The last part is a very Western value set - that we should "base our beliefs on facts".
Other cultures are a lot less pragmatic, and are willing to ignore an absence of facts as long as they can get results. Being dogmatic seems to date back to the Greeks, at least.
Still both sides (the young earthers and the hard athiests) are both pretty dogmatic.
I'd say that both sides should chill out. If a guy wants a job that they doesn't quite believe in, as long as they're capable, why stop them? On the other hand, if you can't get a job because you really don't believe in it, aren't there other jobs out there?
> The last part is a very Western value set - that we should "base our beliefs on facts".
Every culture bases most of its beliefs on facts. You just don't notice most of those beliefs because they're obvious. If you want bread, someone's going to have to grow grain. People fall when they jump off a cliff. I have hair.
There are some beliefs that are not based on facts, and they have a survival advantage if they can convince people that facts should not apply to them. Therefore it really shouldn't be surprising to see anti-factual beliefs across a wide range of cultures. The only reason you can bring Western-centrism into this is because science had its really big success in the West.
> Other cultures are a lot less pragmatic, and are willing to ignore an absence of facts as long as they can get results.
Those results are, by definition, factual. I'm not sure what you're saying here.
> Still both sides (the young earthers and the hard athiests) are both pretty dogmatic.
Can you quantify the dogmatism here? Because you sound like you're conflating strong beliefs with an unwillingness to change them given sufficiently strong evidence.
It's not a "Western" value set, it's a value held by the scientific community he is desiring to enter.
In any case, scientists are a lot less dogmatic than you seem to think. We willingly use theories as long as we get results, i.e. as long as the theories work. The point is that it's exactly there that Creationism fails.
In that way, it's not "ignoring an absence of facts as long as you get results" and more akin to "ignoring an absence of results as long as they believe what they're doing". I don't think you can spin that any way that's positive -- sooner or later reality will bite back if that's how you go through life.
But that's the whole point. Dawkin's argument seems to be that, while a YEC may at first glance seem adequately skilled, their manifest disregard for scientific evidence means that they cannot be trusted to do the job correctly.
"Other cultures are a lot less pragmatic, and are willing to ignore an absence of facts as long as they can get results."
Aren't results facts? Or, put another way, how does someone determine that they are getting results? I don't see how the willingness to try things in the absence of facts is non-Western. It sounds a lot like experimentation.
The issue here isn't the absence of facts, it's the ignoring of facts (by YECs and their ilk).
"But that's the whole point. Dawkin's argument seems to be that, while a YEC may at first glance seem adequately skilled, their manifest disregard for scientific evidence means that they cannot be trusted to do the job correctly."
The problem with the particular case he cites is that this person seemed to have a well demonstrated history of doing his job correctly.
Other cultures are a lot less pragmatic, and are willing to ignore an absence of facts as long as they can get results. Being dogmatic seems to date back to the Greeks, at least.
Still both sides (the young earthers and the hard athiests) are both pretty dogmatic.
I'd say that both sides should chill out. If a guy wants a job that they doesn't quite believe in, as long as they're capable, why stop them? On the other hand, if you can't get a job because you really don't believe in it, aren't there other jobs out there?