Jut an FYI, Francis Collins is a well-known evangelical Christian. He gets a lot of press and notoriety exactly because of his status and his beliefs. He's part of a group of religious scientists seeking to find God anywhere it may be found, in my opinion.
My girlfriend took a class taught by Michael Behe, a biochemist who is a proponent of "irreducible complexity" as a proof of god. Even though the university banned him from discussing his opinions in class and distanced themselves from it[1], he still makes remarks to him knowing answers to something that is a current problem.
How the heck does "who he is" have to do _anything_ with the scientific evidence and argument he presented? This is worthless "cargo-cult" science and it's exactly what should be avoided in the scientific community. The article does it too...
Laudable aim or not, the argument seems an odd one for Collins to make, given that he's such a renowned scientist and led such a pioneering project, one grounded so deeply in the principles of scientific enquiry and discipline.
And thus begins the effects of "cargo cult science" which Feynman once talked about. Collins will be slowly removed from further scientific inquiry for disagreeing with his peers, his reputation will be debased, and he will be ostracized from the scientific community. All because (gasp!), the man may have a religious bent!
Yet another example:
It disappoints me that such a gifted scientist could make this argument.
Two character attacks in less than 1000 words that have nothing to do with the science presented. How dare Collins question the status quo? How dare he try to demonstrate scientific integrity by showing any and all sides of the matter? Either you're for us or you're against us, that's how the cult of science works these days. Especially if you're religious, then clearly you're in another cult and you need to leave the science cult now.
As Feynman once said, science should "...give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another."
Regardless of whether Collins is right or not, I hope that everyone can see how this pitiful system of cult "science" that we have functions to eliminate anyone who disagrees with the worldview provided by scientific naturalism. The scary thing is that it has been like this for many years. Scientists are so used to being logically "right" within the empirical domain that they quickly forget their worldview holds no more water than religion does in the realm of explaining the unempirical.
"Regardless of whether Collins is right or not, I hope that everyone can see how this pitiful system of "science" we currently have functions to eliminate anyone who disagrees with the worldview provided by scientific naturalism."
I just listened to a Richard Dawkins TED talk, where he cites the overwhelming number of atheist scientists as an argument for the truth of atheism. Ignoring the whole "appeal to authority" nature of that argument, it ignores the possibility that scientific institutions might discriminate (either implicitly or overtly) against religious people and winnow them from their ranks.
Just wanted to point out: the appeal to authority argument is only a fallacy when the cited source is not a legitimate authority.
Theologians would want to disagree, but I would argue that an overwhelming number of scientists does constitute a legitimate authority on whether or not something (god or otherwise) does or does not exist.
Just because a large group of people hold a certain unverifiable opinion does not mean it has any more authority or validity than another unverifiable opinion. Even if it did, you've lost that argument already on the basic fact that there are far, far more "theists" than "atheists".
Example:
Scientists would want to disagree, but I would argue that the overwhelming number of people in the world who believe in a god (of some form) does constitute a legitimate authority on whether or not something (god or otherwise) does or does not exist.
I'd agree that there can be no successful argument for or against an unverifiable opinion, consensus-based or not (taking your first point a bit further).
But my claim is that a consensus of scientists is an authority on matters of fact of the natural world, specifically. In the same way that a consensus of programmers would constitute an authority on programming. So that it's fair for Dawkins, who views the (non)?existence of god as a fact of the natural world, to appeal to scientists as an authority.
My girlfriend took a class taught by Michael Behe, a biochemist who is a proponent of "irreducible complexity" as a proof of god. Even though the university banned him from discussing his opinions in class and distanced themselves from it[1], he still makes remarks to him knowing answers to something that is a current problem.
[1] http://www.lehigh.edu/~inbios/news/evolution.htm