This article is why Article Recommendations was created. So much to discuss...
A few years back, I remember digging in to the Evolution vs. Creationism debate when it was really heating up. On one side there were the scientists and on the other were the religious Kansas Board crazies & Co. pushing creationism... But between the two poles stood one man: Francis Collins. He was in an oddly paradoxical and contradictory position. Yet he could calmly respond to any given issue - usually by yielding to the side of science but insisting on his persistent faith. He was THE Evangelical Christian / Scientist. Honestly, if Bush had appointed him to head the NIH, I might have been outraged.
The fact that obama did makes me sink into my own reflections and wonder.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Hm, I'm not thrilled by the choice, but I guess as long as all the practical decisions aren't impacted I guess it's not that bad. I haven't followed this guy much, but from a quick reading of wikipedia, it sort of sounds like his religion at least started as a way to cope with death. His arguments sound very inconsistent. He claims it is just problems that are unsolvable that are for religion, but human altruism is an intro psych topic and while the reason for the fundamental values of the universe hasn't been solved yet, people are working on it and it seems more in the solvable category.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I'm really not sure about - maybe others know more - is to what degree he's famous as a scientist and to what degree he's famous as an administrator? Obviously he had some strong education. And sounds like he did some good research after that. But from what I can tell what he's really known for is running a project. Did he make more a scientific contribution? Or is he a great project leader with a science background?
One thing that struck me in this article was the parallel made between Collins and Obama. Unshakable faith in the Christian God joined in seeming harmony with contradictory political/scientific views.
ReplyDeleteWhy is Collins so adamantly against ID? His own philosophy is the same as ID in all but name. Like the interviewer, I also can't help going back to the "unsolved" vs. "unsolvable" question. What criteria does a person use to decide whether a scientific query is one or the other? His choice of altruism as an unsolvable issue seems arbitrary. There's been a decent amount of research/serious speculation on the evolution of altruism within the scientific community lately. Given this, I feel like he's betting against the odds in claiming, at this point, that a scientific theory explaining altruism is utterly hopeless.