snake. But he presumably believes the things his
Biologos Foundation advocates, for example the view that God causes miracles
to happen (illustrated with a picture of Jesus walking on water). Can
somebody who holds such anti-scientific and downright silly beliefs really
be qualified to run the NIH? Isn't he disqualified, not by whether or not he
leaves his beliefs outside the laboratory and the committee room, but by the
very fact that he is capable of holding such beliefs at all?"

So, do you believe a miracle has taken place in history? Do you have what
Dawkins thinks are "silly beliefs"? According to Dawkins, even if you keep
this belief completely distinct from your work - even if it, apparently, has
no relation to your work at all - you should be disqualified. Whether you're
teaching students, managing a research team, and presumably in other fields
as well. What's more, having these beliefs is ample evidence that you're not
only mistaken, but flat out not intelligent.

While I think Dawkins' views are on the downslide as far as popularity goes,
I think it's worth pausing and realizing just what view of the world,
politics, and policy he and the tiny minority he represents has.

On Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 4:41 PM, Dave Wallace <wmdavid.wallace@gmail.com>wrote:

> From:
>
> http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/holy-post/archive/2009/07/12/a-scientist-who-believes-in-god.aspx
>
> Not all the published opinion in the secular press is against Collins. The
> author also deplores the science-religion warfare model!
>
> (Note for Burgy this newspaper denies global warming so their opinion is
> probably worthless or else they are paid hacks as you suggested earlier.)
>
> *By John G. Stackhouse, Jr.*
>
> Francis Collins, former head of the Human Genome Project, has been named by
> President Obama to head the National Institutes of Health. What makes this
> news is the breathtaking idea that someone could be both a scientist and a
> believer in God.
>
> Like Isaac Newton. Or Johannes Kepler. Or Galileo Galilei. Or most of the
> other leaders of the Scientific Revolution. And a large number of scientists
> today.
>
> This isn't news. What is news instead is the continuing ignorance of people
> who think that science and belief in God are incompatible. They are not.
>
> Science is simply our best description to date of how we think the world
> normally functions according to the causes we can account for in the natural
> world. Science says nothing about whether a Supreme Being, or lots of
> spirits, or aliens, or angels, or anything else might be involved in that
> normal function nor perhaps interfere with it from time to time. To be sure,
> science might make belief in a Supreme Being, or lots of spirits, et cetera,
> problematic: Why believe in them when you can just believe in matter and
> energy in motion? But if you find that some things are not well explained
> merely in scientific terms -- such as altruism, or beauty, or morality, or
> love -- then you might well resort to beliefs that go beyond science.
>
> That's why scientists have also been religious believers since . . . there
> was science. That's why Galileo never renounced his Christian faith, despite
> his difficulties with papal politics. That's why Darwin's theories were
> accepted by prominent Christians, whether Sir William Dawson at McGill or
> Asa Gray at Harvard--and now Francis Collins at the NIH.
>
> We shouldn't be shocked that a believer -- even an evangelical Christian
> such as Collins! -- could be a real scientist. We should be shocked that we
> have bought into the "science versus religion" myth so fully that we can't
> understand how a scientist could be a religious believer also -- despite
> hundreds of years of Christians, Jews, and other theists practicing science.
> The empirical evidence shows that lots and lots of people practice science
> and believe in God. It is unscientific to think otherwise.
>
> Stackhouse teaches at Regent College and he is an advising editor at *Christianity
> Today. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_Today>*
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Received on Sun Jul 12 21:43:38 2009