Should employers be blind to private beliefs? (Richard Dawkins)
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My colleague takes the view that this YEC is entitled to a job...because he keeps his private beliefs to himself while at work...I would object to employing him, on the grounds that his research papers, and his lectures to students, are filled with what he personally believes to be falsehoods. He is a fake, a fraud, a charlatan, drawing a salary for a job that could have gone to an honest astronomer. Moreover, I would regard his equanimity in holding two diametrically opposing views simultaneously in his head as a revealing indicator that there is something wrong with his head.
Dawkins seems to believe that to be hired as a scientist, one must believe in the truth of the model one uses. I can't quite understand why he holds this view - at least in my experience, scientists study hypothesis they don't believe in all the time. I've done this (I don't believe in Copenhagen QM at all, and I'm skeptical of Bohmian mechanics). Does this make me a fraud? According to Dawkins, I guess it does.
By his logic, Einstein (not to mention Podolsky and Rosen) was also a fraud. He used a theory he didn't believe was correct (quantum mechanics) to derive conclusions he didn't believe were true. (Sadly, he didn't live long enough to see experimental verification of what he believed was a reducto ad absurdum.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox
I wonder if Dawkins truly believes all scientists who use theories they don't believe are frauds, or if he only thinks this about theistic (quasi-)theories [1]? If he holds the former belief, I think he really needs to devote a little bit of time to learning about metaphysics and the philosophy of science.
[1] Many beliefs held by theists are "not even wrong", and are therefore not theories. Take, for example, the following flavor of young earth creationism: "God created the universe 6000 years ago, with the state psi(0) = U(-6000 years) psi(world today). psi is the wavefuntion, U is the propagator. It is true that U(-20 billion years ) psi(world today) yields the big bang, but that's just a mathematical curiosity rather than history." This belief is unfalsifiable, and completely consistent with all scientific theories that are governed by an initial value problem (pretty much all of them).
Dawkins approach would lead to more people claiming as true things they believe to be false, so they can get the jobs they want. Kind of like how people living under totalitarian regimes pretend to really like government policies and government officials, in order to get or keep a favorable position within the system.
Theoretical: Given assumptions A, we derive conclusion Y.
Experimental: We observe phenomena Y. This is consistent with A, but inconsistent with A2. Thus, assumption A2 must be false.
The fact that you don't believe theory A doesn't make your experiment refuting A2 invalid. And the fact that you don't believe A doesn't mean that it's incorrect to make conclusions about what would happen if they were true.
And in particular, none of this has any bearing on holding beliefs which are not even wrong. You might believe in Copenhagen QM, I might be a Bohmian, but that doesn't make either of us frauds when we do calculations involving the Schrodinger equation. That's the thing - science isn't religion. The correctness of a theory or the usefulness of an experiment is not dependent on the beliefs of the person performing it.
In reality, of course, Einstein was one of the world's top experts in QM, made some large contributions to it, and understood and agreed with the formalism like everybody else - since the experimental verifications were clearly impressive. His opposition was mainly to Bohr's positivism, and to the completeness of QM, but he didn't oppose it's consistency or correctness. At least after about 1930 or so.
Kind of the flip side of the Michelson-Morley experiment where they set out to measure the properties of the ether and then tried to find what had gone wrong with their experimental method in that they couldn't detect the ether at all. Belief in the ether was wrong, yet they experimented on it anyway.
Likewise, if a religious person decides to do experiments to find evidence the earth is not very old, and his experiment is done properly and fully documented, the experimental results he gets, whatever they are, can still be useful and valid. Maybe the results prove the earth is very old. Maybe they show that different methods of dating the same material give different results and that leads to a breakthrough in more accurate dating.
This is totally the opposite of what I meant to convey.
Einstein/Podolsky/Rosen were doing great work. They helped us understand an important implication of quantum mechanics - that if our configuration-space based theories are correct, we must have some non-local hidden variables. They proposed an experiment to validate this, and for philosophical reasons they believed the experiment would invalidate QM.
Their guess was wrong, but so what? My point is not that Einstein couldn't hack it - it's the exact opposite. My point is that EPR was a fantastic result, discovered by a group who believed the underlying theory was wrong and their predictions would not come true. Their beliefs were wrong, but their science was sound.
Now, when you say he derived conclusions he didn't believe were true, that's kind of wrong, since all he derived was a dilemma (completeness or separation, not both (but possibly neither)). He took this to show that if we maintain the separation principle, then QM needs to be viewed as a statistical account of objects with properties it can't describe (but he never took that to mean hidden variable theories like Bohm's were the answer).
So, my point is, he believed in the correctness of QM (just not in the completeness). He believed in QM being true - just not that is was the whole truth. He believed in the correctness of the EPR derivation and in the correctness of the dilemma at the end. When you say he used a theory he didn't believe was correct, I think that's wrong - he just didn't believe it was the finished article. And when you say he derived conclusions he didn't believe were true, I think that's wrong too, since he derived a dilemma that he very much believed in. In the end he chose the wrong side, but that's not relevant here.
You say Einstein believed this was a reductio ad absurdum - but that's flat out wrong I think. EPR relates to the completeness of the formalism (if the separation principle is taken to be true), not the correctness.
Yes, that's the scientific conclusion. Actually, the history is a bit more muddled - EPR alone doesn't show this, strictly speaking. The EPR paper (1935) concludes with a statement that the authors believe a local and complete theory of QM is possible. We were not 100% certain it was impossible until the discovery of Bell's Inequality (1964, 9 years after Einstein's death). Einstein actually spent a lot of time searching for such a theory.
In addition to the scientific conclusions in the EPR paper, EPR also expressed some non-scientific beliefs. They believed that reality would eventually prove itself to be local and therefore that QM would be shown to be incomplete. From the original paper:
We are thus forced to conclude that the quantum mechanical description of physical reality given by wavefunctions is not complete [...] No reasonable definition of reality could be expected to permit this.
I don't believe that is the case. As long as you can explain why you don't agree with the models in a rational manner and are open to the possibility that you are wrong, then you are fine. Dawkins appears to be upset with compromising the integrity of a scientific position.
He quoted a scientist claiming that even if all evidence clearly indicated the Earth was very old, he would still not believe it because the Bible says differently. And that same scientist also appears to believe that there is not an insigificant amount of evidence indicating that the Earth is very young. This makes me think Dawkins might be right. If this man already knows the answers he is looking for then he cannot be reasonably impartial.
That type of thing is worlds away from "I am skeptical of this model because [science stuff]". Perhaps Dawkins is holding these positions to an unrealistic high standard, but I don't think he is being as ridiculous as you indicate.
Dawkins simply seems to be looking for ways of making life more difficult for religious people. If the job involves some kind of proselytizing for Atheism, rejecting people based on religious views might make sense. Otherwise, I don't see how it's relevant.
If I'm a person who habitually does certain things, but I publicly advocate denying those activities to others, that's very significant information.
Let's take a different example. Suppose an American is being paid to do something that is actively bad for other Americans. Does "doing what you're paid to do" make it all right? There are no other considerations?
Anyone pushing a policy they actually oppose is a fraud, gay or not.
For a non-moralistic example of this behavior, consider a fat person who wishes to lose weight for the selfish purpose of attracting sexual partners, but is unwilling to put down the bacon. Is this person a fraud when they say people should lose weight?
Would my thinking be suspect? Does that mean that I think that gay people shouldn't be hired or be able to get housing?
From the common / popular "pro-gay" view my positions would be characterized as "anti-gay" and I would risk being demonized by GLAAD, etc.
The problem here is that these terms "pro-gay" and "anti-gay" etc, are completely political and ignore all possibility of nuance.
Let me put it another way. I think a gay person should be allowed to choose not to rent out a room in their house to a mormon who, when he came to see the room, went on and on about how evil gay people are.
Clearly, this gay person is choosing to discriminate based on religion. Clearly, also, being forced to rent a room to someone you are not going to get along with is a recipe for trouble.
But, specifically, it is a violation of your property rights in the room you're renting out, just as forcing you to rent it out, or preventing you from renting it to anybody, or dictating the price at which you can rent it is a violation of your right to use this property as you see fit.
Further, freedom of association is the freedom to associate with whom you like and also not associate with people you don't get along with.
Discriminating against people (based on sexuality or beliefs) is a bad idea when you're hiring because you'll exclude people who would be productive in preference to people who might be less productive.
But discrimination is intrinsic in both property rights and freedom of association. (And freedom of association is simply another way of saying property rights in your own body.)
So, while GLAAD and other political groups would call me an anti-gay politician in this hypothetical, would you really call me a fraud?
I think in the end I'm agreeing with you that it is not black and white, you just hit on the political angle that I can speak directly to.
I've been called "anti-gay" because I don't support "pro-gay" legislation, even though my position is based in a (stronger than my opponents, I believe) belief in human rights.
Not really. It's a subtle difference, but it's more like discriminating against someone for being a jerk. Or perhaps insensitive.
a) If the person wasn't religious but said the same thing, one might discriminate the same way. (Therefore showing it wasn't because of religion)
b) Alternatively, if someone was religious, but wasn't judgmental, presumably you wouldn't have a problem with them.
In a way, making discrimination illegal is a form of a thought crime, as it requires determination of the thinking process on the person charged with discrimination.
I never thought of it that way. It's about your biases but it requires some action to mean anything. (In the same sense as murder being technically a thought crime, acted out No action no crime.
I do agree though that if there is public funding involved, such as with public schools, things can be different if desired. But I disagree that government should dictate behavior of private behavior, who one is allowed to sell to or not. If someone owns a store and hates minorities, I would love for them to have a big old sign in front saying so so I know not to buy anything there. Government dictating that that is not allowed just buries the discrimination that is going to be there no matter what. I say, let it be in the open where I can see and ridicule it.
Basically, why is it okay to reject people based on some beliefs but not others?
Do as I say, not as I do?
> If your beliefs, religious or otherwise, are not affecting your job performance, I don't see how they're relevant to hiring and firing decisions.
Except things that aren't directly related to job performance are used as an excuse all the time. So we come back to the question: why special treatment for some beliefs and not others?
What I find alarming is that nothing in this argument really conflicts with Dawkins. He accepts that these beliefs can make no measurable difference, and maintains that they're important anyway. He seems to think that it doesn't matter if an astronomer can advance our understanding of astronomy by leaps and bounds, if the astronomer doesn't update his own beliefs too, and that society should therefore refuse to let itself benefit from what he can offer. Why? Who wins in this scenario?
FWIW, I do agree that religious beliefs should not be considered distinct from "non religious" beliefs (with obvious exceptions for e.g. clergymen).
As far as personal beliefs, if I had to pick, I'd want a guy who had the craziest damn personal beliefs I could find. Perhaps involving the Great Pumpkin, or tiny elves that live in the forest and come out at night.
Why? Because science is not orthodoxy. That is, science is always provisional and always open to change. Some jerk who "just knows" that string theory is right is the last guy I want looking at string theory. Give it to the guy who reads palms and is waiting for the Xanians to arrive in their spaceships after the eclipse.
There is an assumption here, that having some sort of faith would preclude being able to do your job. It's not true -- or rather, it's being inflexible that prevents you from doing your job as a scientist. People are marvelous creatures. They can be hard-headed and inflexible in an infinite number of ways, most of which do not involve some formal belief system. As a for-instance, I imagine many people would think that believing in Intelligent Design would be a disqualifier for studying cosmology. And they would stubbornly resist changing their mind to the contrary. This is exactly the kind of inflexibility you need to watch out for. If you already know where you're going to end up, there's not much point in taking the journey.
Very interesting that thinking of this problem in terms of flexibility and creative thinking (the key elements to move science forward) turns up a completely different answer than thinking about it in terms of "what's most likely correct?" which is an interesting question but not germane. All you're checking with that "does this guy believe what most of us do?" is whether or not most other scientists think this guy is a good guesser, ie, he agrees with them. That's a bit too much popularity contest and groupthink for me.
In business, repeating what others have done is not nearly as profitable is discovering something new. This could be new technology, but it can also come from understanding the market in a way that others did not see.
Groupon could have been done in 1998 or 2003. It is not technically all that complex, but the different perspective on the market created massive value.
The idea that people are divided into rational and irrational is just plain wrong. We all take things on faith, because we do not (and likely can not) have perfect information. Science is great at deducing rules from observation, but life is more than a series of facts.
I am agnostic, not because I believe any religious texts literally, but in general the very nature of my own consciousness leads me to believe that we are here for a purpose, and I believe that purpose could be communicated to us from "a higher power", and if that were the case, of course the tool of choice would be through parable digestible by the masses within a given culture. If God exists, he is certainly not comprehensible by our limited brains, and so of course a metaphor like a bearded man in the sky is the closest we're going to get anyway.
There is a significant number of science purists who seem offended by the fact that I might choose to believe something vague and untestable. They set up strawmen about the irrationality of believing in a flying spaghetti monster without evidence, all the while ignoring all the subtle beliefs that they take on faith. The fact is that almost any idea can be broken down, and attacked on various levels—just try the three-year-old test and ask "Why?" a half dozen times, and pretty soon you're on some heady philosophical ground.
At the meta-level I feel like the intolerance of religion today is no different than the intolerance of atheists from generations past. Fundamentally it's about people who are uncomfortable with people who hold different beliefs, which is inevitable if we are to be free thinkers. The fact that science is about factual observation and the pursuit of true mathematical models doesn't make it axiomatically right. Science is orthogonal to morality, and morality is a key part of human relations.
Who even made this claim? Obviously there's a spectrum. Perfect rationality is uncomputable; the best we can do is approximations. As Isaac Asimov cleverly put it:
"When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
> I am agnostic, not because I believe any religious texts literally, but in general the very nature of my own consciousness leads me to believe that we are here for a purpose, and I believe that purpose could be communicated to us from "a higher power", and if that were the case, of course the tool of choice would be through parable digestible by the masses within a given culture. If God exists, he is certainly not comprehensible by our limited brains, and so of course a metaphor like a bearded man in the sky is the closest we're going to get anyway.
Those are some pretty non-obvious claims. Are you sure that parables of a highly anthropomorphic god would work better than, say, a straightforward (albeit complicated and confusing) explanation? How do you know that thinking of a "bearded man in the sky" is the best we can do?
> At the meta-level I feel like the intolerance of religion today is no different than the intolerance of atheists from generations past.
At a meta-meta-level I feel that statements like this are usually an attempt at social signaling rather than a properly thought-out factual claim.
Even if a doctor's belief in the stork theory of
reproduction is technically irrelevant to his competence
as an eye surgeon, it tells you something about him. It
is revealing. It is relevant in a general way to whether
we would wish him to treat us or teach us. A patient
could reasonably shrink from entrusting her eyes to a
doctor whose beliefs (admittedly in the apparently
unrelated field of obstetrics) are so cataclysmically
disconnected from reality.
1. The seasons are caused by Earth approaching and receding from the Sun?
2. Fixed-wing aircraft fly because air moves over and under the wing at the same rate?
3. Thomas Edison invented the light bulb?
All of these are just as wrong as stork-babies or creationism, and all are just as relevant (ie, not at all) to ophthalmology. I don't demand that my doctor rigorously examine every belief they hold, merely the ones related to surgery. Frankly, a creationist surgeon is much less worrying than a surgeon who believes wi-fi causes cancer.
My colleague takes the view that this YEC is entitled to a job
as a professor of astronomy, because he keeps his private
beliefs to himself while at work. I take the opposite view. I
would object to employing him, on the grounds that his
research papers, and his lectures to students, are filled with
what he personally believes to be falsehoods. He is a fake, a
fraud, a charlatan, drawing a salary for a job that could have
gone to an honest astronomer. Moreover, I would regard his
equanimity in holding two diametrically opposing views
simultaneously in his head as a revealing indicator that there
is something wrong with his head.
1. The seasons are caused by Earth approaching and receding from the Sun?
2. Fixed-wing aircraft fly because air moves over and under the wing at the same rate?
3. Thomas Edison invented the light bulb?
People generally expect a physician of any specialty to have a solid grounding in biology. The first two are cases of ignorance of physics; the third is of history. As such, you'll likely find more people willing to accept a physician's ignorance of them (more so the third, which is a matter of history, than the first two, which are about physics).
Ignorance of biology gives rise to complete denial of evolution, which is a separate belief.
And you'll find a lot less objection to YEC physicians than to stork-theorist physicians (remember, the example Dawkins started with, and the one you quoted).
Have you read it?
[In translation] "I swear by Apollo, the healer, Asclepius, Hygieia, and Panacea, and I take to witness all the gods, all the goddesses, to keep according to my ability and my judgment, the following Oath and agreement: "
Also no injected drugs to cause death or abortion might be a bar to some doctors.
To say that his theorized skepticism towards descent of man theory would detrimentally affect his work one would have to say how this would occur. It what situations do either skepticism or belief in descent of man theory affect ophthalmology. That has not been established.
A Creationist can not perform what he thinks is correct science without performing what the rest of the world is incorrect science. I agree with Dawkins that this makes him suspect as a scientist, because we should base our beliefs upon facts.
Other cultures are a lot less pragmatic, and are willing to ignore an absence of facts as long as they can get results. Being dogmatic seems to date back to the Greeks, at least.
Still both sides (the young earthers and the hard athiests) are both pretty dogmatic.
I'd say that both sides should chill out. If a guy wants a job that they doesn't quite believe in, as long as they're capable, why stop them? On the other hand, if you can't get a job because you really don't believe in it, aren't there other jobs out there?
In any case, scientists are a lot less dogmatic than you seem to think. We willingly use theories as long as we get results, i.e. as long as the theories work. The point is that it's exactly there that Creationism fails. In that way, it's not "ignoring an absence of facts as long as you get results" and more akin to "ignoring an absence of results as long as they believe what they're doing". I don't think you can spin that any way that's positive -- sooner or later reality will bite back if that's how you go through life.
Every culture bases most of its beliefs on facts. You just don't notice most of those beliefs because they're obvious. If you want bread, someone's going to have to grow grain. People fall when they jump off a cliff. I have hair.
There are some beliefs that are not based on facts, and they have a survival advantage if they can convince people that facts should not apply to them. Therefore it really shouldn't be surprising to see anti-factual beliefs across a wide range of cultures. The only reason you can bring Western-centrism into this is because science had its really big success in the West.
> Other cultures are a lot less pragmatic, and are willing to ignore an absence of facts as long as they can get results.
Those results are, by definition, factual. I'm not sure what you're saying here.
> Still both sides (the young earthers and the hard athiests) are both pretty dogmatic.
Can you quantify the dogmatism here? Because you sound like you're conflating strong beliefs with an unwillingness to change them given sufficiently strong evidence.
But that's the whole point. Dawkin's argument seems to be that, while a YEC may at first glance seem adequately skilled, their manifest disregard for scientific evidence means that they cannot be trusted to do the job correctly.
"Other cultures are a lot less pragmatic, and are willing to ignore an absence of facts as long as they can get results."
Aren't results facts? Or, put another way, how does someone determine that they are getting results? I don't see how the willingness to try things in the absence of facts is non-Western. It sounds a lot like experimentation.
The issue here isn't the absence of facts, it's the ignoring of facts (by YECs and their ilk).
The problem with the particular case he cites is that this person seemed to have a well demonstrated history of doing his job correctly.
I'm sorry, but that's bullshit. The whole Science VS Faith thing is a false dichotomy, the two are not inherently incompatible except in the minds of unfortunate extremists on both sides of the argument. Implying that they are ignores the fact that the vast overwhelming majority of science has been performed by so-called "creationists". Society simply didn't tolerate atheism prior to say 1960.
I'm sorry, but that's bullshit. The whole Science VS Faith
thing is a false dichotomy, the two are not inherently
incompatible except in the minds of unfortunate extremists
on both sides of the argument.
Science is the process of discovering evidence.
While theoretically compatible, in practice, people performing science often discover evidence that conflicts with widely-held beliefs. When those beliefs are part of an ongoing faith, the faith-holders usually react violently against the scientists.
Implying that they are ignores the fact that the vast overwhelming
majority of science has been performed by so-called "creationists".
Society simply didn't tolerate atheism prior to say 1960.
I would say that the evidence that they are compatible is overwhelming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_thinkers_in_s...
You would also have to remove many of the believers on the list because being a person without god in 1400 would probably have made you a witch and you'd probably burn at the stake or something.
So you're saying that Newton, say (who incidentally wrote many theological treatise), no longer is a scientist [of any worth] if there were more people at the time who didn't have a faith in God?
The fact that there may or may not be scientists without faith is orthogonal to the fact that scientists with a faith in God produce worthwhile results, or do you disagree?
That's your definition. There are multiple different definitions, even in a dictionary. It is an error to choose one and insist that it applies to all things that get the word "faith" applied to them. Definitions do not have that power. It's a common error, but an error nonetheless.
A definition I find much more useful, the relevant metric of a definition, is that faith in a statement is acting as if the statement is true. I sit in a chair and by doing so demonstrate faith that it will hold my weight. I have in the past sat in chairs where my faith was misplaced, so this isn't even a faked up academic point, I really do have less than 100% confidence in this statement from either a Bayesian or a frequentist point of view, but nevertheless I have this faith and act on it.
In my opinion, this is a much more useful way of understanding it, and in particular as my example shows actually reaches well beyond the "merely religious"; matters of this sort of faith come up in all sorts of places, including science and engineering. I readily agree in advance that scientific faith and religious faith are not the same thing, but they are points on a continuum, not binary opposites, and ultimately we must all have some sort of faith in the things that are beyond the purview of science, which, regrettably, includes rather a lot of very important things.
Push comes to shove I don't have enough evidence to accept any cosmology as 100% likely to be true. Per that article about archilects a few days ago, some form of Intelligent Design is a lot lot less "stupid" than people think; strict atheism is nowhere near as casually obvious as it was forty years ago. (We have a tentative-but-developing recipe for building gods, things that would make the Greek gods look like children by comparison. You may have faith that no such entity anywhere ever been created (by any means), but you really can't prove it, nor can you prove that no such entity lies somewhere in our history or possibly at the root of the current universe.) Yet by my actions I demonstrate faith in some belief. So do you. Neither of us have 100% confidence in the strict mathematical sense. If there's some way to get to 100% confidence, I don't know what it is.
The definition of faith as "choosing to believe things you know are false" is not a useful definition in describing or learning about the world. It's a rhetorical beating stick that allows you to dismiss claims without having to examine them. And you have not done the real work necessary to make your point relevant, which is to establish that your particular definition applies to the person in question with evidence beyond mere assertion.
This is the tired beaten horse of atheistic criticism, taking the general principle that one must make a leap out of indecision and doubt in order to achieve any sort of meaningful viewpoint and twisting it, torturing it into the statement "Faith is explicitly about not making sense."
Faith _is also_ the means by which we escape such boring philosophical questions as "Is the sun going to rise the next day?" or "How do you _know_???" Whether or not you believe that the word "faith" applies to your acceptance of the precepts of science ("I believe the world is consistent.") does not change the fact that the mechanism by which you escape a possibly infinite amount of doubt is by taking the leap outside of it. "Doubt does me nothing; faith gives me something to work with."
I can work with not being absolutely certain.
which will happen.
It's true that in many cases, there is no conflict. There is no conflict (currently, at least) between believing that God was responsible for the Big Bang and belief in cosmology. In the case of believing that the Earth is <10kyr old, however, the conflict is clear.
I don't see how one can argue with that without resorting to contrived beliefs that God set up a huge hoax by making the Universe seem to be 14Gyr old. (That's not a disprovable belief, of course, so it could be the case.)
> In the case of believing that the Earth is <10kyr old, however, the conflict is clear.
I have found that in the "scientific creationist" camp (scientific because they propose experiments to test hypotheses and write up their results in a paper format so that the experiment is understood and replicable) there is a lot of useful discussion about assumptions regarding dating. Not talking about the blind faith camp, talking about people asking how remnants of helium isotopes can be found in ancient rocks when the expected diffusion rates of the helium give a substantially different date than measuring remnant radioactive isotope content. These are interesting findings. They may not prove anything about God, but they are at least exploring interesting scientific issues.
For example, most of them will be OK with saying the earth is about 4.5 billion years old as long as we acknowledge that by "years" we mean not in terms of orbits of the earth around the sun, but in terms of the time for radioactive decay to occur, assuming a given set of original conditions which may or may not be correct.
>(That's not a disprovable belief, of course, so it could be the case.)
Do you see the inconsistency here. You're saying on the one hand "it's bad science" and other the other admitting that their isn't any scientific reason to declare the position as false. A "running start" theory appears to be unfalsifiable and thus outside of the realms of scientific result.
It's not so much the beliefs that people hold, it's whether
or not they stick to those beliefs in the face of mounting
evidence to the contrary. If they do, then their reasoning
is not based in reality, which makes any other reasoning
they do that is also purportedly based in reality suspect.
"I am convinced of the afterlife, independent of theology. If the world is rationally constructed, there must be an afterlife." - Godel
Maybe Godel wasn't logical for his beliefs?
"An equation for me has no meaning, unless it represents a thought of God." -Srinivasa Ramanujan
Maybe they shouldn't have invite Ramanujan to work at Cambridge?
I find these thoughts disturbing, to judge someone's potential to contribute based on his religion.
The way we're headed, religious belief is becoming more and more fringe. Basically, religion only "makes sense" if most people are raised in that tradition.
From the outside (i.e. to people not raised in a religious tradition) it just sounds kind of silly at best, or crazy at worst.
So, at a certain point, saying I believe in X religion becomes just as crazy as saying I believe that the earth was created by pink hummingbirds. It just has more pedigree.
The game's up for organized religion as soon as people see that there's more than one, and that those other believers aren't evil. It'll just take some time for this to play out.
Any references?
Contrast this to 100 years ago.
Not really https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Demographics_... but even if it was so, at which point is it OK to discriminate against people holding fringe views?
Are you seriously suggesting that religion is as well-respected today as it was 100 years ago?
> but even if it was so, at which point is it OK to discriminate against people holding fringe views
When they are a danger to others.
Insanity is culturally-defined. We currently discriminate against people we consider insane.
There is a huge leap from "more and more fringe" to "as well-respected today as it was 100 years ago". Religious views are common, not "more and more fringe", not even just "fringe". Also, extrapolating observations about popularity of religious views doesn't seem to me like a very reliable way of making predictions.
>> at which point is it OK to discriminate against people holding fringe views
> When they are a danger to others.
Which is clearly not the case.
> We currently discriminate against people we consider insane.
Sure, but the trend is to make the effort not to. People like John Nash https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/John_Forbes_N... receive recognition despite their problems, or for overcoming them.
Okay, I suppose it depends which circles you travel in.
> Which is clearly not the case.
Debatable. The religious influence on politics in the US has harmed many. The influence of fundamentalists around the world has harmed many.
> We currently discriminate against people we consider insane. Sure, but the trend is to make the effort not to. People like John Nash https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/John_Forbes_N.... receive recognition despite their problems, or for overcoming them.
Yeah, but he wouldn't be allowed to say join the military, or to become a judge.
In any case, I'm not for blacklisting scientists. Many great historical scientists had bizarre ideas that are less well remembered than their main discoveries.
OK, millions of people have known that there is more than one religion for thousands of years. But you are asserting that most people are not aware there is more than religion. This is completely contrary to reality.
You also have a suggestion that after becoming aware there is more than one religion, people will then become aware that some of the adherents to the other religion "aren't evil". This is also completely contrary to reality. If there is someone who believes that everyone not in their religion is "evil", it must be an incredibly small fringe group along with flat earthers and apollo mission deniers. I've certainly never met one in real life.
Yet you assert this is a majority belief.
This means you are irrational and believe in things that are demonstrably false, does it not?
Therefore, under the thesis being promoted by Mr. Dawkins, you should not be allowed to hold any positions of responsibility in society or university or government. Anyone holding any irrational beliefs that are known to be wrong should not be allowed this and not allowed that, that's the argument.
Ah but it won't apply will it. Only certain specific types of unsubstantiated or irrational beliefs are to receive the blacklisting.
I'm not sure why you believe that. I did not write that anywhere in my post.
> You also have a suggestion that after becoming aware there is more than one religion, people will then become aware that some of the adherents to the other religion "aren't evil".
No. These are independent phenomena. I did not write that the one leads to the other.
> This is also completely contrary to reality. If there is someone who believes that everyone not in their religion is "evil", it must be an incredibly small fringe group along with flat earthers and apollo mission deniers. I've certainly never met one in real life.
Here, we're looking at different time-scales. I'm talking about the past 200 years, or so. "Evil" is an exaggeration, but let's say "immoral" or at the very least "misguided".
The point I was trying to make is this:
1) The primary vector for religious belief is parenting. Yes, people sometimes adopt a faith later in life, but this dwarfed by those who practice the faith of their parents. 2) This vector depends on the child having other adults and mentors (a community) around them who are also religious, or at the very least a community that doesn't mock religion as ridiculous and/or insane. 3) As more and more respectable people who are not obviously "other" are un- or anti-religious, it's harder to get kids to believe their religious teachings 3b) Or at least, it erodes their authority from Religion (capital R) to mere tradition.
> Yet you assert this is a majority belief.
Where? Where are you reading this stuff?
> This means you are irrational and believe in things that are demonstrably false, does it not?
Try again. Your argument is based on false premises.
I can only assume that because this is a sensitive topic, I've hit your auto-rant button, and you failed to actually read my post.
> Ah but it won't apply will it. Only certain specific types of unsubstantiated or irrational beliefs are to receive the blacklisting.
Well, since you bring this up -- why should certain irrational beliefs receive deference.
For instance, if someone tells me that they believe the biblical creation story, admittedly contrary to all evidence, why should they receive any more protection than if they tell me they believe the creation story from the Silmarillion to be true.
"The game's up for organized religion as soon as people see that there's more than one, and that those other believers aren't evil."
By referring to "as soon as people see that there's more than one" clearly indicates you are asserting that people are unaware there is more than one. To claim otherwise is disingenuous as it leaves your entire argument without foundation.
Don't assume malice where a misplaced comma will suffice.
The funny thing about this argument is that it's made within the same protection against religious discrimination that Dawkins would like to discard.
Some of us might like to fantasize that laws against religious discrimination could be carefully disassembled so that atheists remain fully protected while all the theists get comeuppance for their objectionable views, but that isn't going to happen. If you get rid of laws against religious discrimination, it's not going to be open season on Christian creationists, it's going to be open season on atheists and Muslims (who poll almost as badly as atheists in the US).
I get the slippery slope of discrimination but that's not what this is about. I'm talking about the slippery slope of not allowing someone to making a hiring decision on the grounds that the way people live their lives and their values affect their ability to be productive members of your organization.
Interested to hear what you guys think.
I still got all of my work done and was by any measure a successful, participatory employee, but my personal direction didn't mesh well with the direction and culture of the company.
It seems reasonable to me.
Unless someone has personal beliefs that are entirely orthogonal to their work, those beliefs are none of your business.
Wouldn't you want someone's personal beliefs to be orthogonal to their work since it would imply that those beliefs don't affect the work?
"If Gaskell has produced sound, peer-reviewed literature of high quality then I see no reason for denying him the position, even if he believes Mars is the egg of a [giant purple Mongoose]"
The point is that reason and logic always only exist within a specific framework of axioms and assumptions. There is no universal set of axioms and assumptions that apply to all situations, if there where we would have a set of truths that could describe the age of the earth accurately both in the case that the world is as it immediately appears to be and the case where we exist in the dream of a whale. We can only reason within contexts, and in all the examples given in Dawkin’s post, individuals are reasoning excellently within the specific context.
The problem, whether it involves religion or not, is when people start to believe that they do have access to a universal set of axioms and assumptions, that they have presented themselves with an absolute truth. Which is why I always think it’s important to consider, at least for a moment, what if we are inside the dream of a giant, sleeping whale.
[Edit: HN submission title has been revised. Thanks!]
"A senior colleague at Oxford told me of an astronomer who, on religious grounds, believes the universe is less than ten thousand years old...He publishes mathematical papers in learned journals, taking it for granted that the universe is nearly fourteen billion years old and using this assumption in his calculations. He bottles up his personal beliefs so successfully that he is capable of performing calculations that assume an old universe and make a genuine contribution to science. My colleague takes the view that this YEC is entitled to a job as a professor of astronomy, because he keeps his private beliefs to himself while at work.
I take the opposite view. I would object to employing him, on the grounds that his research papers, and his lectures to students, are filled with what he personally believes to be falsehoods. He is a fake, a fraud, a charlatan, drawing a salary for a job that could have gone to an honest astronomer. Moreover, I would regard his equanimity in holding two diametrically opposing views simultaneously in his head as a revealing indicator that there is something wrong with his head."
That looks like a pretty straightforward argument in favor of firing creationist astronomers to me!
Another quote:
My own position would be that if a young earth creationist (YEC, the barking mad kind who believe the entire universe began after the domestication of the dog) is "breathtakingly above the other candidates", then the other candidates must be so bad that we should re-advertise and start afresh.
He seems to be specifically addressing "young earth creationists", and possibly even a subset of those (the "barking mad" ones).
Section 4 of the essay suggests that his guidance would not even be limited to religious beliefs: any beliefs, religious or otherwise, that pose a conflict to one's work position should be considered as grounds for non-employment. That's my reading of it, anyway.
Personally, I think his position is barking mad itself. I mean, this statement
"Moreover, I would regard his equanimity in holding two diametrically opposing views simultaneously in his head as a revealing indicator that there is something wrong with his head."
is completely absurd. I'd love Mr. Dawkins to point at the human who has a full set of rational beliefs which are completely consistent with each other and consistent with his or her day-to-day life. If I were hiring a manager, I would discriminate against Mr. Dawkins in favor of someone who doesn't reject good workers on a whim.
The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
Last month we turned down a developer candidate because his weblog said he was a Discordian who believed in a flying spaghetti monster. He was the best candidate by far, but flying spaghetti is an irrational belief which indicates profound mental illness.
They may well be intelligent, but that doesn't make them sane.
http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/3ze/richard_dawkins_sho...
Also implicit in most of the posts here and Dawkin's piece is to assume there is zero scientific evidence for a young earth or any other Biblical story. As Feynman was fond of saying, it isn't up to science to determine truth all the time, but rather what is more or less likely based on what we currently know. It is most likely our universe is X years old based on what we know now, but even those ages have changed by wide margins in the last century. We don't know how much more it will change in the next century. But we are as sure about the current age as astronomers were 100 years ago.
For the record, based on our present scientific knowledge, it is more likely our earth is 4.5 billions years old than 5000. But we don't know for sure, do we?
"Although there are scientific reasons for accepting a young earth, I am a young-age creationist because that is my understanding of the Scripture. As I shared with my professors years ago when I was in college, if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate. Here I must stand."
The problem with this line of thinking is not with the conclusion - his conclusion is soundly derived from his body of evidence. But I take issue with what he chooses to admit into the corpus of evidence to be considered.
If you read the Scripture as the word of God, I have no problem with that. If you take that as a guide for what determines a good life, that's totally groovy. But the Bible cannot and should not be used as a piece of evidence in determining scientific fact.
A text that considers calling something a "miracle" adequate explanation is, by definition, non-scientific. If you believe in such miracles, that doesn't bother me one bit, but if you accept a miracle as evidence without explanation, you are not practicing science.
Sure we can get in a fight about how obvious should the obviousness be, and what exactly is common sense. However disregard for evidence or strong unfounded beleifs should be a warning sign. The candidate's views on the technology involved in his job should be more deeply screened. What I mean is that a candidate firmly beleiving that the earth was created 10k years ago because the scriptures say so, is (imho) more likely to lack the open-mindedness needed by most jobs in science/technology fields. OTOH, if you "just need a programmer", i'm sure you'll be fine even with a guy thinking bananas are in reality dropped by storks.
I'll frequently to a friend and say "that movie would have been more interesting if they'd followed the subplot and showed how character X finally did Y".
Here I'm starting with a model of the universe, projecting the givens that we were shown, and extrapolating a theory about something else that might happen in that model. And all of it is false. I'm just playing with a model of the world as it might be. And that's all the scientist in the OP was doing, in his mind.
The only difference is that I'm saying that the model is fictional, whereas he believes it. But that doesn't make the projections he might make from his model any better or worse than mine.
This feels the same way. Does the university really want to check up on this astronomer all the time, in case his irrationality carries over to his professional life?
But that's just me. I'm the kind of person who wants his job to be more than "just a job".
There are people who consider jobs to be just jobs and they do their jobs for a living, not to fulfill their life purpose. This is actually the majority of people, and when you start discriminating against them, well, you're kinda evil. Or how should I put it? You'd be no different from a religious zealot who thinks he knows the truth and must force everyone to adhere to the same truth that he adheres to.
The root of most evil (often attributed to "religion") is when you believe you have the truth and that you must force others to see it. Discriminating against these people in their work and livelihood is just one tactic of oppressing people. The Soviet Union was such an evil government; they oppressed religious people in the name of liberating them from religion.
Having said that, I can flip the argument around. Would I trust a doctor who believes that humans are nothing but a lump of material, and that morals are just lies that we fabricated? It depends, and you can argue for a long time why you should (or should not) trust such a doctor. But the point is, it's a double edged sword, if you're gonna use it to discriminate against others, then certain others can also use it to discriminate against you.
When someone is an outspoken advocate for atheism, but is also a scientist, should I take his "science" seriously as if he's objective in his science? He obviously has a strong desire to fulfill his agenda, and is likely to bend backwards to support what he's advocating.
And sometimes, it may even be worthwhile to look at Mars with the eye of someone who believes it to be a giant purple mongoose. So long as in your work you recognize and promote the most likely possibilities, what you believe to be true regardless of evidence is, at worst, a tool that can aid one in thinking outside the box.
Personally I believe the universe and the Earth are many times over older than 10000 years. The evidence is so overwhelming it's hard to understand anyone who thinks otherwise. But I feel like the person who believes the Earth is 10000 years old is a better scientist than the person who knows it to be an incontrovertible fact that the Earth is much older than 10000 years.
Of course one should be open to other possibilities. However, ones openness to a possibility should be related to the likelihood of that possibility. If that's not the case, you are disconnected from reality.
You're twisting my words. I think believing that certain assumptions which are required to support your work are false makes you a better scientist. The specific person Dawkins maligns hasn't taken any positions in their work that align with his personal beliefs. But I believe that his work is better for it.
Really though, this is more a question of diversity of opinion than of one belief system being intrinsically superior to another for the doing of science. We are all disconnected from reality in one way or another. If all of our scientists are disconnected from reality in a similar manner, it's going to drastically stunt their thinking. And this is equally true if all scientists have the same sort of atheist-agnostic belief that science is mostly right in its models or if all scientists are young-Earth creationists. (At least in a hypothetical world where all scientists are YEC and simultaneously produce rigorous work that makes YEC appear almost certainly false.)
So long as their work is rigorous and aligns with data, their personal beliefs merely serve to give them novel ideas Dawkins could never think of.
The evidence for the universe being much older than 10,000 years is truly overwhelming and you don’t get to just discount that evidence. You have to find a theory that fits the existing evidence perfectly and you have to find new evidence that confirms your theory. Considering how extremely certain we are about the universe being much older than 10,000 years, you have to be thorough and your evidence has to be truly overwhelming [0], a daunting task, no doubt.
Some study with little evidence and an incomplete theory just won’t cut it if the topic of discussion is the age of the universe and its goal is to make the universe six orders of magnitude younger. Not all evidence and every theory is worth the same.
[0] Astrophysicists everywhere should jump out of windows and Nobel prizes should be thrown at you.
An American scientist once visited the offices of the great Nobel prize winning physicist, Niels Bohr, in Copenhagen. He was amazed to find that over Bohr’s desk was a horseshoe, securely nailed to the wall, with the open end up in the approved manner (so it would catch the good luck and not let it spill out).
The American said with a nervous laugh, “Surely you don’t believe the horseshoe will bring you good luck, do you, Professor Bohr? After all, as a scientist –” Bohr chuckled. “I believe no such thing, my good friend. Not at all. I am scarcely likely to believe in such foolish nonsense. However, I am told that a horseshoe will bring you good luck whether you believe in it or not.”
I guess Dawkins would fire Bohr. Truly an atheist on a crusade!
I have never seen evidence of protests against that kind of discrimination. And considering the are a pseudo-public entity (tax exempt), it seems very similar.
/me is disappointed with self for commenting on stupid flamebait link.
By the same reasoning, if a schizophrenic claims the sky is blue and we all agree with him, that makes us schizophrenic too.
The deeply flawed reasoning is implying that, because we agree with the observations of a creationist astronomer on the big bang, we are also creationists.
It's believing that the value of time T is such that it conflicts with innumerable results from geology, physics, and astronomy that does.