THE
TEMPLETON FOUNDATION: A SKEPTIC'S TAKE
(JOHN HORGAN:) A
year ago, I faced an ethical dilemma. The John Templeton Foundation
was inviting me to be one of the first batch of Templeton-Cambridge
Journalism Fellows in Science and Religion. 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 — 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.
So what did I do? I went to Cambridge, of course. I rationalized that taking
the foundation's money did not mean that it had bought me, as long as I remained
true to my views. Yes, I used the same justification as a congressman accepting
a golf junket from the lobbyist Jack Abramoff. But I'd already written freelance
pieces for two Templeton publications, so declining this more-lucrative gig seemed
silly. In for a dime, in for a dollar.
Then in January, a journalist considering applying for a Templeton journalism
fellowship called and asked me about my experience. I found myself trying a bit
too hard to justify my acceptance of the fellowship, even as I told the journalist
how much I'd enjoyed it. I decided to write this essay to exorcise my lingering
guilt, and perhaps to help others wondering whether to join the large and fast-growing
list of Templeton donees, which includes many of the world's leading scientists
and institutions.
A devout Presbyterian born and raised in Tennessee, John M. Templeton launched
the extremely successful Templeton mutual funds in the 1950s and became a billionaire.
He started spending serious money to promote his religious values in 1972, when
he established the Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries
About Spiritual Realities. The prize, which Templeton stipulated should exceed
the Nobel Prize in monetary value, now totals almost $1.5-million and is awarded
in Buckingham Palace. Previous winners include Mother Teresa, Billy Graham, Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn, and Charles W. Colson, the born-again Watergate convict. Over the
past 20 years, most of the winners have been scientists who see inklings of the
divine in nature, including Paul Davies, Freeman J. Dyson, John C. Polkinghorne,
and Charles Hard Townes. This year's winner, John D. Barrow, a cosmologist at
the University of Cambridge, continues in that vein.
Knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1987, Templeton established the Templeton Foundation
that same year to support a broad range of activities aimed at finding common
ground between science and religion. So far the foundation has spent more than
$250-million on prizes, academic programs, publications, broadcasts, lectures,
conferences, and research on topics such as the neurobiology and genetics of
religious belief; the evolutionary origins of altruism; and the medical benefits
of prayer, church attendance, and forgiveness.
Sir John recently added $550-million to the foundation, boosting its endowment
to $1.1-billion. Foundation officials plan to double their annual outlays, which
now total $60-million for more than 300 projects.
By all accounts, Sir John is a charming, open-minded man, who emphasizes the
importance of humility in all spheres of life. But at 93, he has yielded the
day-to-day leadership of the foundation to his son John Jr., a pediatric surgeon
who quit his practice in 1995 to become the organization's president. An evangelical
Christian, "Jack" is the chairman of Let Freedom Ring Inc., which raises
funds for conservative causes. He has reportedly contributed to both presidential
campaigns of George Bush, whose relations with the scientific community are arguably
the worst of any president in history.
Nevertheless the nation's leading scientific organization — the American
Association for the Advancement of Science — and scores of research
universities are Templeton Foundation beneficiaries. Largely as a result of Templeton
grants, some 90 American medical schools now offer courses on links between health
and spirituality. Templeton funds have even trickled down to atheists like the
physicist Steven Weinberg, who once proclaimed during a AAAS conference sponsored
by the foundation in 1999, "I am all in favor of a dialogue between science
and religion, but not a constructive dialogue."
Weinberg has not held his tongue as a result of pocketing Templeton cash, but
other recipients have. In March 2003, I attended a Templeton-sponsored conference
at Stanford University titled "Becoming Human: Brain, Mind, and Emergence" (my
expenses were paid not by the foundation but by a magazine). The meeting was
supposed to be a dialogue between neuroscientists, such as V.S. Ramachandran,
Robert M. Sapolsky, and Antonio R. Damasio, and religious figures, including
the theologian Nancey Murphy and the Australian archbishop George Pell. But the
dialogue was nominal; each side listened politely to the other's presentations
without really commenting on them. Several areligious scientists told me privately
that they did not want to challenge the beliefs of religious speakers for fear
of offending them and the Templeton hosts.
At least one scientist has publicly refused to accept money from the foundation.
Sean M. Carroll, a physicist at the University of Chicago, declined an invitation
to speak at a Templeton-sponsored conference held last fall, which featured 16
Nobel laureates and was endorsed by the American Physical Society. Carroll explained
in his blog that "the entire purpose of the Templeton Foundation is to blur
the line between straightforward science and explicitly religious activity, making
it seem like the two enterprises are part of one big undertaking." An atheist,
Carroll did not want his name to be "implicitly associated with an effort
I find to be woefully misguided." Yet Carroll admitted that he had been
tempted by the foundation's offer of a $2,000 honorarium.
Two years ago I faced a similar temptation, when an editor for a Templeton journal
asked me to write an essay. Before accepting the assignment — which
seemed reasonably interesting and, more important, paid well — I revealed
my reservations about the foundation's religious agenda. The editor turned out
to be an agnostic who shared my reservations, particularly about the leadership
of Jack Templeton; money persuaded me and the editor to swallow our misgivings.
I have now written three articles for Templeton publications, for a total of
$8,800.
My ambivalence about the foundation came to a head during my fellowship in Cambridge
last summer. The British biologist Richard Dawkins, whose participation in the
meeting helped convince me and other fellows of its legitimacy, was the only
speaker who denounced religious beliefs as incompatible with science, irrational,
and harmful. 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.
Some of the Christian speakers' views struck me as inconsistent, to say the least.
None of them supported intelligent design, the notion that life is in certain
respects irreducibly complex and hence must have a divine origin, and several
of them denounced it. 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. That stance echoes the view of the foundation,
which over the last year has taken pains to distance itself from the American
intelligent-design movement.
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.
The Templeton prize-winners John Polkinghorne and John Barrow argued that the
laws of physics seem fine-tuned to allow for the existence of human beings, which
is the physics version of intelligent design. The physicist F. Russell Stannard,
a member of the Templeton Foundation Board of Trustees, contended that prayers
can heal the sick — 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.
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 — given
all the problems caused by religion throughout human history — 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. So much for an open exchange of views.
Still I can't regret spending three weeks in Cambridge classrooms, pubs, and
punts, jawing with brainy folks about the meaning of life. The highlight for
me was getting to know the nine other fellows, who represented such big-time
media as National Public Radio, ABC News, the BBC, The New York Times, and The
Washington Post (I was the only freelancer there). About half were believers,
and half were skeptics like me.
My conversations with the faithful deepened my appreciation of why some intelligent,
well-educated people embrace religion. One reporter discussed the experience
of speaking in tongues, and another described having an intimate relationship
with Jesus. My convictions did not change, but others' did. At least one fellow
said that his faith was wavering as a result of Dawkins's dissection of religion.
And if the Templeton Foundation can help bring about even such a tiny step toward
my vision of a world without religion, how bad can it be?
The foundation 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.
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 — at least in its traditional, supernatural manifestations — 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.
[Originally
published by The
Chronicle of Higher Education on April 7, 2006.]
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