Templeton Foundation controversy

[Alex]

God, Science and Philanthropy
Nathan Schneider
June 3, 2010   |    
This article appeared in the June 21, 2010 edition of The Nation.
http://www.thenation.com/article/god-science-and-philanthropy

...The zoologist and author Richard Dawkins quipped in his 2006 book The God Delusion that the Templeton Prize goes "usually to a scientist who is prepared to say something nice about religion." He and others among the so-called New Atheists have been the foundation's most strident critics lately; they believe Templeton is corrupting science by trying to inject it with religious dogma and, in turn, misrepresent science to the public. The advance of science steamrolls over religion, they say, and Templeton is deluding people into thinking otherwise.  ...

...Nobel Prize–winning chemist Harry Kroto..."They are involved in an exercise that endangers the fundamental credibility of the scientific community"...

...Now Dawkins and Kroto, with eight other advisory board members of Project Reason, founded by New Atheist author Sam Harris in 2007 to promote secularism, are at work on another offensive. Project Reason hired British science journalist Sunny Bains to investigate Templeton and build a case against it. Her unpublished findings include evidence of pervasive cronyism: more than half of the past dozen Templeton Prize winners were connected to the foundation before their win, and board members do well obtaining grant money and speaking gigs. Bains also argues that the true atheistic tendencies of leading scientists were misrepresented in the foundation's Big Questions advertisements. Templeton's mission, Bains concludes, is to promote religion, and its overtures to science are an insidious trick with the purpose of sneaking in God.  ...

..."It represents a serious ethical dilemma," says A.C. Grayling, a British philosopher and former columnist for New Scientist magazine; he accuses the foundation of "borrowing respectability from science for religion."  ...

...Jack Templeton [a conservative Evangelical] is little like his father [John Templeton, founder]. ...Only now, though, are we beginning to learn how that struggle will express itself in his father's absence. With Harper gone, and his replacement yet to be announced, there is a vacuum at the top. It is, says physicist and trustee Paul Davies, "an anxious time." What seems to have people there most on edge right now, though, is not so much science as politics. In this respect too, the younger Templeton differs in kind from his father. He has financed a right-wing organization of his own...In 2008 he and his wife gave more than $1 million to support California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage.

...Conservative Christian columnist and blogger Rod Dreher...beginning his new job as the foundation's director of publications...

...Templeton has long maintained relationships with a network of right-wing organizations...Those organizations also receive contributions from Big Oil and take part in the campaign to distort the scientific consensus on global warming...

..."There is no getting around the fact," declared a glowing 2007 National Review article, "that it [Templeton] has quickly become a major force in conservative philanthropy."

This is even more the case today. Jack Templeton announced, in the 2008 Capabilities Report, a "fresh endeavor" on free enterprise, the area of the foundation's work closest to his own predilections. Mauro De Lorenzo, hired as a vice president to lead the initiative, still retains a post at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which Templeton has also funded. ...

...Templeton money has supported a wide range of pious causes, from the American Bible Society to awards for "wholesome" filmmaking (including, controversially, The Passion of the Christ). Templeton Prizes have gone to evangelists Billy Graham and Bill Bright, as well as Watergate conspirator turned Evangelical activist Charles Colson and AEI theologian Michael Novak.

...the foundation meanwhile has associated itself with political and religious forces that cause it to be perceived as threatening the integrity of science and protecting the religious status quo. This is quite the reverse of the founder's most alluring hope: a spirituality finally worthy of our scientific achievements. As a result of such alliances, though, 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. On issues that range from climatology to stem cells, science has too often taken a back seat to the whims of politics, and Templeton's peculiar vision offers a welcome antidote to that. To live up to this calling, Big Questions are one thing; but the foundation will have to stand up for tough answers, too, as it did when announcing the findings of a major study that intercessory prayer doesn't improve medical outcomes, or when rebuking intelligent design.  ...