Religions > Atheism > The Times April 17, 2006: "I'm so sorry, you fellows, but I always religiously avoid your sort", Science Notebook by Anjana Ahuja
| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Therion Ware" |
| Date: |
17 Apr 2006 01:35:48 AM |
| Object: |
The Times April 17, 2006: "I'm so sorry, you fellows, but I always religiously avoid your sort", Science Notebook by Anjana Ahuja |
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2137832,00.html
The Times April 17, 2006
I'm so sorry, you fellows, but I always religiously avoid your sort
Science Notebook by Anjana Ahuja
EVERYONE HAS A fleeting fantasy in which they are reborn as, say, a
Hollywood star or a stupendously wealthy author. My occasional fancy
is that I am a science reporter of some repute, bringing
beard-tuggingly important matters — such as the dialogue between
science and religion — to the attention of readers and
opinion-formers.
So I flirted with the idea of applying for a Templeton-Cambridge
Journalism Fellowship in Science and Religion. The placement at
Cambridge University would undoubtedly be fun — I’d spend two months
listening to scientists, religious scholars and philosophers. I’d hang
out with serious thinkers, meet high-minded hacks, my credentials as
an intellectual would soar. With a stipend of about £10,000, plus book
allowance and travel expenses, it wouldn’t be a badly paid gig,
either.
The only hitch, apart from selling the jolly to my editors, was the
origin of the cheque. The John Templeton Foundation is an enormously
wealthy charity that awards an annual prize of $1.4 million for
Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities (Sir
John Templeton, a financier, insisted that the prize should be more
lucrative than the Nobel Prize).
Over the past decade Templeton prizes have gone to scientists who have
explored such concepts as nothingness, infinity, and multiple
universes, exactly the kind of “wow” subjects that inspire awed
contemplation. Next month the Cambridge University cosmologist John D.
Barrow will receive his cheque at Buckingham Palace; he is praised for
work that “has illuminated understanding of the Universe and cast the
intrinsic limitations of scientific inquiry into sharp relief” .
Ah, yes, the “limitations of scientific enquiry”. This quote hints at
the religious agenda of the foundation, which has become a significant
donor to such institutions as Oxford University, where it is funding
research to discover whether religious belief can reduce pain. The
foundation is also paying for studies about the effect of prayer on
health. That would be fine, were it not for the aims stated on the
section of its website devoted to spirituality and health: “. . . the
foundation hopes to contribute to the reintegration of faith into
modern life”.
The foundation wisely rejects intelligent design but nevertheless
emphasises the metaphysical dimension of any funded research: “What
can research tell us about God, about the nature of divine action in
the world, about meaning and purpose?” it asks. Which, to my reading,
assumes the existence of both God and divine action.
Anyway, at the end of their jaunt, Templeton journalism fellows are
“encouraged to write and publish news stories, editorial pieces, or
magazine articles ... contributing to a more informed public
discussion of the relationship between science and religion”.
Now, consider that one of my more memorable articles about just this
topic contended that illusions of the divine may point to mental
illness. Another article rubbished a study that claimed that childless
couples could double their chances of IVF success by getting strangers
to pray for them. Neither study was associated in any way with the
foundation, but I wonder whether it would have considered those pieces
“more informed”?
My vague misgivings have now been articulated by John Horgan, a
science writer and agnostic who became a 2005 Templeton fellow. “I
rationalised that taking the foundation’s money did not mean that it
had bought me, as long as I remained true to my views,” he wrote last
week in The Chronicle of Higher Education, the US equivalent of The
Times Higher (click here to read his essay).
So, what happened when Horgan told a foundation official that he had
no wish for religion and science to be reconciled? “She told us that .
.. . she didn’t think someone with those opinions should have accepted
a fellowship.”
I applaud those writers who become Templeton fellows; I commend their
desire to learn more and I wish them well in their efforts to keep an
open mind. In truth, I envy them their two-month summer sabbatical.
Perhaps I lack backbone, but I worry that accepting the foundation’s
largesse might make me a bit soft. And a soft reporter is the last
thing needed by infertile couples who wrongly believe that a
stranger’s prayer will help to bring them a child.
--
"Do unto others as you would have then do unto you".
- attrib: Pauline Réage.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: The Times April 17, 2006: "I'm so sorry, you fellows, but I always religiously avoid your sort", Science Notebook by Anjana Ahuja |
17 Apr 2006 03:53:21 AM |
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Therion Ware wrote:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2137832,00.html
The Times April 17, 2006
snip interesting reading..
The foundation wisely rejects intelligent design but nevertheless
emphasises the metaphysical dimension of any funded research: "What
can research tell us about God, about the nature of divine action in
the world, about meaning and purpose?" it asks. Which, to my reading,
assumes the existence of both God and divine action.
snip
And people wonder why I've discarded the US press for the European..
-Panama Floyd, Atl.
aa#2015, Member Knights of BAAWA!
EAC Department of Telepropaganda
"..the prayer cloth of one aeon is the doormat of the next."
-Mark Twain
Religious societies are *less* moral than secular ones:
http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html
.
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| User: "Therion Ware" |
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| Title: Re: The Times April 17, 2006: "I'm so sorry, you fellows, but I always religiously avoid your sort", Science Notebook by Anjana Ahuja |
17 Apr 2006 05:10:54 AM |
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On the auspictious date of 17 Apr 2006 01:53:21 -0700,
panamfloyd@hotmail.com said unto the multitude in message-id
<1145264001.901130.169280@z34g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>:
Therion Ware wrote:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2137832,00.html
The Times April 17, 2006
snip interesting reading..
The foundation wisely rejects intelligent design but nevertheless
emphasises the metaphysical dimension of any funded research: "What
can research tell us about God, about the nature of divine action in
the world, about meaning and purpose?" it asks. Which, to my reading,
assumes the existence of both God and divine action.
snip
And people wonder why I've discarded the US press for the European..
Alas, it's not all that good....
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,542-2137835,00.html
Leading articles
The Times April 17, 2006
Enough in itself
Christianity should not become the latest quarter for conspiracy
theorists
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Easter Day sermon yesterday was unusual
in character. Added to the appropriate, if conventional, themes that
he raised was an explicit plea for Christianity to be kept free of the
conspiracy theorists.
Although there are obvious books and manuscripts to which he referred
— The Da Vinci Code and the recent supposed Gospel of Judas — it is
less particular works than a broader attitude that Dr Williams has
identified. A spirit of the age exists in which it is automatically
assumed that those in authority are invariably “hiding something” —
whether their own misdeeds or something outlandish, such as the
existence of the Roswell aliens — from the public-at-large.
Dr Williams is, alas, right to be concerned about this trend. The
distinction between fiction, fact and “fiction based on fact” has
become increasingly murky. Not only is it sometimes claimed that Jesus
did not die on the Cross but lived on, either with Mary Magdalene or
in some other circumstance, it is seriously asserted that senior
figures in the churches have known about this for centuries and
deliberately sought to conceal it from the faithful. That such notions
were at times popular in the Middle Ages is not surprising. That they
have enjoyed a second wind in an information age when it is surely
evident that such vast plots or schemes would be impossible is
astonishing. The cynicism that is applied to politicians should not be
exported to organised religion.
The fragile nature of our knowledge of the historical Jesus will
always allow for competing interpretations of His life, death and life
again, and no amount of biblical scholarship will settle every
question. Indeed, if such matters could be concluded, then faith
itself would be irrelevant.
It is not as if Christianity requires complex and conspiratorial
elaboration to acquire a deeper meaning. It is more than enough by
itself. There is, after all, an existing conspiracy at the heart of
the Easter story. One in which established religious leaders who felt
threatened by the arrival of a new and radical teacher, a Roman
governor concerned with maintaining his authority in a difficult and
distant province, and an errant disciple easily lured by material
reward, combine to press false charges against an innocent man and put
Him to death, confident that by His Crucifixion the awkward individual
and His challenge would disappear.
That it did not is, as Pope Benedict XVI observed in his first and
well- received Easter Day sermon, the “central mystery” of
Christianity. Something so profound and spectacular occurred during
the time between the witnessed death of Jesus and His equally
witnessed return that the conspiracy against Him and what He advanced
not merely failed but was swept away.
It is what has inspired so many to celebrate the risen Christ in so
many ways over this weekend: whether in the shape of traditional
services, in places such as Canterbury Cathedral or St Peter’s Square,
or in newer forms such as the Manchester Passion, a display of
extraordinary energy, imagination and innovation.
There is enough in the code of orthodox Christianity for men and women
to continue to contemplate until the end of time. It is more
compelling than the material in any contemporary yet ultimately
trivial bestseller.
--
"Do unto others as you would have then do unto you".
- attrib: Pauline Réage.
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| User: "JPG" |
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| Title: Re: The Times April 17, 2006: "I'm so sorry, you fellows, but I always religiously avoid your sort", Science Notebook by Anjana Ahuja |
17 Apr 2006 12:49:24 PM |
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On Mon, 17 Apr 2006 11:10:54 +0100, Therion Ware
<autodelete@city-of-dis.com> wrote:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,542-2137835,00.html
Leading articles
The Times April 17, 2006
Enough in itself
What disturbed me was that the AofC was talking about these
"conspiracy theories" casting doubt upon the Bible's accuracy. My
irony meter met its antimatter equivalent when I read that.
JPG
aa 1919
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: The Times April 17, 2006: "I'm so sorry, you fellows, but I always religiously avoid your sort", Science Notebook by Anjana Ahuja |
18 Apr 2006 01:34:42 AM |
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Therion Ware wrote:
On the auspictious date of 17 Apr 2006 01:53:21 -0700,
panamfloyd@hotmail.com said unto the multitude in message-id
<1145264001.901130.169280@z34g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>:
Therion Ware wrote:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2137832,00.html
The Times April 17, 2006
snip interesting reading..
The foundation wisely rejects intelligent design but nevertheless
emphasises the metaphysical dimension of any funded research: "What
can research tell us about God, about the nature of divine action in
the world, about meaning and purpose?" it asks. Which, to my reading,
assumes the existence of both God and divine action.
snip
And people wonder why I've discarded the US press for the European..
Alas, it's not all that good....
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,542-2137835,00.html
snip
Yeah, but it's still better than what we get here. Even cranks like the
one defending xianity is actually discussing an issue. The US media is
all explosions and murders. There's no effort to inform the public
anymore, just the desire to appeal to their base instincts.
-Panama Floyd, Atl.
aa#2015, Member Knights of BAAWA!
EAC Martian Commander
"..the prayer cloth of one aeon is the doormat of the next."
-Mark Twain
Religious societies are *less* moral than secular ones:
http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html
.
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