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

I find one of Dawkin's implicit assumptions very interesting.<p><i>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 that could have gone to an honest astronomer. Moreover, I would regard his equanimity in holding two diametrically opposing views simultaneously in his head as a revealing indicator that there is something wrong with his head.</i><p>Dawkins seems to believe that to be hired as a scientist, one must believe in the truth of the model one uses. I can't quite understand why he holds this view - at least in my experience, scientists study hypothesis they don't believe in all the time. I've done this (I don't believe in Copenhagen QM at all, and I'm skeptical of Bohmian mechanics). Does this make me a fraud? According to Dawkins, I guess it does.<p>By his logic, Einstein (not to mention Podolsky and Rosen) was also a fraud. He used a theory he didn't believe was correct (quantum mechanics) to derive conclusions he didn't believe were true. (Sadly, he didn't live long enough to see experimental verification of what he believed was a reducto ad absurdum.)<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox</a><p>I wonder if Dawkins truly believes all scientists who use theories they don't believe are frauds, or if he only thinks this about theistic (quasi-)theories [1]? If he holds the former belief, I think he really needs to devote a little bit of time to learning about metaphysics and the philosophy of science.<p>[1] Many beliefs held by theists are "not even wrong", and are therefore not theories. Take, for example, the following flavor of young earth creationism: "<i>God created the universe 6000 years ago, with the state psi(0) = U(-6000 years) psi(world today). psi is the wavefuntion, U is the propagator. It is true that U(-20 billion years ) psi(world today) yields the big bang, but that's just a mathematical curiosity rather than history.</i>" This belief is unfalsifiable, and completely consistent with all scientific theories that are governed by an initial value problem (pretty much all of them).

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?<p>Dawkins simply seems to be looking for ways of making life more difficult for religious people. If the job involves some kind of proselytizing for Atheism, rejecting people based on religious views might make sense. Otherwise, I don't see how it's relevant.

I simply don't understand how Dawkins can give a <i>real life example</i> of a person <i>very successfully</i> keeping his beliefs totally separate from his <i>related work</i> and still say that we should care what that person believes. If being an "honest astronomer" doesn't make you a <i>better astronomer</i>, then why concern ourselves with it, at all?<p>What I find alarming is that nothing in this argument really conflicts with Dawkins. He accepts that these beliefs can make no measurable difference, and maintains that they're important anyway. He seems to think that it doesn't matter if an astronomer can advance our understanding of astronomy by leaps and bounds, if the astronomer doesn't update his own beliefs too, and that society should therefore refuse to let itself benefit from what he can offer. Why? Who wins in this scenario?<p>FWIW, I do agree that religious beliefs should not be considered distinct from "non religious" beliefs (with obvious exceptions for e.g. clergymen).

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.<p>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 forest and come out at night.<p>Why? <i>Because science is not orthodoxy</i>. That is, science is always provisional and always open to change. Some jerk who "just knows" that string theory is right is the last guy I want looking at string theory. Give it to the guy who reads palms and is waiting for the Xanians to arrive in their spaceships after the eclipse.<p>There is an assumption here, that having some sort of faith would preclude being able to do your job. It's not true -- or rather, it's being inflexible that prevents you from doing your job as a scientist. People are marvelous creatures. They can be hard-headed and inflexible in an infinite number of ways, most of which do not involve some formal belief system. As a for-instance, I imagine many people would think that believing in Intelligent Design would be a disqualifier for studying cosmology. And they would stubbornly resist changing their mind to the contrary. This is exactly the kind of inflexibility you need to watch out for. If you already know where you're going to end up, there's not much point in taking the journey.<p>Very interesting that thinking of this problem in terms of flexibility and creative thinking (the key elements to move science forward) turns up a completely different answer than thinking about it in terms of "what's most likely correct?" which is an interesting question but not germane. All you're checking with that "does this guy believe what most of us do?" is whether or not most other scientists think this guy is a good guesser, ie, he agrees with them. That's a bit too much popularity contest and groupthink for me.

<p><pre><code> Even if a doctor's belief in the stork theory of reproduction is technically irrelevant to his competence as an eye surgeon, it tells you something about him. It is revealing. It is relevant in a general way to whether we would wish him to treat us or teach us. A patient could reasonably shrink from entrusting her eyes to a doctor whose beliefs (admittedly in the apparently unrelated field of obstetrics) are so cataclysmically disconnected from reality. </code></pre> This statement seems to work when applied to something like "babies come from storks", but it generalizes poorly. There are simply too many incorrect beliefs floating around; it's difficult to find someone who has resisted all of them. Would you refuse treatment from an ophthalmologist who believed:<p>1. The seasons are caused by Earth approaching and receding from the Sun?<p>2. Fixed-wing aircraft fly because air moves over and under the wing at the same rate?<p>3. Thomas Edison invented the light bulb?<p>All of these are just as wrong as stork-babies or creationism, and all are just as relevant (ie, not at all) to ophthalmology. I don't demand that my doctor rigorously examine every belief they hold, merely the ones related to surgery. Frankly, a creationist surgeon is much less worrying than a surgeon who believes wi-fi causes cancer.<p><pre><code> My colleague takes the view that this YEC is entitled to a job as a professor of astronomy, because he keeps his private beliefs to himself while at work. I take the opposite view. 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 that could have gone to an honest astronomer. Moreover, I would regard his equanimity in holding two diametrically opposing views simultaneously in his head as a revealing indicator that there is something wrong with his head. </code></pre> There's an idiom that goes something like "reality is what keeps happening even if you don't believe in it". If a creationist is able to perform correct science, I see no reason to dismiss it out of hand. Especially considering the wide variety of creationist beliefs now extant in the US -- even if he believes Earth was created six thousand years ago, he may be willing to concede that the Universe is roughly fourteen billion years old.

In the past, a scientist religious belief didn't affect his contribution. I don't see how targeting them now will benefit the scientific community. Carl Gauss was a devote Christian; what are we suppose to do if he existed now, not recognize him?<p>"I am convinced of the afterlife, independent of theology. If the world is rationally constructed, there must be an afterlife." - Godel<p>Maybe Godel wasn't logical for his beliefs?<p>"An equation for me has no meaning, unless it represents a thought of God." -Srinivasa Ramanujan<p>Maybe they shouldn't have invite Ramanujan to work at Cambridge?<p>I find these thoughts disturbing, to judge someone's potential to contribute based on his religion.

Preface: I'm an atheist, myself.<p>The funny thing about this argument is that it's made within the same protection against religious discrimination that Dawkins would like to discard.<p>Some of us might like to fantasize that laws against religious discrimination could be carefully disassembled so that atheists remain fully protected while all the theists get comeuppance for their objectionable views, but that isn't going to happen. If you get rid of laws against religious discrimination, it's not going to be open season on Christian creationists, it's going to be open season on atheists and Muslims (who poll almost as badly as atheists in the US).

Going back to the topic at hand, I am a little uncomfortable NOT being able to take into account someone's beliefs (and therefore values) when making a decision to employ them. Difficult to make the point without going to extremes, but the bottom line is that I believe organizations have (and should continue to have ) the right to direct their culture. If someone isnt a "cultural" fit because they believe in things that would aleniate them from their peers and clients, and therefore contribute to an unproductive work environment, why is it a bad to disqualify them on those grounds?<p>I get the slippery slope of discrimination but that's not what this is about. I'm talking about the slippery slope of not allowing someone to making a hiring decision on the grounds that the way people live their lives and their values affect their ability to be productive members of your organization.<p>Interested to hear what you guys think.

What if they believe non-mainstream cosmological theories? Where does orthodoxy enforcement stop?

One of my favorite video games as a child ended with the realization that the entire game took place inside the dream of sleeping whale (the game ends when you wake up the whale). I always think it’s important to consider (although not too seriously) that perhaps we are just acting in the dream of a giant, sleep whale.<p>The point is that reason and logic always only exist within a specific framework of axioms and assumptions. There is no universal set of axioms and assumptions that apply to all situations, if there where we would have a set of truths that could describe the age of the earth accurately both in the case that the world is as it immediately appears to be and the case where we exist in the dream of a whale. We can only reason within contexts, and in all the examples given in Dawkin’s post, individuals are reasoning excellently within the specific context.<p>The problem, whether it involves religion or not, is when people start to believe that they do have access to a universal set of axioms and assumptions, that they have presented themselves with an absolute truth. Which is why I always think it’s important to consider, at least for a moment, what if we are inside the dream of a giant, sleeping whale.

The title of this HN submission doesn't match the title on the article. Dawkins doesn't seem to be arguing in favor of firing all creationist astronomers; rather, only those whose religious beliefs conflict with their astronomy work. Not all creationist views are identical.<p>[Edit: HN submission title has been revised. Thanks!]

Darwin would not have got very far with Dawkins in charge.

Putting aside the question of the <i>legal</i> requirements (which can necessarily only approximate the ethical requirements), isn't it reasonable to just say that he should be hired if and only if the hiring committee thinks his beliefs will not unacceptably interfere with his job (including, for instance, the possibility that he is a "fraud")? Dawkins trots out all these extreme cases where we would be very worried in order about job performance to argue that religious beliefs should be fair game, but doesn't convince me at all that "if a young earth creationist is 'breathtakingly above the other candidates', then the other candidates must be so bad that we should re-advertise and start afresh." Rather, it just advertises a naivete about how flawed we humans are. If we rejected every candidate who has some self-contradictory beliefs because we take it "as a revealing indicator that there is something wrong with his head", we wouldn't be able to fill any jobs. Anyone who thinks they have reached some sort of platonic ideal of rationality---and that those who haven't should be ignored---is deluding themself, whether or not they may be <i>more</i> consistent.

Definitely a lot of eye surgeons out there that believe in the stork theory of reproduction, it's much more common than people are lead to believe. Good example.<p>Last month we turned down a developer candidate because his weblog said he was a Discordian who believed in a flying spaghetti monster. He was the best candidate by far, but flying spaghetti is an irrational belief which indicates profound mental illness.

I have been following astrophysicist Hugh Ross for some time. For a very intelligent exploration of creationist ideas (that very decidedly do not accept that the earth is only 10,000 years old) check out Reasons To Believe:<p><a href="http://www.reasons.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reasons.org/</a>

Since there's some overlap in membership, here's a link to the Less Wrong discussion of this same article:<p><a href="http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/3ze/richard_dawkins_should_employers_be_blind_to/" rel="nofollow">http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/3ze/richard_dawkins_sho...</a>

I'm surprised to see Dawkins get this so wrong. I suspect holding opposing beliefs about a thing is quite common.

Dawkins and most others here are missing the primary issue: evidence. What qualifies as [evidence](<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence</a>) for scientific purposes is limited. It excludes (or minimizes) evidence the human beings accept in most other areas. You would no more cite your neighbor's belief in the shape of the earth for a scientific paper than cite the number of flowers you bought your wife as proof that you love her. There are many reasons people believe Bible accounts for rational reasons outside of scientific evidence.<p>Also implicit in most of the posts here and Dawkin's piece is to assume there is zero scientific evidence for a young earth or any other Biblical story. As Feynman was fond of saying, it isn't up to science to determine truth all the time, but rather what is more or less likely based on what we currently know. It is most likely our universe is X years old based on what we know now, but even those ages have changed by wide margins in the last century. We don't know how much more it will change in the next century. But we are as sure about the current age as astronomers were 100 years ago.<p>For the record, based on our present scientific knowledge, it is more likely our earth is 4.5 billions years old than 5000. But we don't know for sure, do we?

I think my real problem with all this really comes out when he mentions the Kurt Wise case:<p><i>"Although there are scientific reasons for accepting a young earth, I am a young-age creationist because that is my understanding of the Scripture. As I shared with my professors years ago when I was in college, if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate. Here I must stand."</i><p>The problem with this line of thinking is not with the conclusion - his conclusion is soundly derived from his body of evidence. But I take issue with what he chooses to admit into the corpus of evidence to be considered.<p>If you read the Scripture as the word of God, I have no problem with that. If you take that as a guide for what determines a good life, that's totally groovy. But the Bible cannot and should not be used as a piece of evidence in determining scientific fact.<p>A text that considers calling something a "miracle" adequate explanation is, by definition, non-scientific. If you <i>believe</i> in such miracles, that doesn't bother me one bit, but if you accept a miracle as evidence without explanation, you are not practicing science.

As long as the beleifs do not obviously express a lack of common sense, yes beleifs should not be important.<p>Sure we can get in a fight about how obvious should the obviousness be, and what exactly is common sense. However disregard for evidence or strong unfounded beleifs should be a warning sign. The candidate's views on the technology involved in his job should be more deeply screened. What I mean is that a candidate firmly beleiving that the earth was created 10k years ago because the scriptures say so, is (imho) more likely to lack the open-mindedness needed by most jobs in science/technology fields. OTOH, if you "just need a programmer", i'm sure you'll be fine even with a guy thinking bananas are in reality dropped by storks.

Don't we all do such things all the time?<p>I'll frequently to a friend and say "that movie would have been more interesting if they'd followed the subplot and showed how character X finally did Y".<p>Here I'm starting with a model of the universe, projecting the givens that we were shown, and extrapolating a theory about something else that might happen in that model. And all of it is false. I'm just playing with a model of the world as it <i>might</i> be. And that's all the scientist in the OP was doing, in his mind.<p>The only difference is that I'm saying that the model is fictional, whereas he believes it. But that doesn't make the projections he might make from his model any better or worse than mine.

I remember reading a story about an executive working for Warren Buffett, who cheated on his wife with a girlfriend in a different city. When Buffett found out, he fired the man, since he felt he couldn't trust this person in his business dealings, even if the error was made in a personal matter.<p>This feels the same way. Does the university really want to check up on this astronomer all the time, in case his irrationality carries over to his professional life?

As a side note and referring to the quoted email in the second paragraph, any idiot (in this case the idiot was apparently the chairman of the search committee) who puts such strong evidence that can later be used against the company/institution in writing, in email no less, should be fired on the spot.

I don't believe in Darwinism, and you know what, if some one refused to employ me because of that, then to hell with them. I personally would prefer not to work with someone who would judge me for my beliefs.<p>But that's just me. I'm the kind of person who wants his job to be more than "just a job".<p>There are people who consider jobs to be just jobs and they do their jobs for a living, not to fulfill their life purpose. This is actually the majority of people, and when you start discriminating against them, well, you're kinda evil. Or how should I put it? You'd be no different from a religious zealot who thinks he knows the truth and must force everyone to adhere to the same truth that he adheres to.<p>The root of most evil (often attributed to "religion") is when you believe you have the truth and that you must force others to see it. Discriminating against these people in their work and livelihood is just one tactic of oppressing people. The Soviet Union was such an evil government; they oppressed religious people in the name of liberating them from religion.<p>Having said that, I can flip the argument around. Would I trust a doctor who believes that humans are nothing but a lump of material, and that morals are just lies that we fabricated? It depends, and you can argue for a long time why you should (or should not) trust such a doctor. But the point is, it's a double edged sword, if you're gonna use it to discriminate against others, then certain others can also use it to discriminate against you.<p>When someone is an outspoken advocate for atheism, but is also a scientist, should I take his "science" seriously as if he's objective in his science? He obviously has a strong desire to fulfill his agenda, and is likely to bend backwards to support what he's advocating.

A good scientist should be agnostic. In some ways, believing something accepted to be false in the scientific community is preferable to actually believing what is accepted to be true in the scientific community. If everyone starts with the same assumptions then the same assumptions are propagated through the literature without critical analysis.<p>And sometimes, it may even be worthwhile to look at Mars with the eye of someone who believes it to be a giant purple mongoose. So long as in your work you recognize and promote the most likely possibilities, what you believe to be true regardless of evidence is, at worst, a tool that can aid one in thinking outside the box.<p>Personally I believe the universe and the Earth are many times over older than 10000 years. The evidence is so overwhelming it's hard to understand anyone who thinks otherwise. But I feel like the person who believes the Earth is 10000 years old is a better scientist than the person who knows it to be an incontrovertible fact that the Earth is much older than 10000 years.

Yes.

Here's favorite story of mine on this topic. My favorite philosopher Slavoj Zizek quotes this often as well in his <i>Reality of the Virtual</i> themed lectures (it is disputed whether the story itself is true or not):<p><i>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, with the open end up in the approved manner (so it would catch the good luck and not let it spill out).<p>The American said with a nervous laugh, “Surely you don’t believe the horseshoe will bring you good luck, do you, Professor Bohr? After all, as a scientist –” Bohr chuckled. “I believe no such thing, my good friend. Not at all. I am scarcely likely to believe in such foolish nonsense. However, I am told that a horseshoe will bring you good luck whether you believe in it or not.”</i><p>I guess Dawkins would fire Bohr. Truly an atheist on a crusade!

Dawkins isn't what one might call a deep thinker ...

Why does this discussion always go one way? Do people care if a church discriminates against priests or reverends that do not believe in God, the virgin birth, transubstantiation, or the resurrection (where it applies)?<p>I have never seen evidence of protests against that kind of discrimination. And considering the are a pseudo-public entity (tax exempt), it seems very similar.<p>/me is disappointed with self for commenting on stupid flamebait link.

If they support current Big Bang theory, they're all creationist.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lemaître" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lemaître</a>