Re: Roger Ebert comes out of the closet!!

el cid wrote:
On Sep 1, 10:53 am, Burkhard <b.scha...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
snex wrote:
On Sep 1, 9:28 am, snex <x...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 1, 7:37 am, Robert Grumbine <b...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <h7i5kd52...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, J.J. O'Shea wrote:
On Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:03:46 -0400, nmp wrote
(in article <4a9c1e92$0$192$e4fe5...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>):
J.J. O'Shea wrote:
nmp:
J.J. O'Shea wrote:
[..]
Believe what you want, it doesn't affect me in the slightest. Trying
to push your beliefs on me will tend to result in my pushing back.
It's good that you said this. Now perhaps you will also understand why
some atheists choose to express themselves like they do. I'm not
counting Snex, but some of the more serious ones. You know, those
"shrill", "offensive", "militant" atheists like Dawkins et al, who get
accused of pushing or forcing their viewpoints upon the poor
defenseless theist people.
Not the same thing.
Then what are we talking about, really?
If the only example you can give of "atheists attacking" is Snex, there
really isn't a problem worth mentioning.
He's merely the most prominent and easily spotted. He's not the only atheist
I've killfiled for the same reason. I don't care for fundies, of whatever
persuasion.
Fundamentalists can be ok. One of my neighbors, and he was a good one,
called himself a fundamentalist.
_Evangelicals_, on the other hand, ... unless you're also of the same
belief system as them, not so good for neighbors. viz. snex.
francis collins is a self-described evangelical. when are you going to
criticize him?
in fact, scientists are evangelicals too. they are all trying to
convince everybody else that they are correct. why dont you likewise
tell them to sit down and shut up and let us form our own beliefs?
I actually wonder about hits. Are scientists really concerned about
"beliefs"? I'm not sure (not a rhetorical question). When I had science
examinations as a student, I was asked to perform certain operations,
calculate values of equations and all that. At no point was I asked: and
do you actually _believe_ it? That would have been seen as an
inappropriate question, left for the colleagues in philosophy

The confusion between the two actually matters - a particularly good
example is Larry Laudan's article on "reasonable doubt" in criminal law
("Is reasonable doubt reasonable") where he shows quite convincingly in
my opinion that the legal concept got badly confused when people thought
about it as an expression of an inner belief of the juror, when really
it shoudl be about an external evaluation of the evidence for which
internal belief states do not matter.

Some time back there was a professor in TX who advertised
a policy regarding letters or recommendation. He said he
would ask a student 'How do you think the human species
originated?' The student was required to affirm a scientific
explanation. There was a great deal of back and forth on
the issue of a student who could correctly relate all
of the scientific position but held a different belief
about humans. It seems that many feel that you have to
do more than understand the scientific argument, you
also have to believe it. The professors name was Dini,
it was around 2002 and he taught somewhere in Texas.

Some of the heat may have arisen from rather poor choices
in wording by Dini.
Here's an ancient summary.
http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/techprofessor020203.htm

It was discussed in some heated detail on talk.origins.

How wonderful, thanks! Pity I missed that debate, but I hazard the guess that the fundies on both sides would have engaged in self-contradiction and strategic dishonesty from the word go.

After all, we are dealing here with someone who claims to uphold standards of scientific rationality and honesty in a process that is _designed_ to be unscientific, irrational and dishonest.

The only purpose to keep the pre-modern system of recommendation letters is after all to allow appointment committees to disregard the objective, verifiable evidence and go by the hunches and subjective impressions of someone they know to be a "good chap" - the gatekeepers of the system who ensure that the person you hire is someone you like to drink with in the senior common room.

"On a personal level, she is a very popular and energetic young woman with many outside and social interests, and capable of building deep and loyal bonds to people" code for: She will get pregnant half way through the grant, leaving you with the work, and worse she's faithful to her boyfriend and won't even let you shag her. Avoid. Hire my nephew instead, who is truth to be told a bit of a numbnut but will make a valuable addition to your department's cricket team. See you at the external examiner banquet..."

Of course, you are not supposed to talk about it, which is what happened here, so strategic dishonesty is required:

"He adds that it is easy to imagine how physicians who ignore or neglect the "evolutionary origin of humans can make bad clinical decision."

Really? Now I do teach evidence also to students who study medical malpractice litigation, and I always thought I'm pretty up to date with the available scientific literature that looks at the causes of bad clinical decisions. There is E. Nilson's 2003 article in the Annals of internal medicine, Woolf et all's paper in the Annals of Family Medicine from 2004; several articles, unsurprisingly in the International Journal for Quality in Health Care, e.g. A. Chang's et all 2005 meta study, and with a focus on education Shojania, Fletcher and Saint on "Graduate medical education and patient safety. (Ann Intern Med 2006; 145(8): 592 - 598.) To name but a few. Strangely though, I must have missed the one that correlates bad clinical decision with religious beliefs or belief in the origins of species.

So what is the rational, scientific status of this assertion, or did the good Professor have a spiritual insight?

Reminds me of my failed attempt to get from snex scientific, objectively verifiable evidence for the claimed correlation between religious beliefs in competent scientists and their inability to run a large research institution. In the absence of a published scientific study, i'd have settled for strong anecdotal evidence but somehow, these are things "everyone knows" and "stand to reason" and therefore not in need of evidence.

The situation for the other side is hardly better. After all, they _do_ typically claim that the internal, subjective belief is what matters. There is especially in Christianity a long and horrid history of prosecution of people suspected to "just go through the motions" and not "truly" belief in god - see the prosecution of Jews who converted to Christianity in Spain,. That was what led to the inquisition. So they shoudl feel instinctively at home with the unscientific, inquisitorial attitude taken by Dini....

.

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