RE: Francis Collins and Acceptable Criticisms
I agree with Eugene that what government (including Senators acting in their official capacities) should do is different than individuals should or may do, and I would not want anyone to think that I believe there should be some sort of government restraint on individual expression of disapproval of any or all religious views. That said, my personal feeling would be that the relevant guiding principle in dealing with others should be whether that person engages in reasoned dialogue. In that respect, I thought Eugene's use of the word crank very appropriate. A crank is someone who doesn't engage others in reasoned argument--he either won't even speak to those who disagree, or when he does he will refuse to listen to counterarguments. Someone who responds to the questions and arguments of others, even if he does not end up agreeing with the counterarguments, is not a crank. Thus a firmly held belief, no matter how odd, is not sufficient to make someone a crank; failure to engage others in reasoned argument (including about one's religious beliefs) would be. An example. A lot of people, maybe most people, think my client Jose Merced in our Texas Santeria case is wrong-headed because he wants to sacrifice goats, turtles, chickens and other animals to orishas (household gods) in order to ensure that the orishas receive the life-force ashe and do not pass out of the world. But I don't think many of those disagreeing with Jose would ever think him a crank if they met him and had a conversation with him. He uses reason when talking with others and has some empathy for and insight into the views of others, including those who strongly disagree with his religious beliefs or practices. The real distinguishing factor is again not the content of the beliefs, but the way in which Jose engages the rest of the world that disagrees with those beliefs. I should think any of us would be happy to interact with him. On a broader level, I think the level of public discourse in this country would be elevated if more people recognized philosophy's role as a kind of mediatory genre of thought between science and religion. Right now there are people on both sides of the contentious social and religious questions of the day who seem to think that science and religion should be pitted one against the other, and there are some who have profited from sharpening the conflict. I take it that Sam Harris's argument against Collins is that Collins is not skeptical enough of the claims of Christianity in non-scientific questions. If one examines this argument, however, it is revealed as an essentially philosophical (and specifically epistemological) claim--knowledge is restricted to those things science can prove or disprove, and we should disbelieve other truth claims. This argument is hardly dispositive if one situates it in the full spectrum and history of philosophical debate. No philosopher ! has proven that one must adopt this very specific form of skeptical philosophy. Nor is there any evidence that having any particular philosophical approach automatically affects one's performance as a scientist (though a true Nietzschean might have issues with science's truth claims). The fundamental problem with how Harris couches his argument is that it obscures the philosophical assumptions that underlie it, either through ignorance of those assumptions, or as part of a rhetorical strategy. His argument would be clearer, and would lead to better dialogue, if those issues that are scientific were distinguished from those that are philosophical in nature. Talking about the philosophical questions also has the advantage of creating common ground where those with religious beliefs and those without them can meet and reason together. But creating common ground may not be Mr. Harris's goal. Eric From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Volokh, Eugene [vol...@law.ucla.edu] Sent: Friday, August 07, 2009 6:43 PM To: 'Law Religion issues for Law Academics' Subject: RE: Francis Collins and Acceptable Criticisms I appreciate Eric's points, and I think there's much truth to them. But I do think that it might be helpful to distinguish what the government as an institution should do, and what we as voters (who may try to influence Senators) should do. I certainly don't quiz my doctors about their views on elephants and turtles, but if I learned that a doctor whom I was considering really, genuinely thought that the world did indeed rest on the elephants and turtles, I would probably find another doctor (even if I thought that the government shouldn't fire him for such beliefs). Likewise, I probably wouldn't support someone for head of the NIH if he had this belief. Again, if I thought that many educated devout Hindus today did believe this, then I might have
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 http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin
Francis Collins and Acceptable Criticisms
Francis Collins has been selected to be the head of NIH, where he will have substantial authority to allocate the nation’s scientific research funding. There are a few criticisms of Mr. Collins being made regarding his religion. For this list, I wanted to set aside a specific criticism. Specifically, let’s ignore criticisms based on Mr. Collins using his government position to promote religion. (For example, if Mr. Collins were to give a speech, as head of the Human Genome Project, claiming that DNA is evidence for God.) Instead, I wanted to get the list’s opinion on a different criticism. This criticism goes like this: (1) science is a product of another, deeper, more important feature – skeptical thinking; (2) Mr. Collins does not practice skeptical thinking; (3) in fact, Mr. Collins has made many statements undermining and contradicting skeptical thinking. Therefore, the criticism goes, Mr. Collins should not be the head of NIH because he undermines what science is all about. To get a flavor of the criticism, you can read this piecehttp://www.reasonproject.org/archive/item/the_strange_case_of_francis_collins2/by Sam Harris. It is an elaboration of a NY Times editorial Mr. Harris recently authored. In response, biologist Kenneth Miller wrote in the NY Times that Mr. Harris has “deeply held prejudices against religion” and opposes Mr. Collins merely because “he is a Christian.” What does the list think? Should it be acceptable for an employer to discriminate against a job candidate on the grounds that the candidate believes, practices, and advocates for ideas that are antithetical to the values underlying the job? (Again, assuming that the candidate would not otherwise abuse the post and would generally do a fine administrative job.) Thanks, Anthony DeCinque ___ 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
As a legal matter, the claim that someone's religious views are disqualifying comes close to, if not actually constituting a prohibited religious test for public office especially as the NIH to which Collins was nominated is a federal institution subject to the tests clause directly.However there are cases in which the federal courts ahve upheld the discharge of political appointees who have made (hostile) religious statements about homosexuality. Marc Stern From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Anthony Decinque Sent: Thursday, August 06, 2009 4:48 PM To: Law Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: Re: Francis Collins and Acceptable Criticisms I think that begs the question, in a sense. You say, If he has said anything about science that is antithetical to sound science, that would be a fair ground of criticism. Mr. Collins states that he believes in the virgin birth. Is that antithetical to sound science? I don't really want to get into a religious debate or comment on the validity of Mr. Collins's specific beleifs. I want to know when someone's advocacy of ideas that are antithetical to a profession can be used to disqualify that person (legally). You can change the hypothetical if you want. A faith-healer that is applying to be Surgeon General? A On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 4:41 PM, Douglas Laycock layco...@umich.edu wrote: The alleged ideas that are antithetical to the values underlying the job are simply his religion. Some consider his religion antithetical; he does not. It is not antithetical unless you accept certain other assumptions about the relation between religion and science -- assumptions that his critics adopt but that he rejects. If he has said anything about science that is antithetical to sound science, that would be a fair ground of criticism. But if he is sound when he talks about science, and the only evidence against him is the inferences people draw when he talks about religion, that is simply a religious disqualification. Quoting Anthony Decinque anthony.decin...@gmail.com: Francis Collins has been selected to be the head of NIH, where he will have substantial authority to allocate the nation?s scientific research funding. There are a few criticisms of Mr. Collins being made regarding his religion.. For this list, I wanted to set aside a specific criticism. Specifically, let?s ignore criticisms based on Mr. Collins using his government position to promote religion. (For example, if Mr. Collins were to give a speech, as head of the Human Genome Project, claiming that DNA is evidence for God.) Instead, I wanted to get the list?s opinion on a different criticism. This criticism goes like this: (1) science is a product of another, deeper, more important feature ? skeptical thinking; (2) Mr. Collins does not practice skeptical thinking; (3) in fact, Mr. Collins has made many statements undermining and contradicting skeptical thinking. Therefore, the criticism goes, Mr. Collins should not be the head of NIH because he undermines what science is all about. To get a flavor of the criticism, you can read this piecehttp://www.reasonproject.org/archive/item/the_strange_case_of_fran cis_collins2/by http://www.reasonproject.org/archive/item/the_strange_case_of_francis_c ollins2/%3Eby Sam Harris. It is an elaboration of a NY Times editorial Mr. Harris recently authored. In response, biologist Kenneth Miller wrote in the NY Times that Mr. Harris has ?deeply held prejudices against religion? and opposes Mr. Collins merely because ?he is a Christian.? What does the list think? Should it be acceptable for an employer to discriminate against a job candidate on the grounds that the candidate believes, practices, and advocates for ideas that are antithetical to the values underlying the job? (Again, assuming that the candidate would not otherwise abuse the post and would generally do a fine administrative job.) Thanks, Anthony DeCinque Douglas Laycock Yale Kamisar Collegiate Professor of Law University of Michigan Law School 625 S. State St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1215 734-647-9713 ___ 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
RE: Francis Collins and Acceptable Criticisms
Isn't one of the lines to draw whether the idea is scientifically testable or not? We can make scientific observations now about whether the world rests upon turtles, but we cannot observe the birth of Christ. Also query whether the natural order we've been discussing isn't overly Newtonian in its assumptions. Quantum mechanics allows us to calculate the non-zero probabilities, however infinitesimal, of events we might otherwise hold to be outside the standard rules of nature. Finally, would it have been right for someone in the late 19th century to take pretty negative views of someone who didn't buy into an aether theory? For the government to impose legal detriments on that person? From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Volokh, Eugene Sent: Thursday, August 06, 2009 5:54 PM To: 'Law Religion issues for Law Academics' Subject: RE: Francis Collins and Acceptable Criticisms I do think this raises a troublesome question for those of us who recognize the importance of religious toleration, and yet have to evaluate people's qualities for various purposes. Say someone sincerely tells us that he thinks the world literally rests on the back of four elephants, which rest on the back of a turtle. When told that this is inconsistent with various facts about the world, elephants, and turtles, he says that this is an artifact of some special treatment by divine forces, which allows evasion of the normal rules of the universe. I take it that our first reaction would be to take a pretty negative view of the person. And that the person believes this for religious reasons wouldn't displace our doubts, I think. Even if we have reason to think that he's been a perfectly good geneticist, we might wonder whether he's the best person to promote to a rather different job that involves a broad range of choices about health science funding. Maybe we have some sort of ethical or constitutional obligation to set aside our worries, and draw a sharp line between beliefs that a person says are outside the natural order and those that he says relate to the natural order. But it seems to me that setting them aside at least runs against our first common-sense reactions, and might in fact not be sound. From there we can shift the hypothetical. What if the person believes the world is 6000 years old, and that people used to live nearly 1000 years, and that all the contrary evidence is miracles produced by God to test our faith? What if he doesn't take such a view, but believes that there have been several departures from the standard rules of nature in the past several thousand years, such as a virgin birth, a resurrection, and the like? My sense is that we would indeed draw lines between these examples. It is certainly significant to me that very many smart, thoughtful, and suitably scientific skeptical people are believing Christians, and that (I suspect) many fewer such smart, thoughtful, and skeptical people are Young-Earthers or people who literally accept certain Hindu creation myths. But it's not easy for me to figure out how to translate that sort of sensible distinction into a legal or constitutional rule, or even a broadly acceptable principle of political ethics. Eugene From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Anthony Decinque Sent: Thursday, August 06, 2009 2:26 PM To: Law Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: Re: Francis Collins and Acceptable Criticisms To be clear, I did not make that characterization. I was repeating Mr. Harris's argument. (My view would be different.) Again, I don't want to get into a religious argument (I don't think it's the point of this list) but Mr. Harris's argument was different: Even if the virgin birth is outside the natural order, the question Mr. Harris pushes on is how does Mr. Collins know that X event happened? In other words, since Mr. Collins is claiming that the natural order was suspended on a certain date at a certain place, he is the one who should have to provide evidence for that assertion. I think that this the failure of skepticism Mr. Harris is referring to I refer you to his piece for his arguments instead of my clumsy paraphrasing. All that aside, I wanted to assume that his views [are] antithetical to the values underlying science, not just characterize them that way. Assuming that they are, what result? Is it discrimination to say that someone's religious views undercut values that are needed in a job? I think the faith-healer hypothetical was more on target, but doesn't have the full flavor of the argument. A faith-healer, I suppose, never accepts conventional medicine. (Mr. Harris is arguing that) Mr. Collins is like a part-time faith healer. The doctor-who-prays response is helpful. What about a doctor who
RE: Francis Collins and Acceptable Criticisms
At 04:35 PM 8/6/09 -0700, you 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.
