Water is wet, the sky is blue, Richard Dawkins makes another "silly ass" strawman argument.

Over at Boing-Boing, Dawkins makes an argument about .... based on .....loosely related to ....whatever.....the discrimination practiced by the University of Kentucky in not hiring "alleged Creationist astronomer Martin Gaskell" because he's an "alleged Creationist."  Except that Gaskell is not a Creationist, but he has committed the heresy of expressing sympathy for people who believe that they have to be Creationist because of their view of their religious teachings.

In other words, Gaskell was "vehemently suspected of heresy" and subjected to punitive action by the State.

Uhmmmm....just like Galileo.

Since this isn't 17th Century Rome, Gaskell sued and the University of Kentucky settled out for $125,000.

Boing Boing commenters point out how stupid, arbitrary, fact-free and mean spirited Dawkins' criteria are:

Oh, just come out and say it, you want to discriminate against a certain class of people even though there is no real objective logical reason to do so. You get an ick factor. Which is eminently stupid. Competence is by definition the ability to get the job done in a satisfactory or better than satisfactory manner. If the person is competent, but somehow throws you off personally because of cultural predilections, that's frankly a problem and a weakness of your comfort level. Imagine a world where you could hire and fire based on that. I would certainly like to see what you'd have to say when someone refuses to hire an Atheist, because "it tells you something about him."

Another commenter - with some knowledge about scientific history - points out that under Dawkins criteria Sir Isaac Newton wouldn't have been permitted to teach at the University of Kentucky.

Dawkins backs off by claiming he was never talking about Gaskill; he was talking about a completely different strawman to make his argument easier.

I used the Gaskell case only as a prompt to get into the more general issue. But I very clearly stated that, precisely because Gaskell himself denies being a YEC, I was not going to talk about his case. Nowhere in my article did I say that Gaskell himself should not have got the job.


I deliberately discussed extreme hypothetical cases, because they raise the general issue starkly, in a way that the Gaskell case does not. The Gaskell case is complicated by the fact that he is not a YEC, so it does not bring out the general principle of whether private beliefs should be ignored. Gaskell's private beliefs are not obviously silly, so the issue of principle is not seen in sharp focus.

So, that is why I chose to discuss preposterous examples like the eye doctor who believes in the stork theory, the astronomer who thinks the universe is less than 10,000 years old, and the YEC geologist. The demonstration that it was worthwhile raising these hypothetical extremes is precisely the fact that a substantial number of commenters on Boing Boing have come out and stated that they would STILL hire somebody even if his private beliefs were as ridiculous as these hypothetical cases.

Well, sure, as long as you can control the assumptions of the argument, then you can control the outcome of the argument, i.e., if a tail is a leg, a horse has five legs.
 
But, of course, that is (a) inane and (b) not particularly interesting.  No one was talking about hiring a person who believes that Mars is a purple mongoose.  Dawkins got the traction to make his his apparently banal argument on the currency and notoriety of the Gaskell case, i.e., Dawkins was using the Gaskell case as a springboard for his silly ass ruminations and was implicitly equating the university's decision about Gaskell with a decision not to hire someone who believed that Mars was a purple mongoose.
 
Glenn Reynolds observes:
 

And as far as I can tell, Dawkins is going out of his way to suggest — without quite saying — that a man who writes about the Big Bang as possibly divinely inspired is nonetheless some sort of Young Earth Creationist. But here’s what Gaskell says in the very passage truncated by Dawkins: “I have a lot of respect for people who hold this view because they are strongly committed to the Bible, but I don’t believe it is the interpretation the Bible requires of itself, and it certainly clashes head-on with science.”


Dawkins seems to have completely misrepresented Gaskell to buttress his argument. Really, one would expect better from someone devoted to reason above all.

UPDATE: Down in the comments, where I had missed it before, Dawkins backs off somewhat. Nonetheless, I think his post is quite unfair. Nor is he the first to do this. I think creationism is unscientific — but so, of course, is scoring points by trashing those with whom one disagrees. Sadly, however, it is often effective.

It isn't even the first time that Dawkins has engaged in this kind of ad hominem/poison the well/appeal to the masses/strawman argumentation.  In fact, if you took straw away from Dawkins he wouldn't be able to fashion an argument.