Andrew Brown trolling on his own blog

For somebody who claims to be bored by ya-boo discussions between believers and atheists, Andrew Brown is remarkably keen on stirring them up. His latest effort Sam Harris and Francis Collins is a bash at Sam Harris' NYT article expressing reservations about Collins' nomination as head of the NIH.

Most of what AB says is unworthy of the dignity of any reply, so I'm not going to even bother making any attempt at it. Most of the article is based on quote mining and taking out of context, and as an experienced journalist AB ought to have higher professional standards than that.

But there is one point he makes in the comments which I think is worth highlighting. In response to ChrisWhite3's comment that "surely a scientist who refuses to change his stance in light of fresh evidence is a fairly poor scientist?", AB responds as follows.

Your point would have force if belief in God were a scientific hypothesis. But it isn't. So there's no reason for scientific evidence to affect it.

Let me see if I understand this. Francis Collins is talking as a scientist, explaining how his scientific knowledge has increased his belief in the existence of God, moreover of the existence of a God who intervenes in the universe in miraculous ways, for instance by giving humans souls once their brains had evolved to the point of being able to receive them, or by fine-tuning the universal constants in order to design a universe capable of supporting life. And this not not a matter for scientific enquiry?

Pull the other one! Of course science can investigate such questions using scientific methods.

Now, you can say if you choose "I don't care what the evidence is, I believe that God exists and that Jesus rose from the dead to save me." If Francis Collins had said words to this effect, then I don't think anybody would have thought twice about it - people (even scientists) believe all sorts of irrational things, and by clearly saying he wasn't basing his belief on evidence, it would be equally clear that he wasn't speaking in his professional capacity as a scientist. We're all allowed a private life.

But Collins isn't doing that - he's trying to offer a scientific justification for belief in God. In other words Collins himself is making God a scientific hypothesis. I think that in fact he is correct to do so. Whether God exists, what evidence there is for it, and what sorts of miracles he does if he does exist is a perfectly justifiable line of scientific enquiry.

But Collins seems to be wanting to have his cake & eat it - he is claiming a scientific justification for belief in God, but avoids stating the alternative naturalistic explanations (and they most certainly do exist) for the phenomena he claims to persuade him of the existence of God. In doing so, he is committing the scientific sin of cherry-picking evidence.

That is a serious cause for concern in somebody who is being proposed for a senior scientific management post in charge of billions of dollars of scientific funding. It isn't that he believes in God, but rather that in doing so he is prepared to act unscientifically while talking as a scientist. Big no-no.