<\/p>\n
A number of people have suggested I <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Harris writes:<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n PRESIDENT OBAMA has nominated Dr. Collins is regularly praised by <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n Harris uses a stealth debating But as director of the institutes, Dr. What follows are a series of slides, I will assume Harris is being Slide 1: “Almighty God, who is not This may or may not be true, but Slide 2: “God’s plan included the Perhaps Harris has the Slide 3: “After evolution had Free will and immortal soul are Is there a moral law? Harris <\/span>Again, a red herring.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Slide 4: “We humans used our free Hard to see how this bears on Slide 5: “If the moral law is just a A rhetorical point on Collins’ Why should Dr. Collins’s beliefs be There is an epidemic of scientific Collins would apparently agree Dr. Collins has written that science But when challenged with alternative These statements are NOT in Similarly, Dr. Collins insists that Even<\/font> <\/font>if he does believe this, the Most scientists who study the human <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n I disagree with Collins, but so What made science in the modern As someone who believes that our Actually Collins effectively
\nwas unfair to Sam Harris in criticizing his attack on Frances Collins. <\/span>Below I reprint his column from the
\nNYT<\/a>, inserting at key points comments showing I am very far from being unfair. Towards the end we get into issues more interesting than that, issues growing out of Harris’s attack on Collins.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
\nFrancis Collins to be the next director of the National Institutes of Health.
\nIt would seem a brilliant choice. Dr. Collins’s credentials are impeccable: he
\nis a physical chemist, a medical geneticist and the former head of the Human
\nGenome Project. He is also, by his own account, living proof that there is no
\nconflict between science and religion. In 2006, he published “The Language of
\nGod,” in which he claimed to demonstrate “a consistent and profoundly
\nsatisfying harmony” between 21st-century science and evangelical Christianity.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
\nsecular scientists for what he is not: he is not a “young earth creationist,”
\nnor is he a proponent of “intelligent design.” Given the state of the evidence
\nfor evolution, these are both very good things for a scientist not to be.
<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
<\/font><\/p>\n
\npoint here to undermine Collins.
\n<\/span>He grants Collins is not an idiot.
\n<\/span>But . . .
<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
<\/span><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
\nCollins will have more responsibility for biomedical and health-related
\nresearch than any person on earth, controlling an annual budget of more than
\n$30 billion. He will also be one of the foremost representatives of science in
\nthe United States. For this reason, it is important that we understand Dr.
\nCollins and his faith as they relate to scientific inquiry. <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
\npresented in order, from a lecture on science and belief that Dr. Collins gave
\nat the University of California, Berkeley, in 2008:<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n\n
\naccurate regarding the content of the slides. <\/span>He is not George Will or Bill Kristol. <\/span>In my view Harris’s sins are not those
\nof dishonesty and manipulation, but of overweening self-righteousness.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
<\/b><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
\nlimited in space or time, created a universe 13.7 billion years ago with its
\nparameters precisely tuned to allow the development of complexity over long
\nperiods of time.”<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n\n
\nsince it deals with the origin of things, is of little relevance to
\ninvestigating what happened afterwards, as Collins’ own work demonstrates.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
<\/b><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
\nmechanism of evolution to create the marvelous diversity of living things on
\nour planet. Most especially, that creative plan included human beings.”<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n\n
\ntotalitarian notion that not only must we agree with the physical evidence –
\nevolution – but we must agree with interpretations of the evidence that
\nempirical findings have so far been unable to shed any light on
\nwhatsoever. <\/span>If so this is a
\ndisturbing comment on Harris, not Collins. Christianity has strong totalitarian strains, though Collins appears free from them. Atheism apparently does as well.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
<\/b><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
\nprepared a sufficiently advanced ‘house’ (the human brain), God gifted humanity
\nwith the knowledge of good and evil (the moral law), with free will, and with
\nan immortal soul.”
<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n\n
\nthings science has no way of studying. <\/span>It is unclear how even to describe a free will. <\/span>If it cannot be formulated in a testable
\nproposition, it is not amenable to scientific investigation. <\/span>SO LONG AS this is not used to suppress
\nscientific investigation it is difficult to see why it matters. <\/span>
<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
\nwould seem to think not. <\/span>I do –
\nbut do not need a Christian God to find it. <\/span>Even Robert Axelrod’s study of the iterated prisoners
\ndilemma and computer strategies to win it can be used to argue for a moral
\nlaw. <\/span>See his The Evolution of
\nCooperation<\/i><\/a>.
<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
<\/b><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
\nwill to break the moral law, leading to our estrangement from God. For
\nChristians, Jesus is the solution to that estrangement.”<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n\n
\nresearch – unless Harris demands fealty to his views on things other than
\nscience – which he pretty obviously does.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
<\/b><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
\nside effect of evolution, then there is no such thing as good or evil. It’s all
\nan illusion. We’ve been hoodwinked. Are any of us, especially the strong
\natheists, really prepared to live our lives within that worldview?<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n\n
\npart. <\/span>I do not see for a minute
\nhow it is relevant to his work as a scientist – beyond perhaps making him a
\nmore ethical scientist. <\/span>I like
\nthat idea.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
<\/b><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
\nof concern?<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
\nignorance in the United States. This isn’t surprising, as very few scientific
\ntruths are self-evident, and many are counterintuitive. It is by no means
\nobvious that empty space has structure or that we share a common ancestor with
\nboth the housefly and the banana. It can be difficult to think like a
\nscientist. But few things make thinking like a scientist more difficult than
\nreligion.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n\n
\nwith all these statements – so why is Harris making them except to suggest that
\nnaming Collins to this position somehow leads to undermining these
\npropositions. <\/span>On could as easily argue that naming a believing Christian to this post,
\none who agrees with these propositions, helps undermine the authority of those
\nwho argue that these tenets of modern science must be rejected to preserve
\none’s Christian faith. <\/span><\/b><\/span>The entire paragraph
\nis either irrelevant or misleading.
\n<\/span><\/span><\/b><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
<\/b><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
\nmakes belief in God “intensely plausible” — the Big Bang, the fine-tuning of
\nnature’s constants, the emergence of complex life, the effectiveness of
\nmathematics, all suggest the existence of a “loving, logical and consistent”
\nGod.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
\naccounts of these phenomena — or with evidence that suggests that God might be
\nunloving, illogical, inconsistent or, indeed, absent — Dr. Collins will say
\nthat God stands outside of Nature, and thus science cannot address the question
\nof his existence at all.
<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n\n
\nconflict or tension. <\/span>God is
\n“immensely plausible” but science can neither prove nor disprove the
\nissue. <\/span>So?<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
<\/b><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
\nour moral intuitions attest to God’s existence, to his perfectly moral
\ncharacter and to his desire to have fellowship with every member of our
\nspecies. But when our moral intuitions recoil at the casual destruction of
\ninnocents by, say, a tidal wave or earthquake, Dr. Collins assures us that our
\ntime-bound notions of good and evil can’t be trusted and that God’s will is a
\nmystery.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n\n
\ntwo propositions are not contradictory.
\n<\/span>Judging from what Collins is described as saying, the universe had to
\nevolve to a certain point to be ready for human souls. <\/span>This involved the working out of
\nscientific laws and principles that were themselves NOT indicative of these
\nsouls. <\/span>From a Pagan perspective
\nI’ve discussed this at length in Pagans and Christians<\/i><\/a>
\nas well as my book of dialogue with an evanglical Christian, Beyond the Burning Times<\/a>.
\n <\/span>To be very brief, if as
\nCollins says, God sets certain processes in motion that will in time generate
\nbodies able to hold souls, these processes will not be moral in the way a soul
\ncan be. <\/span>Since the bodies that hold
\nsouls will continue to depend on these processes to live, they will be subject
\nto these phenomena, sometimes to their regret. <\/span>Does God make it better in the end? <\/span>Science cannot say.<\/span> <\/span>
<\/b><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
<\/b><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
\nmind are convinced that minds are the products of brains, and brains are the
\nproducts of evolution. Dr. Collins takes a different approach: he insists that
\nat some moment in the development of our species God inserted crucial
\ncomponents — including an immortal soul, free will, the moral law, spiritual
\nhunger, genuine altruism, etc.
<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
<\/font><\/p>\n
\nwhat? <\/span>I also disagree with
\nHarris. <\/span>In so far as we study
\nphysical reality these beliefs of Collins, Harris, and myself are irrelevant beyond
\nthe point at which they might suggest hypotheses that can be scientifically
\ninvestigated and our willingness to respect the results of those tests. <\/span>But while Harris
\nseems to under play the fact, science has always consisted of people who
\ndisagree with one another but have a broad agreement as to the standards that a
\nscientific proposition should meet.
\n<\/span>Harris by contrast seem to think it’s nothing but a count pf heads
\n(“Most scientists…”) <\/span>Heads count-
\nbut it’s a lot more complex than that.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
\nsense possible was the development of standards for testing claims about the
\nphysical world that people could agree with despite differing beliefs about
\nreligious matters. <\/span>It has always
\nworked that way.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
<\/b><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
\nunderstanding of human nature can be derived from neuroscience, psychology,
\ncognitive science and behavioral economics, among others, I am troubled by Dr.
\nCollins’s line of thinking. I also believe it would seriously undercut fields
\nlike neuroscience and our growing understanding of the human mind. If we must
\nlook to religion to explain our moral sense, what should we make of the
\ndeficits of moral reasoning associated with conditions like frontal lobe
\nsyndrome and psychopathy? Are these disorders best addressed by theology?<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n
<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n\n
\nanswered this point earlier in Harris’s attack, if Harris would only try to
\nunderstand him. <\/span>Collins said the brain
\nwas necessary. <\/span>Defects in the