Pretty positive (I'd say absurdly white-washed) article, but it gives you an idea of what forces are behind ID and religious conservative influence on science, particularly in sociological and psychological fields. I didn't quote the whole thing because it's a registration-only article, but it goes on to quote a Biblical parable, and earlier it goes on about how his choice to live in a Bahamas tax shelter makes him "frugal" rather than making him a tax evader who is refusing to help support the very society that nurtured him and made it possible for him to be so fucking rich in the first place.NO BILL GATES
Unlike many high-profile philanthropists trying to cure the world's ills — such as the attempt by Bill and Melinda Gates to use their Microsoft millions to eradicate malaria — Sir John prefers a more oblique approach: Help people through the power of positive thought and love. It's a philosophy grounded in the New Thought Movement — a loose affiliation of U.S. denominations known as the Unity Church that believes people can conquer adversity and sickness through prayer and positive thinking.
Now deeply embedded in the American psyche, New Thought's influence can be seen everywhere from the Christian Science church to Oprah Winfrey. But Sir John's interest in it sprang from his mother. A university-educated free spirit who financed a Christian missionary in China, Vella Handly Templeton provided the childhood subscription to Modern Thought, the magazine created by religious mystic and church founder Charles Fillmore, that fostered her son's lifelong fascination with the power of the divine.
"In general, the problem with our culture is narcissism, solipsism and selfishness," says Steven Post, who is also a professor of bioethics at Case Western Reserve University. "Sir John has always said to me, 'Just love and let everything else take care of itself.' He agrees with Abe Lincoln, who said we have to focus not on what we know, but on what we don't know.
"It's a very different approach to that of Bill Gates, but in 100 years, they're going to look back and say, 'Bill Gates did some great things, but Sir John was a visionary.' We can cure all the malaria we want, but if we're living brutal, nasty, empty lives, it will only do so much good."
Based just outside Philadelphia in Conshohocken, Pa., the charitable foundation created to generate all this positive thinking is run by the great benefactor's son, Jack, a former pediatric surgeon and born-again Christian who seasons even banal conversation with religious references.
Amid an intellectual climate in which secularists such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins are waging war on evangelical Christians and Muslim extremists alike, the foundation hands out its $60-million each year for the study of everything from intelligent design (the latest take on Biblical creationism) to evolutionary psychology and the social and psychological effects of forgiveness, altruism and happiness.
Despite its Christian roots, the Templeton Prize for "progress toward research or discoveries about spiritual realities" has gone to thinkers of many religious and ideological stripes, from Mother Teresa (the first recipient in 1973) and evangelist Billy Graham (1982) to Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1983) and Charles W. (Chuck) Colson (1993), the Watergate conspirator who did jail time and now runs the world's largest prison-outreach program .
"I grew up as a Presbyterian," Sir John explained during a rare interview in 2005. "Presbyterians thought the Methodists were wrong. Catholics thought all Protestants were wrong. The Jews thought the Christians were wrong.
"So, what I'm financing is humility. I want people to realize that you shouldn't think you know it all."
Winner Charles Taylor, for example, says he is expected simply to keep doing what he does best. "My work for the Templeton prize is just about everything I've ever done, thought and written," explains the emeritus professor of political science and philosophy at McGill University.
He and the mysterious money man have yet to meet, but Prof. Taylor — currently working with historian Gérard Bouchard on a year-long study of Quebec's relationship with its religious and cultural minorities — says that "Sir John has a very wide, broad view of what spirituality can be.
"Unlike Bill Gates, who likely woke up with money one day and thought to himself, 'Now what do I do with this?' you can see Sir John wanted to make all this money because he had an interest in the realm of ideas from very early on. It's a very different psychological type from the average tycoon."
UNLIMITED LOVE
Different but effective. The Templeton influence on the cash-starved world of ideas is profound and growing. In addition to the big prize and millions more a year in smaller personal grants, his foundation finances big-ticket agencies such as Prof. Post's Institute for Research on Unlimited Love (dedicated to "altruism, compassion and service") and the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania (promoting "scientific study of the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive").
Led by bestselling author and self-help guru Martin Seligman, a past president of the American Psychological Association, the centre has been able to move "positive psychology" from the New Age periphery to the academic mainstream. It's now one of the more popular undergrad courses at Harvard.
As well, the Association of American Medical Colleges credits the Templeton influence with paving the way for a course on spirituality and medicine that is now part of the standard curriculum at most U.S. medical schools.
And yet James Coyne, a respected psychologist also on staff at the University of Pennsylvania, would rather the lines between faith and science not be blurred.
He has conducted research that refutes the findings of Templeton-financed studies that claim forgiveness and "infinite love" have a healing effect on the sick. Prof. Coyne has found instead that such enforced positivism can actually have an adverse impact on the ill, which flies in the face of a central Templeton belief: that an individual's ability to think his or her way out of adversity builds character and is good for the soul.
"To me, it just makes for bad science," Prof. Coyne explains over the phone from Philadelphia. "As an agnostic, I acknowledge there's a lot I don't know. But at the same time, you have to wonder: If there is a God out there, would she really want to reveal her existence by proving in a randomized trial that some people do better than others through the power of prayer?"
Closeted away on his tropic isle, John Templeton seems undeterred by critics or academic in-fighting. He no longer gives interviews, letting his money do the talking.
In 2005, he sold off one of his larger personal funds and pumped another half-billion dollars into the foundation, rekindling fears that he's a secret social conservative and prompting Business Week to describe his efforts as "the most quixotic mission being taken on by any major American philanthropist."
Prof. Coyne accuses the foundation of being more results-oriented than open-ended. "They've essentially bought off the field of psychology," he says. "They wine and dine editors of journals and get better treatment in being published, and they structure grants in a way that's very tempting, if not outright corrupting, to young academics.
"If it were a drug company giving away the money, there would be public outrage."
Such charges irritate Charles Taylor. "It's utterly insulting to think that anyone who got this prize in natural science was bought over," he fires back. "A scientific culture is very badly conceived if it wants to set aside spiritual concerns."
It's true that Mr. Templeton's philanthropic vision appears to be a mass of contradictions. A devout Christian, he started each morning of his working life with a group prayer, but he also has long sought understanding through cross-cultural religious study — witness a book he wrote entitled Agape Love: A Tradition Found in Eight World Religions.
Yet, despite all this spirituality, he remains very much the hard-nosed financier, grounded in the real world and determined, some say, to find a scientific explanation for the existence of God. As he explained to Business Week, in trying to overcome the conflict between science and spirit, "what I'm trying to say is, 'Don't argue — maybe you're both right.' "
He lives in a modest Bahamas house he has owned for years. According to a foundation spokesman, he is frail, having outlived two wives and one of his three children (his daughter died during a routine medical procedure), but still has his wits about him.
"I saw him a year ago in Nassau," recalls Prof. Post. "I had breakfast with him and he was every bit as inspiring as ever.
"I can say without exaggeration, he is the kindest, humblest, most decent man I've ever met. I've never heard him say a bad word about anyone, which doesn't mean he agrees with everyone. He is a supremely loving human being, and at the same time, he's just a boy from Tennessee."
He decries people like the Gates Foundation for making a real, substantial difference while he pours his money into "spiritual" charities, ie- religious propaganda. People are fucking DYING out there and he thinks that it's a complete waste of time to try and help them. Instead, he pays people to publish bullshit religious articles about the power of prayer. Thanks, Sir John Templefuck.
