... is offered by John Horgan in The Templeton Foundation: A Skeptic's Take, sent along by Maxine Clarke. The word take, I gather is meant as a pun, since Horgan - who was freelancing at the time and describes himself as "an agnostic increasingly disturbed by religion's influence on human affairs" - defintely took Templeton's 15 grand and doesn't indicate he has any plans to return it.
My addition of the phrase "sort of" to this tale of ethical agonizing could probably use some explaining.
Richard Dawkins was at the same seminar Horgan attended and, Horgan reports, "was the only speaker who denounced religious beliefs as incompatible with science, irrational, and harmful" (views I gather Horgan shares but did not express). But, he says, "the other speakers — three agnostics, one Jew, a deist, and 12 Christians (a Muslim philosopher canceled at the last minute) — offered a perspective clearly skewed in favor of religion and Christianity." In calling their perspective "skewed," it seems to me that Horgan is calling into question their intellectual honesty. If they honestly said what they honestly thought, their perspective was no more or less skewed than Dawkins's. It is hardly surprising that John Polkinghorne would offer a Christian perspective: He is, after all, an Anglican priest. He is also a particle physicist of some note and accomplishment.
In the meantime, Horgan gives no indication that he himself at any time during this affair was remotely as open regarding his own beliefs as Richard Dawkins - nor is there any indication that Dawkins had been expected to do otherwise or was denied his honorarium for speaking as he did. In other words, whatever reason Horgan may have had for exercising reticence, it wasn't anything having to do with the Templeton Foundation.
I also found this passage interesting:
Biologist [Simon Conway] 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."
Is Horgan actually suggesting that one cannot be both a believing Christian and a scientist? This would surely come as a surprise to Gregor Mendel and Georges Lemaitre, to say nothing of Polkinghorne and Freeman Dyson and many others besides.
"The foundation," Horgan notes, "recently named 12 recipients of its 2006 journalism fellowship, and I suspect that some of the new fellows have doubts about jumping on the Templeton bandwagon. The foundation could assuage the misgivings of those and other grantees with a few simple acts."
Horgan then goes on to offer the foundation his sage advice. I would suggest that it simply ask the granteess to examine their consciences before they accept the check.
Hi, Frank,
ReplyDeleteYour post illustrates, all too well, that there remains in the minds of some (on BOTH sides) an insurmountable barrier between science and religion ... and that's a shame ...
Personally, I believe that the two are not seperate and exclusive, but, rather, provide the means of asking two distinct sets of questions in an effort to solve a single problem ...
And they share a motive ... the desire to know, to understand and to beieve ...
You cite Gregor Mendel and Georges Lemaitre ... and there are many other, lesser-known examples ... there is a kernel of truth at the root of the stereotype of a country vicar gathering samples of beetles in his spare time ... simultaneosly documenting the glory of God's creation, and the working of Darwin's theory of evolution ... God's "inordinate fondness for beetles" ...
Hi Jeff,
ReplyDeleteThe point you mention is the one I've been trying to get at on this blog: that if this latest "dispute between science and religion" proves anything it is how much flabby thinking there is on both sides.
To give just one example: Richard Dawkins defines biology as "the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." Really? A bridge gives the appearance of having been designed for a purpose. And indeed it has been so designed and built accordingly. Living things do not look at all as if they were designed and made. Artifacts are designed and constructed. Living things are not artifacts. The very insertion of the design factor into this debate - which Dawkins clearly accepts - confuses the whole issue.
I completely agree with you that this whole debate is a shame. It is also a sham. If people want to get at the phenomenon that is religion they can start by reading Rudolf Otto's The Idea of the Holy. It isn't as if some serious field work on the subject hasn't been done.
I liked your posting about Mr Horgan's rather strange article. I could not quite see the point of what he was trying to get at. He took the money but regretted it (but as you say, did not return it). Then he "has a go" at other participants.
ReplyDeleteOh well.
My original mentor, the entomologist and zoologist J.W.S. Pringle, attended a conference funded by the Rev Sun Moon (have probably got the name wrong, but the followers are popularly known as "the Moonies"; you probably know who I mean). This sect funded conferences, and paid handsomely for scientists to attend. Pringle was attacked for going. I don't know what to think about this, really. Is it immoral to go to a conference if you don't agree with the ethics of the givers? What about the pharmaceutical industry then, nobody seems to have problems attending their meetings?
I don't know what Pringle thought about it all and I was far too much in awe of him to ask, but he seemed not in the least bothered by the criticisms. He was probably of the "never apologise, never explain" persuasion. And like Darwin, just wanted to be with his insects.
(Incidentally, Jeff's quote has surprised me as I often say it was Darwin who was "inordinately fond of beetles". I accept I am probably in error. Either way, Bonnie would not be too impressed).
But isn't it great that we all get along?
ReplyDeleteHi, Maxine,
ReplyDeleteThere is a story, anecdote, whatever, that an English cleric asked evolutionist J.B.S. Haldane what he could infer about the Creator from studying the works of nature. Haldane is said to have replied, that the Creator had "an inordinate fondness for beetles."
Where is Dave Lull when we need him?!
ReplyDeleteBut I am sure you are right, Jeff --- just the kind of thing JBS Haldane would have said. Have you read the biography of him by Ronald Clark?
Not only ever-reliable, but educative and entertaining to boot.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much, as ever, Dave.
All best
Maxine.
"Is Horgan actually suggesting that one cannot be both a believing Christian and a scientist?"
ReplyDeleteI think his point is more subtle: a researcher cannot claim the impartiality necessary to do science well if that researcher approaches a question with an incontrovertible (to his/her mind) agenda (or, as John points out, with an agenda imposed by funding sources). Certainly, any scientist approaches his/her problem with some set of commitments, but the mark of a true scientist, as opposed to an ideologue or an activist, is a willingness to abandon those commitments in the face of sufficient empirical evidence (if, for instance, someone were to find evidence for a static universe, she would tend to doubt her findings, but a scientist would be open to the possibility that her results are correct and eventually accept the better supported hypothesis). As I read it, John's argument is that certain religious positions (some forms of Christianity, for instance, including those held semi-publicly by the Templeton Foundation) preclude contradiction by observation and, by extension, one cannot hold such beliefs and be a practicing scientist, at least within the areas that fall under the domain of the religion (contrast, for instance, evolution, which seems to contradict religious origin accounts, with thermodynamics, which does not).
-Jim Weatherall
Assistant Director of the Center for Science Writings
Stevens Institute of Technology
I quite agree, Jim, that "a researcher cannot claim the impartiality necessary to do science well if that researcher approaches a question with an incontrovertible (to his/her mind) agenda..." Moreover, I suspect that John Polkinghorne has been fully able to do that. And I presume Mendel and Lemaitre were as well. I wonder if Richard Dawkins - who seems to have become more of a proselytizer than a scientist - can, presuming he does any actual science any more. Finally, it remains true that one should consider ethics before you take the money. Not take the money first and shed tears of regret afterwards. Perhaps you are right as to what Horgan meant. But what he said were things like this: "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." This certainly seems to imply that Morris' faith is somehow incompatible with practicing science.
ReplyDelete