Sam Harris on Francis Collins

06 August, 2009

Dr.Harris has published a sort of continuation for his "saga" against Dr.Collins


To read it please go to: http://www.reasonproject.org/index.php/archive/item/the_strange_case_of_francis_collins2/

Putting aside the obvious irony about the title of the article, Dr.Collins' case is nothing sort of strange at all. The "christian" meme is one of the strongest still available in Western culture. Mr.Collins ravings about his faith are very personal, and should not be read outside the scope of private confessions.
Dr.Harris, a neuroscientist, must know that the best way to "fight" against paleo-limbic activity is to enhance cortical functioning. The "demens" part of the dubiously called "homo sapiens" allows this kind of situation, that is, that a brilliant geneticist and a religious peasant inhabit the same person, as is the case of Dr. Collins. That is not reason enough to make Dr.Collins unsuitable as head of National Institute of Health, on the contrary, a touch of Christian ethics may be helpful in an area that requires prudence in order to be able to abstain of doing absolutely everything that we can do and doubt a little in the name of "what is going to happen if you do absolutely everything that we can do" with the power of a technology that needs some restrain to avoid building unmanageable chaos out of our own uncontrolled inventions.

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