The Nation on the Templeton Foundation.
The Nation has a long article about the highly influential Templeton Foundation, which primarily funds research projects at the intersection of science and faith. It’s written by Nathan Schneider, one of my favorite writers on religion, and he even finds a way to make the Nation-obligatory enumeration of right-wing ties fit in to the story as a whole, the upshot of which ends up being that:
“…the foundation is also better positioned than most to foster a conservatism—and a culture generally—that holds the old habits of religions and business responsible to good evidence, while helping scientists better speak to people’s deepest concerns.”
Definitely worth a read if you’re at all interested in religion, science, and culture.
Templeton’s mission at the end of the day is accomodationism: “You can be a good Christian and a legitimate scientist (or even supporter of scientists) at the same time.”
The degree to which core Christian beliefs need to become metaphorical is left up to each individual. We’ll just paper that bit over.
Faith has both enriched the lives of an enormous number of people and been the cause of great evil. The new atheists recognize that eliminating faith is impossible; we just want to limit its influence on the public sphere. And that’s where Templeton’s influence is pernicious. It seeks to legitimize the idea that knowledge through faith is as legitimate a way of knowing, and making public policy, as knowledge through science.
And there it’s just wrong.Report
PZ Myers has some comments (quelle surpise!) http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/06/scientists_making_creationists.phpReport