A reader sent me an email he received touting a new project from the Templeton Religious Trust, one of the big-money grantmaking foundations that grew out of the generosity of zillionaire fund manager John Templeton. You can see the initiative by clicking on the image below. Note that the subtitle reprises the original purpose of the Templeton Foundation: to find evidence for God in science. And of course they maintain the accommodationism that science and religion can “reinforce each other”, which is ridiculous:
The donation for this project, which was $3,033,427, ended last October and is now public. The email contained a summary and we found no surprises in it. David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary biologist, was apparently part of this project (he appears at 1:35 in the video below). I’m not going to discuss this in detail as it’s incredibly boring and biased, so click on the image above if you want to take a look.
The only thing I will mention about the verbiage below is the old, rotten claim that both science and religion are “belief systems.” No, religion is a belief system, a “way of believing that which cannot be confirmed,” but science is, as Carl Sagan notes below, a “way of thinking.” The claim that science and religion are coequal as “belief systems” is one way in which people like Templeton try to simultaneously tear down science and elevate religion. It hasn’t worked: Christianity and Judaism are rapidly declining in the West as the “nones” grow in number.
This is from Templeton’s email; all the bold is theirs:
He can both Do science and religion help us find meaning?
Dominic Johnson at Oxford, and Michael Price at Brunel University they say they can. Through a grant from Templeton religion trustJohnson and Price have funded 18 research projects around the world to study how religious and scientific beliefs evolve over time and provide systems of meaning for people and entire communities.
“We are interested in the origins of two very important belief systems; religion and science; how these systems are compatible or incompatible and what the implications are for society,” says Price.
For Price and Johnson, religion and science are sources of wonder, wonder, and life, and help satisfy the human need for meaning and purpose. Through this intercultural and interdisciplinary study, they have shown that many of the assumptions we have made about the relationship between religion and science have always been wrong.
Doesn’t this remind you of sociologist Elaine Ecklund (who was also copiously funded by Templeton, making a career of osculating faith)?
“The findings that surprised me most were that science and religion are not only not incompatible, but in fact mutually reinforcing,” continues Price. “The people who derived the most benefit from science and religion were those who adhered to both belief systems.”
Science and religion are not in conflict, they are stronger together.
For more information, watch this video
Who are they kidding? How is science, which operates without using the notion of gods or the supernatural, “stronger” because of religion? Well, here’s a 5-minute video, and the last 30 seconds tell us how science and religion reinforce each other. But it’s a scam.
Another huge waste of money. What is it your meaning system?
