Last week, Jerry Coyne called for Francis Collins to resign as head of the National Institutes of Health over a newly published essay Collins wrote on the compatibility of science and religious belief. Josh Rosenau of the National Center for Science Education responds:

If Collins speaks for science, Coyne seems to be arguing, then he should resign when his statements clearly go outside the bounds of scientific consensus. There being no scientific consensus around whether science and faith are compatible, he should not continue to be the government’s chief scientist.
But he isn’t the government’s chief scientist. His job isn’t to speak on behalf of science per se in the White House or in public. His job is to administer NIH, and in his free time, he can do as he likes. Science and religion has long been one of his interests, and he contributed an introduction to a book on the topic. Yes, it identifies him as director of NIH, but Coyne’s book and blog identify him as a professor at the University of Chicago, and no one pretends that Coyne’s comments in his private writings are official statements by one of the nation’s premiere research institutions. In Collins’s essay, a section entitled “My Own Perspective On Science And Faith” presents … his personal view on the topic. I disagree with it, Coyne disagrees with it, others are free to do the same.
But that’s not cause for firing him from a job that he seems to be doing just fine. He’s getting big budget increases for biomedical research, he’s continuing to expand access to newly derived stem cell lines, and nothing in Coyne’s bill of indictment suggests any faults in his administration.

Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne is outraged that Francis Collins has edited and written the introduction for a new anthology, Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith, which claims to provide “evidence” for a Christian God and prove “once and for all the rationality of faith.”
As Coyne writes on his blog:

Collins is director of the NIH, and is using his office to argue publicly that scientific evidence—the Big Bang, the “Moral Law,” and so forth—points to the existence of a God. That is blurring the lines between faith and science: exactly what I hoped he would not do when he took his new job.
And to those who say that he has the right to publish this sort of stuff, well, yes he does. He has the legal right. But it’s not judicious to argue publicly, as the most important scientist in the U.S., that there is scientific evidence for God. Imagine, for example, the outcry that would ensue if Collins were an atheist and, as NIH director, published a collection of atheistic essays along the lines of Christopher Hitchens’ The Portable Atheist, but also arguing that scientific evidence proved that there was no God. He would, of course, promptly be canned as NIH director.
Or imagine if Collins were a Scientologist, arguing that the evidence pointed to the existence of Xenu and ancient “body-thetans” that still plague humans today. Or a Muslim, arguing that evidence pointed to the existence of Allah, and of Muhammad as his divine prophet. Or if he published a book showing how scientific evidence pointed to the efficacy of astrology, or witchcraft. People would think he was nuts.
Collins gets away with this kind of stuff only because, in America, Christianity is a socially sanctioned superstition. He’s the chief government scientist, but he won’t stop conflating science and faith. He had his chance, and he blew it. He should step down.

Philosopher and theologian Philip Clayton shares his thoughts on the debate he had with “new atheist” and fellow philosopher Dan Dennett a couple of days ago:

What was at stake today was not whether theism and atheism are finally identical; surely that much is beyond dispute. Instead, what most divided Dennett and me was the question whether in the end worldviews make any difference. Dan is prepared to call religion “benign”—which means: not outright malignant—when it supports values that he endorses. (His friend Richard Dawkins would not give as much ground.) Beyond that, however, religion is of little interest to him. For religious believers like me, by contrast, religious belief is never reducible to the moral convictions it supports or the behaviors it produces. It functions as an entire world- and life-view, permeating all that I do, affecting how I see, interpret, and evaluate everything I encounter. It’s that truth that I sought to communicate this afternoon.
Dan Dennett and I will probably never agree on whether it’s probable that God exists. But I hope that those who view today’s debate online will ask themselves why it matters that we were defending different understandings of what ultimately exists. If we can’t even agree on the significant difference between the two speakers, and how that difference is revealed in our different ways of approaching a whole host of philosophical questions, we won’t begin to be able to evaluate the competing arguments for our different positions.

A couple of weeks ago, philosopher and theologian Philip Clayton publicly challenged “new atheist” and fellow philosopher Dan Dennett to a debate. Well, Dennett has accepted the invitation, and the two will debate today in Albrecht Auditorium at Claremont Graduate University in California from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. EST. As Clayton sets it up:

This will be an open-ended conversation. The flyer says simply “Science, Philosophy, Theism.” Here’s a face-to-face meeting of a Christian philosopher and theologian, one who endorses evolution and works extensively on science-religion issues, with the leading philosopher among the New Atheists—one who proudly describes himself as “one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.” We’ll take on the question: Is there any real (argumentative) common ground between our two positions?
What do you think will happen? Will we really connect as philosophers? Will we even be able to formulate arguments that the other can respond to? Or will it just be two ships passing in the night, shooting rhetorical salvos in each other’s direction as they steam in their different directions? In his post on Richard Dawkins’ Web site, Dan responded to my talk on theology and evolution at the Cambridge Darwin Festival by simply concluding, “in short Clayton is an atheist who won’t admit it.” [Clayton responded here.] When we meet this week in Claremont, will we get any further in exploring forms of theism that are not anti-philosophical and anti-scientific?

We look forward to hearing how it goes.