This is a statement that philosophers of many shades have embraced to try and justify their existance, but it is false. Individual observations using any of the senses can have some degree of unreliability, as can our memory of them (the degree of which is *very* situation and person dependent), however humans have been pretty good at making a sufficiently coherent view of reality when taking all input in aggregate over time. While the degree of detail largely depends on the degree of interest, when people see a Douglas Fir they are near universally in agreement about the nature of the tree. David Hume tried to challenge induction by claiming that observations aren’t perfect, but what he and every other philosopher of similar mindset have failed to grasp is that we don’t need perfect – we just need “good enough” (where the margin of error to determine “good enough” varies with application).

As for the original question and follow up questions, let me just remind people that religious descrimination is already widespread and embraced. I moved to mormon land recently, and when originally looking for a job prior to the move the mormon church popped up quite a lot on job boards with jobs in my field. They explicitely state that being mormon is a hard and fast requirement even though the jobs had nothing to do with religion other than the corporations that happened to employ you. Every religious corporation from the Vatican to the Southern Baptist Convention require you to be of their belief, and society accepts that. It isn’t enough for a person to know the beliefs and be willing to promote them for money (though I suspect some people are that way, but are thorough about their deception) but rather religious organizations require you to be a follower.

This incidentally spreads to tangentially related fields – the executives of catholic, baptist, and methodist hospitals have to be the appropriate type of believers. Similarly with religious charities. We descriminate against beliefs all the time in the name of other beliefs, at the work place.

So why then, is it not ok for a job that requires strong emperical skills to require its candidate to showcase said skills in all aspects of their life, including what they choose to believe?

The constitution says you are free to believe what you want and that the government will not endorse one belief over others. It does not say that your belief is free from societal cost, or that it won’t endorse the secular laws over your beliefs. Life functions on descrimination, on deciding one choice is inferior to another. Our choices are not the product of random chance. People who balk at the word descrimination don’t seem to grasp that. Descrimination is not wrong – descriminating on particular qualities that have no bearing and are intrinsicly part of a person (skin color, gender, etc) is what is considered wrong.

… let me just remind people that religious descrimination is already widespread and embraced.
…They explicitely state that being mormon is a hard and fast requirement even though the jobs had nothing to do with religion other than the corporations that happened to employ you. Every religious corporation from the Vatican to the Southern Baptist Convention require you to be of their belief, and society accepts that.

Well, according to the US EEOC, these are be violations of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
And yet, you are correct: religious organizations (and non-religious ones as well, I’m sure) routinely discriminate based on religious views that don’t concern the job description.

I don’t support discrimination based on religious views, which does also mean that I don’t support discriminating against religious people occupying secular or scientific positions as long as their views do not affect their work.

Is this the argument used by religious organizations to let them violate the civil right act? That all work done in a religious organization, even non-religious work, would be negatively impacted by non-believers? Does the act specifically exclude religious organizations in violation of the establishment clause of the 1st amendment? I honestly don’t know, but I’m curious if anyone does.

If a candidate’s beliefs render him or her incapable of fully and competently performing the duties that he or she would be expected to perform as part of the job, then those beliefs are relevant. If the candidate’s beliefs are likely to create distractions, or to lead to workplace conflict, so that it negatively affects the work of his or her colleagues, or makes the organization less effective, then those beliefs are relevant. If the candidate’s beliefs are so repugnant that they are likely to bring the organization itself into disrepute, then those beliefs are relevant. But if the only “problem” with a candidate’s personal beliefs is that they cause a few pompous intellectuals to “harrumph” about the fact that someone who doesn’t fully share their own worldview is able to get a nice job in a field that they believe should be populated exclusively by people who think exactly the way they do, then those beliefs are NOT relevant, and ought to be ignored.

So, can you demonstrate that the candidate’s personal beliefs are relevant to the job, or not? Set aside your straw man arguments, and explain just how this candidate’s personal beliefs impair his ability to do the job effectively, and to add value to the organization that was considering hiring him. If you object to his being hired because of his personal beliefs, but you can’t show how those beliefs will render him incapable of doing the job well, or will disrupt the work of his colleagues, or will discredit the organization he was applying to work for, then all you’re doing is harrumphing.

Extreme cases are better than strawmen as they are at least real world examples.

There is a wealth of political theory that deals explicitly with these issues and I would suggest to Richard that he head down to the arts faculty, or at least read what academics in the field have to say about such issues. Maybe start with Will Kymlicka.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Dawkins will be impressed as logical positivism is long out of fashion. Perhaps he could read about why it lost its foot hold in the humanities.

As it is, when Dawkins wades into these issues, he seems eerily similar to the ID mob who try to debate him on matters of evolutionary biology: woefully ignorant.

As far as whacko beliefs and suitability of candidates go, I thought that was answered in the last thread: if those beliefs do not affect the candidate’s ability, they should have no bearing on the decision to hire.

The above applies only in liberal societies. If you want to have a society that punishes people for not believing in the official “truth”, then you are already far further down the illiberal rabbit-hole than many of the religious people, beliefs and institutions you wish to criticise.

I thought a lot about (1) the first time you wrote about it. In the end I decided it would be alright as long as the flat-earther never let his belief interfere with his job and as long as there were no better qualified applicant with a more mainstream belief. The only victim is the flat-earther himself, whose beliefs are constantly in conflict with his work. Something to be pitied, for sure, but it would be his own choice.

(2), OTOH, I consider unacceptable because the religious beliefs of some, however common, should never allow them to victimize others.

All in all, I think my philosophy can be summed up as “Do and believe what you want, as long as you don’t thereby cause others to be physically or mentally hurt.” (By ‘mentally hurt’ I mean lasting harm, not just hurt sensibilities.)

BTW, the topic of halal butchering is brought up from time to time by a right-wing party in Denmark, but gets derailed every time because veterinarians say it is NOT any more cruel than regular butchering, in part because the law requires the animals to be sedated before any kind of butchering.

… His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.

“You appear to be astonished,” he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. “Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.”

“To forget it!”

“You see,” he explained, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”

“But the Solar System!” I protested.

“What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently; “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.” -

From “A Study in Scarlet”

How is it that Arthur Conan Doyle who believed that woodland faeries are real could write stories about a rigidly logical detective who didn’t know, or care, that the earth revolved around the sun? Would you hire that author?

The point of a hire is not just to have them do a good job, but for them to keep doing a good job and trust their judgement. A young-earth astronomer cannot be trusted to do a good job continually as they demonstrate that they don’t actually believe what they are saying most of the time.

Your argument that the worker’s “bad” belief will affect the quality of their work in the future is undermined by the fact that you have no evidence that it has affected the quality of their work in the past. Effectively, you’re saying, “Forget the evidence, my irrational suspicion about the influence of their irrational belief is more important.”

Which isn’t very rational.

Seems like Dawkins et. al. want us to give them permission to discriminate on the basis of their suspicion that a “bad” belief will lead to bad work, even if there is no evidence that the “bad” belief on the part of this worker has led to bad work. Is that really the argument that they want to make?

I do like your reading, though. Imagine an august Roman general exulting in triumph as a tiny, starving tribe shuffles past, and not getting that he’s a dork for glorying in an easy victory. Totally fits, and totally something a Roman would have done.

Neural networks as complex as ours handle both behaviours without clear delineation between them, as has been shown in across cases of event recall, criminal witnessing, and any number of cognitive testing. We are constantly imagining what we see and what we believe, as much as we are perceiving it. Those activities happen often without a feeling of contradiction.

In other words, it’s not insane to hold, and strongly advocate for, contra-factual beliefs. It is entirely human. We all do it, whether we want to admit it or not.

And, in the end, IsolatedGestalt nailed the real crux of this.

Duesberg is a respected molecular and cellular biologist based at Berkeley. His research into cancer is lauded by many within the field, and (my science is weak so others may want to correct me) he postulated contrarian views that were in conflict with accepted knowledge, however these views later helped to enhance our understanding of cancer causes.

Duesberg also believes that HIV does NOT cause AIDS, he is the most respected AIDS-denier, and uses his social and intellectual capital as a tenured professor at a prestigious university to give his cause legitimacy.

I don’t think that it is too unreasonable to suggest that it is the same contrarian impulse that led Duesberg to both his successful research into cancer, as well as his less successful research into HIV.

Although my earlier tone probably precludes a response, I wonder what Dawkins has to say about Duesberg?

The cosmologist isn’t THAT impossible. Improbable, perhaps.

Potential thought process as follows:
1: God created the world six thousand years ago, give or take.
2: God created the world to look like it was created billions of years ago
3: God must have had a reason.
4: Wouldn’t it be _fascinating_ to figure out what that is?

And suddenly we have a cosmologist who believes that God created the world 6000 years ago, but is exceedingly interested in trying to figure out how the universe works and why, in the context of a billion year old universe.

As for Dawkins’ desire for more discrimination: We, the human race, have tried belief-based discrimination for many a year. The clause against “religious discrimination” isn’t there because we decided religions were special and needed to be protected; it’s there because people have never been good at tolerating people who believe differently from them about important things, and religions just happen to have been the biggest, most obvious of them. Historically, these attempts at discrimination have never turned out well. I don’t trust you to run a new one, any more than I would trust the Pope or the president.

And whatever you discriminate on will end up in the courts, and they’ll decide if you can or can’t. And it’ll end up as law, or anti-law. And there will be people determining which beliefs are protected and which are not, and which aren’t allowed of public servants, and which aren’t allowed in publicly traded companies…

So yeah. People with crazy beliefs can and should be able to have jobs any jobs, as long as they can do the jobs in question. Because the alternative — a thought-police — is worse.

–

On the other hand, here’s a straw man:

Joe is an awesome nuclear weapons engineer. His reviews claim that he’s one of the best, his peers brag about having worked with him. He’s applied for a job in the US army, working with their nuclear weapons and power plants.

His religious beliefs, based on his facebook page, show that he belongs to a small cult that believes that life is meaningless and the world ought to perish in fire. The sooner the better. His profile picture is a globe dotted with mushroom clouds. When questioned, he admitted to being part of the cult, but claims that it would not affect his ability to do the job.

I would choose to discriminate against him.

It goes without saying that discrimination between options is essential and prior to any choice amongst those options.

IMO this discussion centers more on a question of the fairness of the criteria used to discriminate, or of the legitimacy of the use of those criteria, rather than of the justification of the need to discriminate.

Hmmm. Saying that took a lotta ‘of’.

However, I’m still not sure that your analogy should apply. There’s many an expert who is drastically lacking outside of his or her own field is there not? Some of whom have been mentioned. Hoyle’s adherence to the steady-state hypothesis doesn’t alter the excellence of the astronomy book on my shelf. I understand the point, but would reiterate that it really does depend. We humans are a messy, disparate lot and I’d rather we were more lenient to one another. Granted, our propensity for believing nonsense is infuriating, but what to do?

I find it sad that Professor Dawkins wants us to fail anyone who passes this test.

A mockery in which the mocked is deceived into thinking that he is on the contrary being given a great honour.

But I’m afraid that this must remain a thing of imagination only; for I am unaware, and I indeed would doubt, that any Roman ever actually arranged to hold a Triumph for another as a means to mockery or humiliation.

The Romans took their Triumphs too seriously for that.

Except that the mockery of Carrie doesn’t stay subtle in her case.

No, religion should not get a free pass. There is also a distinction to be made between “beliefs” and scientific theories, which, as I see it, are not so much beliefs as they are supported and corroborated by observation/evidence (maybe something like String Theory doesn’t fit into this category yet, but I’m definitely no expert). Part of what makes a belief a belief is the very fact that it needs no evidence, otherwise it would be something else entirely. Take belief in God for example. Since it is not something that can reasonably be said to be supported by anything we might call “evidence”, the question becomes meaningless and irrelevant in a scientific sense.

Part of what distinguishes religion from science (in terms of Creation anyway) is that it sets itself above any arguments which need to be tested by controlled experiments/evidence, and therefore conveniently does away with any notions of having to prove itself – as in “Deus ex machina”.

Maybe this is why we tend to relegate these kinds of questions into the “personal” realm, and are therefore reluctant to discriminate based on them, as they are similar to what we could call “tastes” and “preferences”.

Consider the set of all characteristics regarding sets. This set has characteristics which are also in the set.

Some thirty years ago, a colleague in a British university told me of an undergraduate pupil who was unable to find Africa on a map of the world. That is literally true.

Those are called “teachable moments,” and competent educators face them every day without too much O tempora, o mores handwringing. Some of us even manage to teach without shaming the ignorant.

Anyone notice how many times Dawkins situates himself as the lone King Canute of All Knowledge against the ignorant hordes? The strawmen examples above, the Africa-unknowing undergraduate, even that poor young woman who challenged him re: atheism (“What if you’re wrong?”) at a public lecture, all get the set-them-up-knock-them-down treatment, and Dawkins gets to enjoy the role of a Martyr for Knowledge against the Unwashed Multitudes. Absolutely tiresome. As Gibbon said, “Victory against such foes is humiliation enough”: these are tiny victories that make him look petty and small, and meanspirited to boot. A worse evangelist for his many causes it would be hard to imagine….

In his world, we’d have highly qualified people consigned to we know not where, while less competent people poke around ineptly inside eyeballs solely because they have clearly repudiated storks. This is rational thinking?

“Do we all from time to time, in a mild way, accommodate mutually contradictory beliefs inside our heads?”

Probably the most persistent theme in all Sir Terry Pratchett’s excellent Discworld books. The answer is YES and it’s AMAZING!

Give us a cite.

Would I, a strict atheist, be allowed to teach in a church? What if I was an incredibly good Sunday-school teacher? If I were a world renowned expert of Yeshiva, yet an atheist, would a Jewish school be wrong to not hire me?

To ask scientists to be anti-discriminatory, yet say its ok for religious people to be discriminatory is irrational.

Shouldn’t all scholars adopt these words as their motto? Isn’t this the very essence of what “academic freedom” is all about? Once we start trying to suppress ideas we disagree with, by ostracizing the scholars who hold those ideas, we become dogmatists, not scientists. Legitimate science confronts error with reason and open debate, not with excommunication. If you feel an overwhelming need to purge “heretics” from your fellowship, perhaps you ought to consider a career in the clergy instead of the academy.

No, of course it is not. Any more than it is intellectually dishonest to take a position in a debate that you do not believe. Any more than it is dishonest for a defence lawyer to defend someone whom he believes to be guilty.

In fact it’s just good teaching. For one thing when you teach, you aren’t saying “this is how it is” but “these are the views/theories/ideas that were put forward by X and Y” — unless you are teaching preschoolers.