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Should employers be blind to private beliefs? (Richard Dawkins)

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Re: Should employers be blind to private beliefs? (Richard Dawkins)

#101

Post by jimbokun »

jasonlotito wrote: post #45
jimbokun wrote: post #10

This 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…

The article isn't about religion so much as it is about beliefs. Does being a religious belief make a belief better? The current laws seek to protect religious beliefs over non-religious ones. Basically, why is it okay to reject people based on some beliefs but not others?

I was careful to use the term "private beliefs" in my first paragraph. 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.

Re: Should employers be blind to private beliefs? (Richard Dawkins)

#102

Post by dasil003 »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #84

I personally don't care, but if I had to pick, I would want a scientist that was technically proficient, flexible in their thinking, and was able to explain the current way of thinking to a level acceptable to his peers. That'd be it. 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…

You know I might be able to get behind the idea that religious beliefs shouldn't be privileged against other "crazy" beliefs, but I can't help but feel that Dawkins has an unjustifiable axe to grind against religion.

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.

Re: Should employers be blind to private beliefs? (Richard Dawkins)

#103

Post by JabavuAdams »

spindritf wrote: post #89
JabavuAdams wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Times change. In the past you could be killed (in the West) for not being religious, or for adhering to the wrong sect. 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…

> The way we're headed, religious belief is becoming more and more fringe. 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?

I don't see any stats on change over time in the link you provided.

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.

Re: Should employers be blind to private beliefs? (Richard Dawkins)

#104

Post by jimbokun »

chc wrote: post #91
yummyfajitas wrote: post #37

I find one of Dawkin's implicit assumptions very interesting. 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…

I think you need to distinguish between different kinds of "using a theory." Investigating something you don't believe in is not the same thing as using (perhaps with reservation) a model you believe to be imperfect, and that in turn is different from claiming as true things that you believe to be totally false.

"and that in turn is different from claiming as true things that you believe to be totally false."

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.

Re: Should employers be blind to private beliefs? (Richard Dawkins)

#105

Post by JabavuAdams »

shadowfox wrote: post #88
JabavuAdams wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Times change. In the past you could be killed (in the West) for not being religious, or for adhering to the wrong sect. 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…

> The way we're headed, religious belief is becoming more and more fringe Any references?

In any of the places I've worked, someone who enthusiastically affirmed that they believe in God would seem a bit weird.

Contrast this to 100 years ago.

Re: Should employers be blind to private beliefs? (Richard Dawkins)

#106

Post by Natsu »

pjscott wrote: post #80
borism wrote: post #40

Here's favorite story of mine on this topic. My favorite philosopher Slavoj Zizek quotes this often as well in his Reality of the Virtual themed lectures (it is disputed whether the story itself is true or not): 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,…

Do you actually believe that Dawkins would do anything other than chuckle amicably in that situation?

Dawkins wouldn't just chuckle, he'd write a book about it.

Re: Should employers be blind to private beliefs? (Richard Dawkins)

#107

Post by yummyfajitas »

chc wrote: post #91
yummyfajitas wrote: post #37

I find one of Dawkin's implicit assumptions very interesting. 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…

I think you need to distinguish between different kinds of "using a theory." Investigating something you don't believe in is not the same thing as using (perhaps with reservation) a model you believe to be imperfect, and that in turn is different from claiming as true things that you believe to be totally false.

In general, a scientist will never "claim as true" anything. They will make claims of the following nature:

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.

Re: Should employers be blind to private beliefs? (Richard Dawkins)

#108

Post by chc »

jimbokun wrote: post #104
chc wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you need to distinguish between different kinds of "using a theory." Investigating something you don't believe in is not the same thing as using (perhaps with reservation) a model you believe to be imperfect, and that in turn is different from claiming as true things that you believe to be totally false.

"and that in turn is different from claiming as true things that you believe to be totally false." 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.

If it seemed like I was arguing for Dawkins' position, that wasn't my intention. It just seemed like yummyfajitas was lumping a lot of very different things under a vague umbrella term, which I think does a disservice to the argument he was making.

Re: Should employers be blind to private beliefs? (Richard Dawkins)

#109

Post by shadowfox »

pjscott wrote: post #80
borism wrote: post #40

Here's favorite story of mine on this topic. My favorite philosopher Slavoj Zizek quotes this often as well in his Reality of the Virtual themed lectures (it is disputed whether the story itself is true or not): 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,…

Do you actually believe that Dawkins would do anything other than chuckle amicably in that situation?

Actually yes. (Of course assuming he has any power to do so :P)

Re: Should employers be blind to private beliefs? (Richard Dawkins)

#110

Post by jimbokun »

jamesbritt wrote: post #79
wisty wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last part is a very Western value set - that we should "base our beliefs on 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…

"... as long as they're capable, ..." 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 a…

"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."

The problem with the particular case he cites is that this person seemed to have a well demonstrated history of doing his job correctly.

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