How would someone know a person’s religion unless the person makes it known?
I don’t think that’s relevant to the point of principle, i.e., that a scientist’s hiring, tenure, promotion, reception of grants, etc. should be based wholly on the scientist’s merit (as researcher, teacher, helpful department member, etc.), not on any private beliefs (religious, political, etc.) that he holds.
The young scientist’s department might find out about his/her religious beliefs because he/she has indicated them (e.g., by publishing a book, as Gonzalez did), but might find out by any number of accidental means, e.g., a supervisor might see him one Sunday leaving the local Southern Baptist church service, or might read his name in a blog comment on some website. Either way, no employment discrimination should follow.
Of course, if the young scientist’s scientific performance is negatively affected by his religious commitments, then a case could be made for discrimination against him. But that wasn’t the case with Gonzalez, who helped discover several extrasolar planets, all along being a Christian and in contact with ID people. And he never mentioned his religious beliefs in his scientific articles, nor (as far as anyone has reported) in his classroom teaching, so he wasn’t using his university position for proselytizing. His religious beliefs were known, it seems, primarily from his Privileged Planet book, and that excited the ire of an atheist professor of religion at his school, who then crusaded around the campus against him; thus, the air had been poisoned for many months before the tenure vote came up. How much his astronomy colleagues were influenced by the hostility of others on campus is hard to say, but it likely was a factor, because the astronomy department wouldn’t have wanted to be characterized as encouraging “creationism” by hiring someone who had been labelled a “creationist” (with all the negative connotations with which that word is loaded). And the point is that no political considerations of that sort should go into hiring or tenure decisions.
2 Likes
We return to the culture of narrow scientific education, I think. There is simply no excuse in a free society with Christian roots for PhD bearers to equate Christianity with fundamentalist YEC. Any educated theologian or philosopher would be ashamed to equate science with madmen out to destroy the world.
But there is, it appears, a culture amongst “some” scientists that “theology has nothing to teach us; philosophers should mind their own business; history is bunk except when scientists tell it.” In other words, the problem is scientism, a willful ignorance.
2 Likes
Thats a well selected quote from Eddie’s postings. And i have to say that considering the circumstances, i agree with @Eddie on this issue.
But i think this points to the value of any effort to find Common Ground that is widely perceived as SAFE for “Scientists of Faith” (S.o.F.) to hold without any threat of overturning current science!
Some pro-Evolution groups want to change the Hermeneutic Model that creationist use… instead of flirting with so-called Concordist views.
But i dont see an important distinction here. Genealogical Adam, even at its most concordist, will affect Creationist hermeneutics TOO… and with less conflict!
The experience of people working in the biological sciences, is that their main contact with Christianity comes in the form of being repeatedly under attack by YECs.
2 Likes
I’m not at all sure that is true.
I say this, because I have heard plenty of criticisms of Sagan as a marginal scientist. Sagan was widely admired because he was very good in his public outreach. But within the scientific community, he was seen as better at public outreach than at science.
Personally, I see it as a problem that people such as Sagan tend to be undervalued within the scientific community. But that’s a different kind of bias than what you are suggesting.
2 Likes
Yes, but the experience of ordinary people in the pews is that their main contact with science comes from people like Richard Dawkins (or Carl Sagan, since he has been mentioned and liked to talk about the “god hypothesis”.) The difference is that the people in the pews don’t claim superior education.
3 Likes
I have to agree with Eddie here. Suppose we were talking about women rather than Christians. Suppose we had a vocal minority of senior faculty who publicly stated that women had no place in the lab, with virtually no pushback from other scientists, and a much larger group who didn’t publicly mock women, but who were quietly disdainful of them. Everyone would view that as a hostile environment (and a slam dunk lawsuit) that would detrimentally affect women in science and drive many away. I don’t think scientists should get a pass for tolerating this kind of intolerance when it comes to religion.
I’m also uneasy about the taint that attaches to ID. I find ID arguments to be quite unpersuasive, but when scientists are not even allowed to raise the possibility without losing all credibility . . . that’s not good. Intellectual monoculture is not good for science.
7 Likes
The difference being that very few scientists are actually madmen(*), and of those very few want to destroy the world. Whereas, at least in my country, most Christians do actually reject basic scientific conclusions for religious reasons.
(*) Madpeople. Enough with sexist stereotypes of mad scientists.
3 Likes
Gonzalez listed his Intelligent Design book on his CV and presented it as part of his scientific work in the tenure review process. It is Gonzalez himself that opened up criticism of the book. I think it is entirely professional to judge the scientific merit of the work that the review panel was presented with by the candidate.
2 Likes
I’d still question that in those of equivalent education. But hey, it’s your country. In mine:
After carrying out detailed face-to-face interviews with over a hundred Christians and Muslims, Unsworth designed her own survey. Of 2,116 people in Britain, she found that only 3% reject the idea that plants and animals have evolved from earlier life forms, whilst 6.8% reject the idea that humans have evolved from non-human life forms. Only 4% would qualify as young earth creationists.
Further, she discovered that even amongst regular worshippers–meaning those who attend religious services once a month or more, only 14.3% reject plant and animal evolution, 28.6% reject human evolution and 10.2% think the earth is young.
So it seems to be local matter.
2 Likes
A scientist’s religious beliefs should also not be used as a shield against criticism of his scientific work. If a scientist is not bringing in research grants, not publishing papers on new work he has done at his new position, and is not actively pursuing new data then it is entirely unfair to claim that religious beliefs are the motive for any criticisms.
It wasn’t?
His publications were coming at a much lower rate after getting into ID stuff, and the papers he did publish were based on data he had collected in his postdoc work, not on work he had done at Iowa State. It appeared that his religious beliefs may have very well impacted his scientific work.
2 Likes
Part of the problem is that there are activist organizations like the Discovery Institute who are misrepresenting what goes on in these departments.
1 Like
Neil:
I think you and I are focusing on different things. I don’t deny that some scientists think that some other scientists spend too much time in the popular arena and not enough time doing research in their fields. But I was making a different point. You are talking about the mere fact that a book is popular rather than a technical contribution to a scientific field. I am talking not about a book’s genre, but about its specific contents and conclusions
Sagan had tenure at Cornell, an Ivy League school. So at some point his colleagues judged his scientific work to be good. But suppose now that Sagan was younger, with 68 publications in his field, but not tenure, and was applying for tenure. Suppose that he was at Iowa State, and was applying for tenure in the astronomy/astrophysics department. Suppose that by this time he had published Cosmos or Intelligent Life in the Universe. Do you think that Hector Avalos, the atheist Biblical scholar over in the religion department, would have lobbied the astronomy folks not to give Sagan tenure? Do you think that the theological/philosophical conclusions of those books would have been an issue for the astronomy department? I’m pretty close to 100% certain that the conclusions wouldn’t have been a problem to them at all.
Sure, in this hypothetical case, there might have been some disapproval of time spent by Sagan on writing a popular book that could have been spent on research, but in the Gonzalez case, the time spent on writing the Privileged Planet book wasn’t what was irking the people who made the tenure decision. It was the contents of the book. It was the fact that Gonzalez believed that his science justified a design inference, and in particular, a design inference to God. That’s what the atheist agitation against Gonzalez was about, coming from the religion department there, and that’s what bothered some of the folks in the astronomy department, not that the book of was popular, but that it took the wrong side regarding the question of science and design.
I realize that this is a matter of judgment, and can’t be settled by a knockdown proof. But in my judgment, it’s pretty clear that if all other circumstances were exactly the same, and the only difference was between a popular book written by Sagan and one written by Gonzalez, the book never would have become an issue at Iowa State at all.
This is an excellent statement, Glipsnort. I’m not angry with any scientist who finds ID arguments unpersuasive. I get upset only by what I see as an intellectual monoculture, where questions are not allowed to be raised, or are shut down on in a hostile and closed-minded manner.
I also like your discussion of hostile environments. That’s a good way of expressing what I was trying to say.
1 Like
It’s my understanding that Gonzalez’s c.v. was set up in the normal way, i.e., with different sections for different types of contribution: teaching experience, peer-reviewed articles, popular publications, university and community citizenship, etc. It’s my understanding that he did not try to pass off his book as research, but fully admitted its popular character by putting it in one of the latter sections. Again, if Carl Sagan had put Cosmos in the popular publications section of his c.v., I don’t think anyone would have batted an eye.
If you read my previous posts carefully, you would know that I was complaining not about their assessment of the scientific merit of the book, but about their prior religious prejudice against the conclusions of the book. It is allowing that prejudice to influence their judgment re tenure that I was calling “unprofessional.” Their personal religious beliefs (i.e., in the case of many of them, that there is no God) shouldn’t come at all into their assessment of whether or not Gonzalez was a competent astrophysicist. Their judgment of his competence as a scientist should have been made on the basis of his peer-reviewed work, not on the basis of his religious or philosophical speculations published in a popular work.
This is inaccurate. Long before the tenure committee met, criticism of the book had been broadcast around the campus by an atheist professor in the religion department, who had the specific aim of preventing Gonzalez from getting tenure. (In my experience, it is unprecedented for an Arts professor to try to influence a tenure decisions in a Science department. If the astronomy professor in question had been an atheist, and the Arts professor had protested giving him tenure on that ground, I think the astronomy department would have told the Arts professor that it was totally unprofessional of him to intrude upon the decision-making process of a body of science professionals.)
I never said that such considerations should not have gone into the tenure decision, so whoever you are arguing against here, it’s not me.
I said that the personal religious distaste for the idea of a designing God, a distaste held by not a few scientists in the astrophysics field, should not have gone into the decision. That’s all that I was objecting to.
Again, substitute any of Sagan’s books for Gonzalez’s, and the whole case would have been treated differently. Sagan would have been accepted or rejected, based on the normal criteria, and the world would never have heard a thing about it, since news channels don’t find that tenure decisions in university science departments make very catchy headlines. It was because of the specific religious conclusions of Gonzalez’s book, and because of the prior agitation on campus against him coming specifically from atheist quarters, that suspicion became attached to the tenure review process.
There is no indication that his personal religious beliefs were a problem. Write a book, period, likely affected him. However, that graph is misleading. We expect there to be a dip in productivity for assistant professors, and also they are supposed to move to corresponding authorship. First authorship tells you nothing at this stage.
2 Likes
It’s clear that getting a PhD in science is no guarantee that you’ve also become well-read in religious issues (or politics or ethics or any other field for that matter). But I think most PhDs know that.
1 Like
I find this attitude to be more indicative of the generally secular, liberal culture of the American Northeast rather than anything science-specific. I’ve found this type of environment in many other contexts which have little to do with science. Most of the opposition is against the perceived anti-intellectual, anti-scientific mindset of some religious people. Which is why, as far as I have experienced, if you’ve shown first that you value science and intellectual inquiry, revealing that you’re also religious doesn’t degrade their opinion of you.
4 Likes