John Horgan was one of the first batch of Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellows in Science and Religion. As he reports,
The 10 fellows were to spend several weeks at the University of Cambridge, listening to scientists and philosophers pontificate on topics related to science and religion. The fellowship not only sounded like fun, it also paid all expenses and threw in an extra $15,000 â€" a tempting sum for a freelancer, which I was at the time. On the other hand, as an agnostic increasingly disturbed by religion's influence on human affairs, I had misgivings about the foundation's agenda of reconciling religion and science.
Horgan took the money and went to Cambridge, but what he encountered makes me feel all the more certain that allowing oneself to be used to blur the line between science and religion is absolutely the wrong choice. For the whole story, read his piece at Edge.com. For now, let me give you a couple of gems from the meeting he attended
Simon Conway Morris, a biologist at Cambridge and an adviser to the Templeton Foundation, ridiculed intelligent design as nonsense that no respectable biologist could accept. [...] And yet Morris, a Catholic, revealed in response to questions that he believes Christ was a supernatural figure who performed miracles and was resurrected after his death. Other Templeton speakers also rejected intelligent design while espousing beliefs at least as lacking in scientific substance.
It gets worse:
The physicist F. Russell Stannard, a member of the Templeton Foundation Board of Trustees, contended that prayers can heal the sick â€" not through the placebo effect, which is an established fact, but through the intercession of God. In fact the foundation has supported studies of the effectiveness of so-called intercessory prayer, which have been inconclusive.
[But lets not forget that some studies have been conclusive, and found intercessory prayer to be, not to put too fine a point on it, a load of bollocks. Actually, to be fair, the main page of the Templeton foundation site, today reports that the Templeton-funded "Largest Study of Third-Party Remote Intercessory Prayer Suggests Prayer Not Effective in Reducing Complications Following Heart Surgery". I must confess to being impressed by them reporting this on the main page, although they do say in the statement that "Prayer research is a fascinating topic...", whereas I would have said that "Prayer research is a waste of time, since intercessory prayer would violate well-established laws of physics". But you can't have everything.] And finally, back to Horgan's story; here's the money shot
One Templeton official made what I felt were inappropriate remarks about the foundation's expectations of us fellows. She told us that the meeting cost more than $1-million, and in return the foundation wanted us to publish articles touching on science and religion. But when I told her one evening at dinner that â€" given all the problems caused by religion throughout human history â€" I didn't want science and religion to be reconciled, and that I hoped humanity would eventually outgrow religion, she replied that she didn't think someone with those opinions should have accepted a fellowship.
My views on all this are well-known. However, Horgan ends his essay with an interesting suggestion
First, the foundation should state clearly that it is not committed to any particular conclusion of the science-religion dialogue, and that one possible conclusion is that religion â€" at least in its traditional, supernatural manifestations â€" is not compatible with science. To demonstrate its open-mindedness, the foundation should award the Templeton Prize to an opponent of religion, such as Steven Weinberg or Richard Dawkins. At the very least, the foundation should post this essay on its Web site.
So in order not to be negative the whole time, I will state (and don't pretend like I don't wield awesome power in these matters) that I am prepared to apply for Templeton money if they award the Templeton Prize to Richard Dawkins.
