RE: Francis Collins and Acceptable Criticisms
I think Mark's point is quite right, partly because it stresses the basic traditional doctrines of the majority faith (which is quite relevant to scientists' want[ing] public support) and partly because there have been many very distinguished scientists who have had such beliefs (including recently, and not just in the distant path). But I think both the merit and the limitation of this argument is that it is indeed so constrained, and does distinguish the religions of sensible mainstream people from the religions of zany fringe people. It works very well a prudential and pragmatic argument (albeit with some degree of moral consequences if the prudential and pragmatic predicates are fulfilled). But I suspect it doesn't work as a constitutional or quasi-constitutional argument, and I'm not sure that it even works as a rule of political morality, though it is a good guide to sensible behavior. Or am I not doing it enough justice? Eugene From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Scarberry, Mark Sent: Thursday, August 06, 2009 5:07 PM To: Law Religion issues for Law Academics; Law Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: RE: Francis Collins and Acceptable Criticisms If scientists want public support for their effort -- support that I for one am happy to give even if it means taxes are somewhat higher than they otherwise would be -- then scientists need to show that they do not consider most of us to be fools. If belief in the basic traditional doctrines of the majority faith in the US disqualifies one from leading a scientific effort because it somehow shows that the person cannot be trusted to do honest science, then science is, in Dickens' phrase a ass -- a idiot. (Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist, speaking not of science but of the law.) There have been many very distinguished scientists who have had such beliefs, and I think it is bigotry to disqualify such persons from scientific positions. Or perhaps we now should discard the results of the human genome project, because Francis Collins led the effort, and of course the results cannot be reliable. A scientist might reasonably ask whether a candidate for such a position would use methodological naturalism in carrying out his or her duties. I doubt that Francis Collins ever thought that God would send a miracle to make up for sloppy treatment of DNA samples, or that he set up a program to look for hidden biblical messages in the base sequences of human DNA. But naturalism as a method is far different from naturalism as a belief system; to require naturalism as a belief system is indeed to impose a religious test. Mark Scarberry Pepperdine From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu on behalf of Volokh, Eugene Sent: Thu 8/6/2009 4:35 PM To: 'Law Religion issues for Law Academics' Subject: RE: Francis Collins and Acceptable Criticisms I appreciate Eric's suggestion, but I wonder whether it works. I take it that the response to But all our instruments show that there's no elephant or turtle down there would be the same as the response to But all our experience with medicine tells us that there can't be a virgin birth or a resurrection - Well, this is a special miracle that can't be tested with your instruments / that doesn't fit with our experience. I'm not sure one can easily distinguish the two. But even if one does draw the line that Eric suggests, say the person says The world used to rest on the back of four elephants, which rest on a turtle. But not long ago that changed, and that's why our instruments can't perceive this now. Would our view of the person's general trustworthiness really change, on the grounds that now he's saying something that isn't currently testable with current observations? Likewise, the quantum mechanics rationale doesn't strike me as working, either. If it turned out that an NIH candidate believes in werewolves (perhaps with some religious explanation), and explains his belief on the grounds that there's a probability, however infinitesimal, that he'll turn into a werewolf, would you be satisfied about his qualities? What if you heard this from a doctor that you were considering going to - wouldn't you think you might be safer in someone else's hands? As to the aether theory, I don't know what the view was at the time; I suspect that it wasn't viewed so firmly that anyone who disagreed would be seen as a crank. But say that it was, and that therefore people who rejected the theory were wrongly condemned and discriminated against. That's surely bad. Yet does our uncertainty about what's right, and our recognition that time has upset many fighting faiths, mean that we just have to categorically ignore a person's seemingly unsound scientific views when he's being considered for a high government
Re: Francis Collins and Acceptable Criticisms
[I sent this last night but it doesn't seem to have reached the list so I'm trying again, slightly edited.] The courts have told us that a statute that coincides with a religious belief, and that may have been enacted by legislators whose votes were influenced by their personal religious beliefs, is not thereby an establishment of religion. E.g., Harris v. McRae (no tax funding for abortions). Why shouldn't the same principle apply here? If a person's openly held beliefs or public statements are actually antithetical to the requirements of a particular job, then that person should not have to be hired or retained in that job. Whether the beliefs or statements at issue arise from the person's religion or from some other source should be irrelevant. If I won't defend someone's legal right to utter blasphemy, then the ACLU could reasonably refuse to hire me as a First Amendment litigator, regardless of whether my refusal to do so arises from my religious belief that blasphemy (and the defense of blasphemy) is a sin, or from my purely secular belief that the world would be a better place if people were legally prohibited from casting aspersions on other people's religious beliefs. I therefore don't see how denying a job to a person who holds beliefs that are antithetical to the requirements of the job constitutes a religious test. I think the argument that this is a religious test assumes that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification” includes the meaning “no secular test shall ever be required as a qualification if it would have a disparate impact on people of some religion,” which seems dubious to me. Is it a “religious test” to require that a Public Health Service nurse be willing and able to give vaccinations, which (I'm assuming for the sake of making the point) means that a Christian Scientist can't get that job? Whether a person's beliefs are actually antithetical to the requirements of a particular job depends a lot on the job. I don't care if an NIH file clerk believes that the germ theory of disease is a false invention of Satan, intended to mislead people into vainly trying to cure illness with medicine rather than with prayer -- as long as that belief doesn't cause him to misfile charts. But I think such a belief should disqualify a person from being the head of NIH, because such a belief is very likely to skew decisions that are within the power of that job. (And this remains true even though it's possible that in 200 years the germ theory will have been displaced by a more sophisticated understanding of illness. We can't live 200 years in the future.) Of course, it's the government's option whether to assert or to disregard such a disqualification. There's nothing unlawful about appointing a person who doesn't believe in germs to be the head of NIH, any more than it's unlawful to appoint a person who doesn't believe in regulating Wall Street to be the head of the SEC, or unlawful to appoint a person who believes that “when the President does it, it's not against the law” to be the Attorney General. Art Spitzer (speaking personally; I don't think the ACLU has expressed any view about the appointment of Dr. Collins) ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
RE: Francis Collins and Acceptable Criticisms
I thought that werewolves were men who turn into wolves (or vice versa, according to Larry Niven and the Warlock). So what does it mean to turn INTO a werewolf? At 09:09 PM 8/6/09 -0700, you wrote: Many list members whose email programs block attachments may have wondered, as I did, what Will Linden's point was. If you let the attachment through you will see that it includes his photo, in which, in my view, he simply looks respectably hirsute. You may be able to see it below. With appreciation for Will's attempt to lighten the mood, Mark Scarberry Pepperdine At 04:35 PM 8/6/09 -0700, Will Linden wrote: explains his belief on the grounds that there's a probability, however infinitesimal, that he'll turn into a werewolf, would you be satisfied about his qualities? Turn INTO a werewolf? http://www.retaggr.com/SignatureProfile/wlinden ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others. http://www.retaggr.com/SignatureProfile/wlinden ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
RE: Francis Collins and Acceptable Criticisms
I agree with Art to the extent that his post is limited to specific beliefs that are in fact antithetical to the satisfactory performance of a particular job – that is, beliefs as to which there may be either secular or religious sources. But there are other variations of the problem. 1. The contention that religious beliefs per se, that is, the belief that some things have happened or will happen that can’t be explained by science and have theological explanations, is itself a basis for disqualifying a person for a job requiring a commitment to, and expertise in, science. 2. The contention that some unconventional and idiosyncratic religious beliefs disqualify a person for a leadership position, not because they are antithetical in some direct way to the requirements of the position, but because they cast doubt on the person’s judgment or on the way that they distinguish truth from falsehood. This leaves open the question of exactly what it means for a belief to be antithetical to the performance of a particular job. On that issue I would think it is clear that common monotheistic beliefs are not antithetical to the satisfactory, indeed the exemplary, performance of high level positions in science and virtually every other field. Alan Brownstein From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of artspit...@aol.com Sent: Friday, August 07, 2009 7:42 AM To: religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu Subject: Re: Francis Collins and Acceptable Criticisms [I sent this last night but it doesn't seem to have reached the list so I'm trying again, slightly edited.] The courts have told us that a statute that coincides with a religious belief, and that may have been enacted by legislators whose votes were influenced by their personal religious beliefs, is not thereby an establishment of religion. E.g., Harris v. McRae (no tax funding for abortions). Why shouldn't the same principle apply here? If a person's openly held beliefs or public statements are actually antithetical to the requirements of a particular job, then that person should not have to be hired or retained in that job. Whether the beliefs or statements at issue arise from the person's religion or from some other source should be irrelevant. If I won't defend someone's legal right to utter blasphemy, then the ACLU could reasonably refuse to hire me as a First Amendment litigator, regardless of whether my refusal to do so arises from my religious belief that blasphemy (and the defense of blasphemy) is a sin, or from my purely secular belief that the world would be a better place if people were legally prohibited from casting aspersions on other people's religious beliefs. I therefore don't see how denying a job to a person who holds beliefs that are antithetical to the requirements of the job constitutes a religious test. I think the argument that this is a religious test assumes that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification” includes the meaning “no secular test shall ever be required as a qualification if it would have a disparate impact on people of some religion,” which seems dubious to me. Is it a “religious test” to require that a Public Health Service nurse be willing and able to give vaccinations, which (I'm assuming for the sake of making the point) means that a Christian Scientist can't get that job? Whether a person's beliefs are actually antithetical to the requirements of a particular job depends a lot on the job. I don't care if an NIH file clerk believes that the germ theory of disease is a false invention of Satan, intended to mislead people into vainly trying to cure illness with medicine rather than with prayer -- as long as that belief doesn't cause him to misfile charts. But I think such a belief should disqualify a person from being the head of NIH, because such a belief is very likely to skew decisions that are within the power of that job. (And this remains true even though it's possible that in 200 years the germ theory will have been displaced by a more sophisticated understanding of illness. We can't live 200 years in the future.) Of course, it's the government's option whether to assert or to disregard such a disqualification. There's nothing unlawful about appointing a person who doesn't believe in germs to be the head of NIH, any more than it's unlawful to appoint a person who doesn't believe in regulating Wall Street to be the head of the SEC, or unlawful to appoint a person who believes that “when the President does it, it's not against the law” to be the Attorney General. Art Spitzer (speaking personally; I don't think the ACLU has expressed any view about the appointment of Dr. Collins) ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see
