Not believing in Jesus is considered wrong in the evangelical faith.
Not giving up all your money to help the poor is considered wrong in the evangelical faith.
Premarital sex is considered wrong in the evengelical faith
etc, etc.

Go to a country thats not rooted in one of the Big 3 religions, and youll find its not obvious at all that many of the things evangelicals consider wrong are consider wrong by these people.

And considering that the so called greatest sin is a lack of belief in Jesus, then no, its not on a "very small level".

This is like saying that Einstein could not possibly behave as a responsible physicist because he had problems accepting that QM models as the best (ie, ideal) model of reality.

One can accept scientific conclusions (QM is accurate) without having to accept a philosophical position based on the scientific conclusion (QM is reality).

Well, I go through many situations in which I'm uncertain of the right thing to do. If that is not an experience you have, I suppose I have no credibility with you, but it is definitely the case. And many people act in ways that they clearly believe are right, even when demonstrable harm results. It's called "ignorance," and it causes much more human harm than deliberate malice.

There are people who panic and end up killing a trauma patient because they don't know what they're doing. But they are hysterical and trying to help.

The question is, what if they have already made the wrong choice? Do you then prefer that they suffer for it, or not? Assume no external implications.

The charge I'm leveling is that your God considers wrongdoers suffering to be a more desirable state of affairs than wrongdoers not suffering. Not that your God considers wrongdoers suffering to there not being wrongdoers in the first place.

Well, then at least one of us is failing to understand the other at some level.

If God is cruel, then that doesn't imply that he could have chosen to be kind. It does imply that he's not kind. If love is cruel, and that's just how love "works," then that raises a question. Did God create love? If so, then God created love to be cruel, and this is a cruel act. If not, then love must be a part of God, and ergo a part of God is cruel.

I'm not convinced this makes sense in the first place. Love has certain benefits - increased closeness, understanding, a feeling of bliss and connection, a regard for one another's interests, and so on. It also bears certain drawbacks, costs, and risks - the likelihood of being hurt, the effort needed to maintain the relationship, the decreased personal flexibility, and (in your view) all the evil in the whole universe. If God is all-powerful, then why can't he remove the costs while leaving the benefits in place? Don't call it love if you want to keep terms straight - call it "lurve." Why can't God create "lurve," a thing with all the benefits of love but none of the costs?

Come on now. God gave all of us free will, the likelihood that none of us would choose to cause grief was miniscule. I suppose you could just say "love can't exist without a 99.9999999% chance of grief," if you really want to pick nits here. The point is that you believe the capacity for evil is necessarily intertwined with love, and that love cannot exist without it. In this case, if God is love, then God is also the capacity for evil.

Yes, if one has a philosophical position such as Einstein's deism. If one holds an ideological stance that makes concrete claims, it's a different story. Stalin could not adequately support science given his prejudice against genetics. Ideologues make poor scientists (at least, unless their pet ideology is science itself).

LOL @ all of this. Go learn about the lives of past scientists. Science is not driven by people who don't have a clear sense of how they think the world works. Scientific data is empty and meaningless until is has been given an interpretation. The interpretation is heavily influenced by one's philosophical perspectives.

Good point about the interpretation influencing perspective, I mean.

How someone perceives or reads the world is their guiding interpretation or inspiration. We all have a subjective starting point we work from and an ideal we strive after. Without the ideal there is no consistency of results and sometimes a lack of motivation in pursuing goals.

Here's a pointed and important question: Should ethics influence science?

Public opinion and politics should have nothing to do with directing scientific research. Religion should have nothing to do with ethics. That's the whole problem here, although I do not feel as strongly about it as Madnak. Specifically talking about stem cell research, there is no logical/ethical/rational/defensible basis for the argument that a ball of 150 cells deserves the same ethical considerations as a suffering person with a potentially treatable affliction.

Which is a huge negative for someone nominated to direct funding for scientific research, because the general public and politicians, on average, have absolutely no capacity to decide what constitutes a good use of those funds.

Science has absolutely no reason to compromise anything, not even the tiniest point on the tiniest matter, in order to "bridge science and religion." By it's very nature Science should follow evidence where it leads, with no regard to where anyone wants it to lead. Religion can either accommodate science, fight it, or ignore it, but at this point fighting it is a losing proposition. Of the other two I don't really care, but "bridging the gap" is solely the responsibility of Religion, science shouldn't be watered down in any way to make it easier to swallow for Joe Moron.

WTF does this even mean? Controversy, debate, argument, whatever you want to call it is how you get answers to questions in the real world.

You have some kind of "science as elite" mindset here.

Collins in his book specifically says everyone has a place at the table in the ethics discussion on science research.

Also this is a GOVERNMENT agency funded by public monies. I damn sure want some ethical accountability on any tax money I'm providing. I don't care how many letters you got behind your name.

Everyone at the table is a lot safer. I like to think as many options are heard and reviewed before decisions are made. That's the best method of operating any serious matter. There is no reason to act Elitist or to rush decisions when making far ranging decisions about the future of the world. It took us thousands of years to get here and we shouldn't go charging off half cocked now. The world progresses through steps. Controversy is a part of progress but it can be regressive as well as progressive.

I never said ethical accountability wasn't important, I said ethical accountability to religious doctrine is not important. I'm also highly confused as to where you're getting any kind of elitism from my post. We're talking about the distribution of funds designated for scientific research, so obviously science the most important basis for decision making.

Science being held accountable to religious doctrine is a big part of why it took us thousands of years to get here. Medical methodology was significantly better in the year 200 than in the year 1200.

Ethics should certainly influence the practice of science, but in only two senses.

In the top-down sense, science must be legal (no kidnapping people and cutting them open against their will, etc). That's a matter for the legislators, not anyone in the NIH.

In the individual sense, every scientist should hold to his own personal standard of integrity. However, nobody has any business forcing their standard on other researchers, creating policy to restrict other researchers, or denying funding to other researchers because those researchers have differing standards.

Sure, and in that sense it should be clear that I find the philosophical perspective of evangelical Christianity to be distasteful and don't want it influencing anyone who plays the role of speaking for the scientific community, much less determining the course of (much of) scientific research in this country.

That's why things like the peer review process and journals full of peer-reviewed articles exist. If anyone interested in the data a researcher interprets can find a problem with that interpretation, let alone a better-supported/more objective interpretation, you can lay odds with your last dollar they will make every attempt to replace that interpretation with their own. The endless repetition of this process generally leads to pretty solid conclusions.

There are problems that stem from people being too eager to publish results and interpretations and run with the findings from a single paper, but in the long run the self-correction process of scientific research is extremely thorough.

To quote Collins scientists are needed for their technical expertise. Their ethics aren't any better than any other group's.

Also I think man's nature is more at fault than religious doctrine for any failures in science to progress. Doctrine doesn't make decisions. Men use their intellects to do that.

Though I'm starting to lean towards our thought processes having a divine spark especially since seeing that Love Study video I posted in David Sklansky's most recent RGT thread.

I'm not saying their ethics are better, I'm saying that concerning the specific issue of funding scientific research they are far and away the most qualified to make decisions. The ethics concerning the application of the results of that research is an entirely different matter.

For the specific time period I mentioned, religion takes the blame. Whether it lies with man's misapplication of religion or religion itself is a tangential subject.

Actually that is exactly what doctrine does. It dictates the correct decision without the need for the use of intellect, which is precisely the problem encountered in the dark ages.

Provide some evidence that fear of this with respect to Collins is founded on something other than your own paranoia.

Another view: Does a PI have the authority to impose his own sense of ethics on those who work underneath him? Should he be allowed to choose what aspects of research are pursued under his watch?

1) You've yet to provide any evidence to deny Collins standing as a scientist.
2) You've yet to provide any evidence that Collins has behaved unethically in the past.
3) You've yet to provide evidence that Collins lacks the administrative capacity to make the types of decisions that the NIH director would need to make.

You're accusing (future) Collins of making decisions based on philosophical perspective, but here you are making decisions based on philosophical perspective. You're so blinded by your own ideology that you have no "moral" basis for your argument against ideology. ("Moral" in quotes because I don't know what the right word is to represent your logical foundation of accusation.)

You're just being a hypocrite.

Collins has already taken a stand against the creation of human stem cells. He has furthermore already used his position as head of the Human Genome Project to praise God and to make religious claims. There is certainly every reason to expect that he will not be willing to fund such research, and that he will continue to abuse his position as a pulpit.

In general, yes, that's the one of the responsibilities of the PI.

Your point is that you disagree with his philosophical position, and therefore this makes him unqualified? It's almost as if you can't take a position without having to put up this caricature of him being some crazed fundamentalist. This should only demonstrate for you how weak your argument is.

Therefore, your two senses are clearly not sufficient.

Uh, using one's professional position as a politician or scientist as a platform for getting your views across is way out of line. If Dawkins were to speak out against religion in his official capacity as a professor at Oxford, that would also be unethical and irresponsible. I wouldn't necessarily be surprised, "ethical" and "responsible" aren't the first words I'd use to describe Dawkins, but nevertheless. This is basic professional integrity - private beliefs are one thing, using your position as spokesperson to attempt to proselytize is egregious. I think any mixing of church and state is also corrupt (and yes, I apply this to Obama, etc).

Okay, true enough, there is the additional assumption that a given research project needs to have a coherent standard. Every damned lab assistant can't be applying different ones, obviously (and for purely practical reasons - everyone has to be on the same page).

Are you saying that professional scientists do not have the same freedom of speech that others enjoy? How do you distinguish between the private citizen speaking and the "professional"?

Collins was already a federal employee in the past of the NIH. The Human Genome Project was under the NIH.

So its not like they are hiring someone blind. You could see this as an insider choice which is a lot more careful than going to someone outside the organzation who might not even have the specialized experience.

Not if his philosophical perspective is morally based as well. Keep pretending that the "worldview assumptions" that we differ on are abritrary and not based on reason.