I don’t think the hiring concern was due to the evaluators using theism, or young-earth-creationism, or whatever, as an indicator of the employee’s intellect or competence.
If it were, presumably the fact that they judged the guy vastly more competent on other grounds would counterbalance, and the question on the table would be “taking everything into account, is this guy competent enough to do the job?” And, judging from the article, their answer to that question was “Yes.”
As you say, people compartmentalize.
The impression I got was that, having answered that question, they then asked themselves “will it make us look bad to have a visible public figure associated with us who believes this stuff?” and the answer was also “Yes.”
And they decided the latter was more important, but then ran into trouble because they documented that process and anti-discrimination laws prohibit acting on that decision.
I don’t think the hiring concern was due to the evaluators using theism, or young-earth-creationism, or whatever, as an indicator of the employee’s intellect or competence.
If it were, presumably the fact that they judged the guy vastly more competent on other grounds would counterbalance, and the question on the table would be “taking everything into account, is this guy competent enough to do the job?” And, judging from the article, their answer to that question was “Yes.”
As you say, people compartmentalize.
The impression I got was that, having answered that question, they then asked themselves “will it make us look bad to have a visible public figure associated with us who believes this stuff?” and the answer was also “Yes.”
And they decided the latter was more important, but then ran into trouble because they documented that process and anti-discrimination laws prohibit acting on that decision.