Darwin would not have got very far with Dawkins in charge.
Should employers be blind to private beliefs? (Richard Dawkins)
21–30 of 145 posts
Re: Should employers be blind to private beliefs? (Richard Dawkins)
#22Going back to the topic at hand, I am a little uncomfortable NOT being able to take into account someone's beliefs (and therefore values) when making a decision to employ them. Difficult to make the point without going to extremes, but the bottom line is that I believe organizations have (and should continue to have ) the right to direct their culture. If someone isnt a "cultural" fit because they believe in things t…
I agree with you.
I was laid off from my last company because I didn't like the direction of the company and wasn't happy with the work. At the same time, profits were down and the company needed to downsize.
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.
Re: Should employers be blind to private beliefs? (Richard Dawkins)
#23If they support current Big Bang theory, they're all creationist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lemaître
Believing that the Universe did not exist before some time T does not make you a Creationist in the sense of the word that is employed in this discussion.
It's believing that the value of time T is such that it conflicts with innumerable results from geology, physics, and astronomy that does.
Re: Should employers be blind to private beliefs? (Richard Dawkins)
#24If they support current Big Bang theory, they're all creationist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lemaître
Do you have any idea how deeply flawed your reasoning is? By the same reasoning, if a schizophrenic claims the sky is blue and we all agree with him, that makes us schizophrenic too.
Which is exactly why one shouldn't be barred from employment based on personal beliefs... It is Dawkins who makes the comparison between religion and disease or disorders, no?
Re: Should employers be blind to private beliefs? (Richard Dawkins)
#25Even 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 catac…
Would you refuse treatment from an ophthalmologist who believed:
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).
Re: Should employers be blind to private beliefs? (Richard Dawkins)
#26What if they believe non-mainstream cosmological theories? Where does orthodoxy enforcement stop?
The big bang is an extrapolated theory with possibly one piece of evidence: the cosmic microwave background. The CMB may be interpreted in other ways. Not believing in the Big Bang is far removed from being a young-Earth creationist. Many more things have to be wrong (perhaps logic itself) for young-Earthism to be proven right. The field of cosmology is still pretty young and the theories supporting it are much more likely to be changed. But the general idea that the Earth (and the universe) is old (billions of years at least) has many different and unrelated pieces of evidence supporting it.
Re: Should employers be blind to private beliefs? (Richard Dawkins)
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
You must have read a completely different article than I did, because as far as I can tell you are entirely mistaken about the content. "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 t…
No, I read that. Not all creationists believe that the universe is less than ten thousand years old. 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…
Well, knowing Richard Dawkins, he thinks more or less any religious person is "barking mad." It sounds to me like he is just advocating for discrimination against people with stupid beliefs (where "stupid" is up to the employer to decide, I suppose), on the grounds that just being stupid is enough to put the quality and honesty of someone's work in doubt.
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.
Re: Should employers be blind to private beliefs? (Richard Dawkins)
#28A good scientist should be agnostic. In some ways, believing something accepted to be false in the scientific community is preferable to actually believing what is accepted to be true in the scientific community. If everyone starts with the same assumptions then the same assumptions are propagated through the literature without critical analysis. And sometimes, it may even be worthwhile to look at Mars with the eye o…
So you think assuming a less likely position makes people better scientists? I'd like to see a calculation that a system of optimization that proceeds with that assumption actually does converge...
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.
Re: Should employers be blind to private beliefs? (Richard Dawkins)
#29This obsession with unearthing people's private beliefs and actively using them as grounds to discriminate against them, seems quite Orwellian to me. Why not just evaluate how well an employee does the job she is paid to do, and not worry about the ideas she expresses outside of work, or the activities she engages in? Dawkins simply seems to be looking for ways of making life more difficult for religious people. If t…
There's too much grey to make this black and white. What would you say to a closeted gay politician pushing anti-gay legislation? Would you not consider that person a fraud, just like someone saying their research is based on the universe being 13 billion years old when they don't really believe that?
Honestly, I don't think the politician's sexuality, open or not, really matters there. Either the legislation is good or (in this case) it isn't.
Re: Should employers be blind to private beliefs? (Richard Dawkins)
#30A good scientist should be agnostic. In some ways, believing something accepted to be false in the scientific community is preferable to actually believing what is accepted to be true in the scientific community. If everyone starts with the same assumptions then the same assumptions are propagated through the literature without critical analysis. And sometimes, it may even be worthwhile to look at Mars with the eye o…
[deleted]
Though I'm an atheist, I'd disagree that a good scientist should be agnostic. The reason is segmentation, along with a widespread belief that religious beliefs are beyond measurement in the physical world.
That said, I disagree with your assertion that the burden is on science to prove the non-existence of the god(s). In fact, there's a distinction often drawn between "strict" and "soft" (or empirical) atheism. A lot of people confuse empirical atheism with agnosticism, since it does not contain a positive belief in the absence of a god, but israther a default position against the existence of got in the absence of compelling evidence. This second type seems to be what the OP is getting at. For instance, when medical researchers say "there is no evidence that silicon implants cause autoimmune disease", this often sounds to the public like equivocating. However, scientists will say things like this after tracking 8,000 women, half of whom have had implants, and discovering that they develop autoimmune disease at rates that are, statistically speaking, indistinguishable. "We found no evidence..."
Prior to a study, I suppose a scientist might say "I don't know" if there is absolutely no literature on the subject and a very compelling hypothesis has been advanced. They might even say "I'm inclined to think this is true, research is underway." But obviously, scientists don't accept the hypothesis by default until someone disproves it, even when the hypothesis is very compelling.
Religion can be different, I recognize this, in that to some people, the hypothesis (god exists) is extremely compelling (they feel this is true deep in their core, they've had a revelatory or mystical experience, or they believe that the universe simply couldn't exist without) and impossible to measure. So maybe they see this as a 50-50 proposition, with an equal burden of proof on both sides?