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Published online 9 July 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.658
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Francis Collins named as NIH chief
Obama nominates prominent geneticist as agency director.
President Barack Obama on 8 July nominated physician and geneticist Francis Collins as the next director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Collins, 59, steered the public effort to sequence the human genome, racing the privately-funded team spearheaded by J.
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As for the glib statement that the spiritual world view provides another way of finding truth...just what truth doe it provide? Morality? Nah - atheists have morality. Origins? Nope - that's an argument from ignorance - "I don't don't know, therefore it must be the work of a magical being." His "truth" is confined to the subjective, personal experience. This is a bit tough to characterize as "truth". Science on the other hand, does deliver objective, verifiable, testable versions of reality without any appeal to mysticism. It's not "belief" if you can demonstrate/observe/measure it. If you can't, then it's all opinion and we know just how valuable those are.
David, Do your demonstrations/observations/measurements accurately reflect reality? Why?
I think people like David are those that give Scientists bad name. David, metaphysical truths are not subject to "scientism" and anyone that does is considered to be ignorant indeed.
As a complete ignorant myself, I would like to ask M. Kabir how he defines 'metaphysical truths'. Are those simply all statements which are not objective, cannot be verified and cannot be tested? Suppose the negations of these statements are not objective either, or cannot be verified or tested. Would these negations than be 'metaphysical truths' as well?
Don't you think one needs some type of spirit to keep moving in a spiritless world like that of ours? Some derive spirits from science; others elsewhere, may be , in religion!I have a nasty feeling that those who derive spirit from Science are the lucky ones because their material world is rather resourceful, to say the least! Hence, the spiritual world view provides not another way of finding truth, but another way of finding solace! A 9 to 5 scientist is not a good idea, though.
There is some good info on Francis Collins at these links: http://atheismisdead.blogspot.com/2009/04/john-horgan-and-francis-collins.html http://atheismisdead.blogspot.com/2009/05/new-atheists-on-francis-collins.html
Adam:My experiments/observations are not subject to different results depending on my belief system. You can do the same experiments and get the same results. We may differ as to the evaluation of these data, but the reality stands for all to see. No need for the FSM to make things happen. Kabir:Just what are these metaphysical truths that you are so fond of? Since there are some 700+ religions recognized by the US government, I suspect there is some disagreement as to the actual truth value of these belief systems. More importantly, how do you know they are truths? A belief is not the same as an observation. Arunan:I disagree that this is a spiritless world. I find beauty and enrichment in all manner of things outside of science. The larger question is - what is the source of this sense of spirit? A sense of awe does not require mysticism. You may be right though that religion is about solace.
David, I never suggested that they were. Nor must Dr. Collins be. The point is, you believe that your results reflect an actual reality that you spend your time studying, whereas you have no way of testing for that. Mind you, I think that everyone has that belief and Solipsism is an untenable way of living. However, that is still a belief which my existence is based around (and not the only one though I am, like I take you to be, agnostic).
Many people defends that being an advocate for good and solid scientific research is not imcompatible with a life in the tangled loop that is religion. But those people have fallen into the faulty logic of wishful thinking. A small story my illustrate this point: Before the breakup of the light spectrum and the advances in astronomy that it entailed, all knowledge about the planet venus was obtained using telescopes. And from the telescopes, there could be seen absolutelly no remarkeable features on the surface of the planet - all that could be seen were its vast sulfurous clouds covering the entire surface of the planet. But then, like today, imagination ran amock. It was assumed, by the less rational but most enthusiastic voices of the time, that the clouds were made of water - what else could they be? After all, all throughout their lives people had known clouds and clouds were made of water, which poured into the surface of the planet once in a while. So if there was water in Venus, it was believed, then there must be life as well, and if there is life it must have had as much time to evolve as life on our planet. Assuming that there was no meteor hitting that planet as what heppened in its neighbouring earth, then dinossaur-like creatures must populate the entire planet. What a lovelly scenario - but utterly and destructivelly false: observation - you could not see a thing; conclusion - dinossaurs. So why do we not learn from the mistakes of the past? There are absolutelly no observations supporting religious beliefs that can survive carefull examination beyond what individual minds and imaginations can devise. No collective observation of any kind that could undoubtebelly rendered rational rather than emotional. Societies that place religious belifs at the center of their lives seem to be falling again into the same venus mistake: observation - we cannot observe anything; conclusion - there must be an all powerfull god that only reveals himself to those willing to believe in him without proof... Many people defend that science and religion are connected by the thread of creation that started at the big bang, and the creation of all the physical laws, which could then put the process in motion which would eventually lead to the existance of life and later, by small evolutionary steps, to humans. But once again, they are falling into the same faulty logic - observation: we do not know what created the big bang; conclusion - a magical all knowing, all powerfull being created the universa and its laws with the purpose of creating humans. But if we are corageous enough, and witty enough to go against the norm we will ask ourselves the question - then who created god? And if the answer is "god always existed", then why not save a step and conclude that the universe always existed. There is nothing wrong with conjuring hypothesis about the origin of the universe that could be rigorously tested. But to behave in a manner that assumes that hypothesis to be true without further investigation, to openly and loudly defend that position without any piece of evidence or rigorous tested seems to be, at least, irrational, un-scientific and, if this is the attitude of a scientist, highly unprofessional. These views are supported and decoumented in more detail both by Carl Sagan's book "Cosmos", where the Venus mistake was first presented, and in the recent book "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins, where the god hypothesis is scientifically analysed.
The following truths cannot be dispelled in any way other than stubborn ignornace: 1. The universe is not infinite = first cause = a creator. 2. Nucleic acid defines a "digital" code - with no known equal - the ultimate origin and assembly of which could not possibly have arisen from the inorganic state of our planet. 3. The Christian Bible is supported by > 20,000 documents (orders of magnitude greater than that supporting Plato's body of work). 4. The oldest extant version of biblical scripture post-dates actual events by a very short time interval; the same cannot be said for many historial works we all accept as truth. 5. Love is not innate, it is taught, with the first teacher being God himself. 6. Atheism is subject to much more criticism than Christianity using "Laws of Logic" For those who insist to think otherwise, I refer to the last several debates between Christian scholars (chiefly John Lennox) vs Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins; the former duo's arguments (as do those above and below) ring hollow.