[Buddha-l] Prominent Neobuddhist proposes religion based blacklisting for government jobs

[Richard Hayes]

On Jul 31, 2009, at 5:12 PM, Jim Peavler wrote:

> I would think that if Harris, as is alleged, attacked a scientist's
> credentials to do a job, and Harris himself has no scientific
> credentials, then pointing out his lack of the knowledge and
> experience required to comment on another's scientific achievements,
> then that is not an ad hominem attack.

I don't think that was the gist of Harris's argument. As I understand  
what I have read, Harris was not at all questioning whether Collins is  
a competent scientist. Rather, he was asking whether a person who has  
strong religious convictions can be counted on to apply his scientific  
credentials consistently. If a scientist is capable of keeping her  
religious convictions completely private and does not let her  
essentially untestable religious dogmas mix in with testable  
scientific hypotheses while she is doing science, then there is  
nothing to worry about. But if a scientist, and especially one in a  
position to make public policy, cannot keep non-scientific  
considerations out of her discussions of science, then she is  
incompetent. One need not be a scientist to know that. Hence, to say  
of Harris that he is not as good as qualified a scientist as Collins  
is a very bad argument indeed. It is informally fallacious and thus  
not at all persuasive (except to Zen Buddhists, who are taught not to  
think too much).

> This is no better than Rush Limbaugh declaring that global warming is
> a hoax.

This is a completely fallacious argument. EVERYTHING is better than  
Rush Limbaugh.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes
rhayes at unm.edu