At least he's a scientist. Grats, you actually have someone more qualified than your Northern neighbour. For once.

What a stupid article.

First did Collin's beliefs interfere with his human genome project? No.

Did it interfere with any of his scientific endeavers? If you think so, please cite sources.

As long as he can do the job, the beliefs are irrelevant.

I don't think Collins is really deriving anything from religion, I think that he is merely attributing the science he does to religion.

Morality is an illusion, in any sort of secular conception of it. Most atheist, who don't understand the historical development of moral laws, and concepts, don't get this. Morality has long been held, by a sense of a telos, that man like a designed thing, has a notion of what he "should be". Man taking care of the poor, the sick, and the orphan, loving others, is seen as what man is to be, the purpose he is to live for. 

In secular world, such concepts no longer exist. Man is what he is, if he desires to only care for the here and now, his present family, perhaps even a single generation afterwards, with no concern about the well being of those after these generations, than so be it. If he says fuck making sacrifices to prevent Global warming, if decides to be like Lazarus and shut his door on the dying and poor, than so be it. He is what he is, and any atheist telling him he should live differently, would get a fuck off. 

You absolutely right, that is why societies do not exist, and therefore cannot decide what is right or wrong based off enlightened self interest!

Oh wait.

According to who? You?

A profit-based corporation's ethical code, which are their morals, puts the stakeholder at the #1 interest. They exist to make money.

Only when that is broken are they acting against corporate morals.

Sorry to burst your divinity bubble.

Morality, as objective standard of 'right' behavior, is an illusion, of course. The religious conception of it, as obedience to God's laws, is not really a true moral system at all - it is a legalistic requirement of obedience to a set of commandments, more akin to the secular legal system, but inferior to that in the most enlightened (ie, secular) nations, as it has no real appeal system, and the punishments are totally disproportionate to the harm actually caused by the offenses.

Your idea of purpose is totally warped, if it is meant to be THE purpose for existence. Helping others in distress is of course admirable, and it may well serve as a major or entire purpose for someone in a situation to do that for many people. If someone can be helped out of a impoverished situation to the point where they can go on to help others, that is ok, but not everyone is  going to be able to achieve that, especially those with severe physical afflictions.

What then is the 'purpose' for those poor and afflicted themselves? You almost make it sound like their purpose is only to serve as a target for you to exercise your 'good works' and gain your divine brownie points.

Basing one's purpose on trying to achieve what one deeply feels 'should be', can justify great evil as well as great good. Hitler and Mao and Pol Pot and David Koresh almost certainly followed the same principle. Someone basing their actions on such precepts is going to be far less amenable to persuasion that they may be doing something 'wrong', ie harmful to others for no overall benefit, than someone basing their morality on true consideration for others rather than trying to earn Karma points for their own ultimate benefit, and/or please some imaginary overlord.

Oh, my mistake. When I read his account it sounded like he'd had it recently.

In any case, his (and your) support of 'theistic evolution' is bizarre at best. I mean, the phrase was pretty much coined by Ken Miller, who is a Roman Catholic. You're a deist. Collins is a far-right Christian.

It's totally dishonest of you to pretend to have the same belief set just because it overlaps in the area of including magical deities. 

EDIT: Okay; either the publication is wrong, or Collins is bullshitting in his book. He says in the book that he was staunchly atheistic right up until his parents died, and that (as I said) he did not fully convert until he was out for a nature hike and saw a waterfall. This would be well after the HGP (his parents died in, what, '99 or '98?). 

So which is it?

I don't recall saying that I have the same beliefs as him

I never read his book, but if it was in 99 or 98, it still would be within the HGP, since he stepped down in 2008.

Harris's criticisms are perfectly legitimate; yes, Collins has both credentials and successful academic career to be proud of, but he should be ashamed of his religious identity. I mean, did you look at what he wrote on the slides that Harris noted?

'Precisely tuned'? Yeah. About as 'precisely tuned' as a prostitute's nose powdering job.

Consider just the scale of our own solar system. Within all of that space, this is one teensy tiny little speck of dirt that has complex life on it. Everywhere else is utterly and completely fatal (pretty much instantly fatal) to complex life.

The universe is a lot of things. It's big. It's chaotic. It's awe-striking. It's beautiful. It's dangerous. 

It is not, in any sense of the word, 'fine tuned'. For fuck's sakes, we're - in a very real way - stellar debris. We're a pleasant accident after a star came apart in a very not-so-fine-tuned way; we're that marvellous accident that occassionally happens when you drop a loaded brush onto a canvas. 

Calling our existence the result of fine-tuning is an affront to what that term means, and is ignorant of all the accidents that did not have such wonderful consequences.

God must be a pretty shitty planner, then. Complex life didn't evolve for quite some time on Earth, and evolution itself is not a 'marvelous' process (even though it does produce marvelous things). It's a brutal, destructive and painful process. Moreover, if God did plan it out, when did he enact it? Did he magically fill the prebiotic Earth with the carbon compounds that eventually became RNA and later evolved into cellular life? Or did that happen on it's own, and God just magically 'spiked' the process somewhere along the way? Where did God step in?

Fascinating. So God waited until we were... what? Were we still apes when he magically plopped our grey matter in place? Or did we get to the Homo stage before that happened? 

And, hey... what about all of the other animals that have a sense of altruism? Are they just mimicking us to mock God?

This is just too ridiculous. If Collins really does believe that we evolved, this statement is a lie he just tossed out to the evangelicals (because he knows that our brains, like everything else, is an evolved trait - not a magical gift) so he could hear them applaud. If he doesn't, well, that's a much different (and much larger) problem.

...And now we get into the troubling stuff.

According to this slide:

 - We're not allowed to disagree with an authority's moral codifications.

 - We're all guilty of any perceived transgression made by an ancestor.

 - Blood sacrifices can somehow magically undo past transgressions.

 - ...Further Christian bunk moral superiority complex rubbish, ad nauseum. 

And this is a man we should trust to hold political office? One who believes in the absolution of authoritarian codifications, hereditary guilt and the sanctity of human sacrifices?

*Sigh*

I'm having a Kung-Fu Panda moment...

It's all been said before, but what we want is not the same as what we sometimes get. Maybe it is all an illusion (I wouldn't characterize it that way, and neither would experts in the field of psychology, but I'll give the doctor the benefit of the doubt). So what? It's a nice illusion, isn't it? Whether it's an illusion that keeps us smiling at each other or whether it's the cosmic significance of the action, isn't the bottom line that we're all still smiling at the end of the day? 

If it's a peach seed you have in the ground, the only tree you'll wind up growing from it is a peach tree. If the doctor wants to chastize us for having such limited imaginations about the harvest and offering only woe for the lack of variety to be found at the end of the day, I guess that's his choice.

But hey, I like peaches.

By his own words he is an evangelical Christian. 

I mean, I guess there could be some left-leaning evangelicals in the states, but it would surprise me. By his rhetoric, I'm pretty damn sure he's right-wing (opposition to public health care, opposition to environmental protection, opposition to a woman's right to choose & stem cell research, etc).

That's not what amoral means.

An amoral action, would be eating a peach. It is neither moral nor immoral to eat a peach.

An action can be immoral or moral regardless of whether or not the person considered the moral ramifications.

...Which is exactly what I said. Or meant to say, anyway.

Amoral = without morals doesn't seem all that ambiguous to me, but whatever.

...and that was the point, glad you noticed. 

That thing made a quote with my name, and added something that I didn't write. In addition it didn't reply to what I wrote, but attempted to act like it did.

How rude.

My apologies pussy cat, now I understand Ken's response. I made a mistake in formatting the block quotes.

It should have read: 

followed by my response. 

 No, no ClockCat; play my game instead. Trust me, it'll be more fun in the long run.

No one has summed the situation up as well as PZ:

 I also wholeheartedly agree with PZ on this one.  Sam has a tendency towards rhetorical flourish, and I can understand why his article is rubbing some people the wrong way.  Collins' work on the genome project was solid.  He believes in evolution.  I can't fault Obama -- a Christian -- for supposing that Collins will continue to be a scientist in the lab and a clown on the street.

Having said that, I don't know where Collins is in his faith these days.  I saw some interview with him a few years ago where he seemed to indicate that his "Waterfall Experience" was rather recent.  This does seem to contradict the claim that he was a Christian at 27.  Then again, Evangelical Christians are well known for bending the truth for Jesus.  He might have been using rhetorical flourish in the interview to try and keep things exciting.  I dunno.

Like Harris, I have concerns for Collins handling of controversial (read: conflicting with the religious agenda) research, specifically where it relates to the human animal.  That is, after all, my favorite branch of science.  Let's not suppose for a second that the long and very rich arm of the church isn't going to be slipping its fingers into Collins pocket when big decisions are pending.  I've noticed that in politics, a little money makes a tough moral decision a lot easier to make.  Collins is already sympathetic to Christian values.  He personally holds them.  I imagine that when push comes to shove, it would be a lot easier to sway him to the Christian side than it would a non-believer or even a non-Evangelical.

Politically, this is a big gamble for Obama.  He's made his pledge to support science, and he's clearly trying to back that up by putting a qualified scientist in a position of real authority.  He's also trying to placate the religious nutters by showing them that he believes religion and science to be ultimately compatible.  If Collins keeps Jesus in his home and out of the office for his entire term, Obama will have won.  If it gets back to Christian Legislation as Usual, Obama will lose a large block of support that voted for him specifically because of his non-religious approach to government.

I was agreeing with you.  By all appearances, he was a Christian during the HGP.

If he does a good job as director, it will be because he did not let his faith interfere with the job.  It is clear from his own words that he believes some pretty wacky things about the origins of human morality.  I assume (though I'll be happy to be proven wrong) that he has wacky views about sex, since he is an evangelical.  Sex and morality are two of the most dynamic fields in evolutionary biology right now, and the scientific model differs sharply from Collins' model.  Will he treat research in these fields neutrally without reference to his religion?  I dunno.  If he does, it will be perfectly reasonable to say that he did so despite his convictions otherwise.  What could possibly be wrong about that statement?

He has stated his beliefs on morality clearly and plainly many times.  I purposefully mentioned that I don't know his beliefs on sexuality, but presume that they are similar to those of other evangelicals who share many of his other beliefs.

I'm not talking about just those slides.  Collins runs in evangelical circles.  He has opined on morality before, and I have it on reasonable authority from those who care more than I that he has expressed traditional Christian values with regard to morality.  As I said, I'll be happy to be proven wrong if you can do it.  Please, find me a quote from him espousing non-evangelical morals.  It will make me feel better.

A 30 minute google search turned up nothing at all relating to Collins' views on abstinence.  I'd say that's one of the reasons Obama nominated him.  He has no easy to find history on the matter, and Obama is clearly not in favor of abstinence only education.

The point is not a particular issue.  Frankly, he appears to have been tight lipped publicly.  Collins is either ignorant or disregards the large number of scientific papers offering evolutionary explanations (and passing peer review) for the origin of morality in animals.  He insists that human morality is different IN KIND from animal morality.  This is NOT the scientific model.

Pineapple, you might be right.  He may be the most liberal evangelical in America.  He might think that sex before marriage is fine, and that homosexuals are normal.  I have read some of his statements about homosexuality.  I'll dig them up if you like.  He has a habit of very subtly implying that homosexuality is overwhelmingly a "free will choice" despite the discovery of genetic markers that significantly increase the probability that a person will be gay.  One can assume from his careful wording that he doesn't want to openly say homosexuality is a wrong moral choice, but why else would he so carefully define it as a choice?  My bet is that's what he believes.  It is, after all, one of the standard beliefs of evangelicals.  But as I say, it's only speculation.

Come to think of it... what differentiates a traditional evangelical Christian in America from a moral naturalist?  The only things that come to mind are sex, drinking, abortion, and homosexuality.  Well... some of the more wacky include things like unquestioning obedience of a wife to a husband and things like that, but they are admittedly fringe dwellers.

Look, I'm not here to bash Collins as the worst possible choice for the position.  He's probably a relatively decent choice.  My point is that Collins has openly admitted that he disagrees with the scientific model of morality, prefering instead the religious model.  That is cause for concern in a man who will be overseeing a scientific agency.  I am concerned.  I would be substantially less concerned if someone who swore by the scientific method in all cases was the head of a science department.

I hope he never lets his religion get in the way of good science.  I wish I didn't have to hope.

 You've never been to middle America, have you?  Evangelical may mean just "born again" in the dictionary, but it has a lot more connotations in America.

Pineapple, we're in basic agreement here.  He hasn't let much of his actual beliefs about morality hit the press.  This is either scary or comforting, and I don't know which.  Christians have begun to learn that the less they say, the more chance they have of being confirmed for any office in government.  Has he been keeping his views a secret so that he can promote the will of God once he's in office?  I dunno.  Probably not... it doesn't seem to be his M.O.  However, his belief that some things are faith based... that's very dangerous, and worries me.

That's all I'm saying.

Your anecdotes don't change the definition of Evangelical any more than mine would change the definition of it.

This is what I was talking about.

You are simplying using anecdotes to come up with a schema of evangelicals and then whenever somebody breaks the schema, you just rationalize saying that they are doing it despite being evangelical, when in reality your "definition" of evangelical is based on anecdotes.

Remember the whole definition debate of atheistism? How Christian tried to use anecdotes to re-define atheism? That didn't go over well, so why should you be allowed to do the same thing?

Please tell me which word you would like me to use to describe this group:

"Christians in America who believe that sex is sinful outside of marriage, homosexuality is wrong, and abortion is murder"

You shouldn't get into the business of cum swallowing. Hamy's not a scientist, he read a few books, attempts to churn out some of the shit he learned, but half the time doesn't have a clue as to what he read. He's the idiot that claimed that Bob Altemeyer's study of RWA types, was a study of the mind of theism, only to embarrass himself when confronted by other individuals who have read his work.

Hamy is what you call a poser, like Rook Hawkins, he found suckers on a website that eat his plagued with nonsense rantings, particularly when it comes to "morality".

Now, you accused me of believing wacky things about morality, now I want you go through my post and point to one instance were I claimed something "wacky" about morality. I'd wager I know far more about the science, and history of the concept, more so than a dumbass like Hamby does that's for sure. And I'll take him on, on his views of morality, particularly the role of religion in moral conception, any day of the week, and we can start to see which one of us really holds "wacky" views about it.