I agree wholeheartedly with Andy Lawrence on this, and since this is the first time this has ever happened I thought I’d mark the occasion by reblogging his post…
Bit of a Twitter Buzz this morning about Martin Rees winning the Templeton Prize. For those who don't know, the Templeton Foundation is an organisation founded by billionaire John Templeton, to encourage open minded and progressive thinking in religion. In the 1980s they also started funding science, where they felt there was some philosophical (not necessarily directly religious) interest. Most interestingly, in 2006 they gave nine million dolla … Read More
via The e-Astronomer
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In the Dark 
April 6, 2011 at 2:49 pm
The Templeton Foundation is entitled to give its money to whoever it chooses, although we are free to comment on how closely the receptors match the Foundation’s criteria, and on that basis there have been some strange ‘winners’ of the Prize in the past. Rees’s Guardian interview is unintentionally hilarious – he obviously wasn’t deliberately trying to wind up the reporter by stonewalling, but I’ll bet he succeeded.
Rees’s “cultural Christianity” is the historical tail end of a very nasty phenomenon in which anybody who disagreed with Established churches over matters of faith were liable to execution. (To say that Jesus of Nazareth took a different attitude is an understatement.) I understand what motivates Dawkins, although he makes a lot of incorrect statements.
Neither are science and religion as disjoint as some would like. Largely they are, but they say opposite things about miracles.
Anton
April 7, 2011 at 9:34 am
Phillip
I couldn’t agree less with your comments. The “blame everything bad that’s ever happened on religion” argument just doesn’t hold water.
I don’t believe in God but I genuinely respect other people’s beliefs and moreover am interested in what they say, even if I don’t understand where they’re coming from.
There’s absolutely no reason why John Barrow (who is a Christian) or George Ellis (who is a Quaker) or Martin Rees (who is an atheist) should turn down the Templeton Prize. It’s not given “for religion” but for promoting dialogue. I think that’s a good thing.
A person I respect enormously is George Ellis. When he won the Templeton Prize he used a large part of the money not for personal things, but to set up funds to allow disadvantaged students to study at university in South Africa. That’s what I call integrity.
If I won the Templeton Prize (which is an outcome of vanishingly small probability) I would happily accept it, be glad of the publicity it generated to help promote dialogue, and then spend it on things I believe in.
Peter
April 7, 2011 at 4:34 pm
As I recall from the interview, Martin Rees declined to say whether he was already a millionaire.
I don’t think Abba would have been doing anything morally wrong by taking that billion. It is the world that is mad when such money is on offer to four musicians – just as I don’t blame footballers for the ridiculous salaries they get. It is a (secular, stir, stir) society that is willing to pay them that much which is up the pole.
April 7, 2011 at 5:50 pm
Phillip: Please stop talking about ‘religion’ as if all religions are equivalent, when their scriptures are incompatible at very basic levels. I can speak personally for only one theistic religion but I assure you of those incompatibilities. To assert that these religions are all the same is to claim that you know better than their adherents what these scriptures are really saying, even though those adherents spend a lifetime investigating them.
Beyond that it is worth looking at what those scriptures actually say. I can think of one major theistic religion which tells its adherents to kill everybody who won’t accept it. My own (Christianity) commands me to offer people informed choice and leave it at that.
The church has killed people too? By the Bible’s own criteria that wasn’t the church, just people claiming to be – and many of the very people they put to death were the scriptural church, such as the Lollards in England and the Waldenses around the Alps, both in mediaeval times. Authentic Christianity, the kind about which Tertullian recorded that people were saying, “See… how they [Christians] love one another… and how they are ready to die for each other”, has always been a counter-culture. (Quote from Apologeticus, ch. 39; 197AD.)
You have described yourself on this blog as formerly a “fire-breathing Christian”. That desciption makes me wonder whether you were sadly misled over what the Christian faith entailed.
‘Religion’ is simply a theistic faith system and its practice. But there are plenty of non-theistic faith systems, and everybody has to start somewhere, ie believe something that they can’t prove from more basic axioms. Western secularism is basically the claim that man is perfectible by social engineering (cf by divine cleansing). Within its framework we have seen two world wars and communist enslavement. Unless sin is dealt with then it will always find something to alight on.
Anton
April 7, 2011 at 6:01 pm
I just wanted to add, more briefly, that it’s not religions that do bad things to people, it’s other people.
April 8, 2011 at 4:39 am
Has Martin Rees stated that he’s an atheist? I got the impression from things I’ve heard him say and write that he is an agnostic, or possibly a “mild Christian (Church of England)”, but someone who prefers to keep his religious beliefs to himself.
I agree with you Peter – it is of course people who do bad things to each other, not religions. Much good has been done in the name of religions, as has much bad. Wasn’t it Poincare who said “humanity is both the glory and the scum of the Universe”. That is true for religious people too, one can find bad people who claim to be Christian or Muslim or Hindu, and one can find good people. I don’t think it is religions which make people good or bad.
I remember once waiting for a train in the concourse area of Charing Cross Station, and someone asking me if I would give some money to charity (I can’t remember the cause). I was happy to give a few pounds, and when I did the person asked me whether I was a Christian, I found this to be a very strange question, as if being a Christian was a pre-requisite to being charitable.
April 8, 2011 at 7:28 pm
I can remember Martin Rees saying something in conversation many years ago that I think was a statement that he was an atheist, although I do not recall the exact words: it is possible that he said that he was not a believer, or did not believe in God. I therefore think that he was atheist, but cannot exclude the possibility that he was an agnostic (two rather different viewpoints).
April 8, 2011 at 5:18 pm
It was Peter who said that people (not religions) kill people, and technically that’s true but I think it’s a bit glib when the scriptures of one religion say kill all who don’t convert and another says don’t. I am willing to take responsibility for my choice of faith, so please address your response to that comment to Peter, not me…
I didn’t say that secularism ‘led’ to WW1&2; I’m saying that those wars happened in a basically secular culture. Secularists are quick to blame the religious for many mediaeval wars so let’s have a bit of symmetry.
Who is a true Christian? Even Satan believes that the Bible is true – he just hates it – so I can’t go with intellectual assent to biblical assertions as the sole criterion. An element of commitment to following the message of Christ, as found in the gospels, is also involved: which is why I said what I did.
Anton
April 8, 2011 at 7:21 pm
I’ll just note that the “Ads by Google” space above these comments is displaying for me now:
“Kabbalistic Astrology
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“Show My Sign.”
🙂
April 8, 2011 at 8:14 pm
Unfortunately I don’t get any royalties.
April 8, 2011 at 10:30 pm
Perhaps Bryn is using Google chrome? It also tells them where people have been surfing.
April 8, 2011 at 10:54 pm
WordPress sometimes (but only sometimes) shows adverts immediately below “Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)”. It is now showing one for audio books. I’m using Firefox.
I presume that is how WordPress makes money (and profit) to run its service.
April 8, 2011 at 8:14 pm
My statement may well have been glib, but the point behind it was intended to be that whatever the message of the religion itself there’s always the danger that people will distort it for their own ends. I have a limited knowledge of Christianity, but it does seem clear to me that there are many that wilfully represent the Gospels in order to pursue an agenda which has nothing to do with their true meaning.
April 8, 2011 at 10:28 pm
Peter: We’re not too far apart. the parable of the Good Samaritan that Jesus told in Luke 10 is that unbelievers can behave better than believers.
April 8, 2011 at 10:37 pm
“many wars were (and still are) fought in the name of religion, while I can’t think of any war fought in the name of secularism”
Again, religions are not all the same. But in answer to your implied question, try the civil war known as the French Revolution.
April 11, 2011 at 5:47 pm
[…] particularly interesting timing after the discussion of religion and science that arose after I reblogged a post by Andy Lawrence about the Templeton […]