There was a lot of ballyhoo when the Templeton Foundation launched its “Big Questions Online” website in 2010. Rod Dreher was in charge (and blogging), and, by promising to pay handsomely for articles, they solicited a bunch of accommodationist scholars to osculate the rump of faith. I always thought of the site as sort of a BioLogos For Methodists.
I’ve visited there from time to time, and I’m happy to report that nothing has been put up at the site since last October, and very little since the middle of 2011. Last year Rod Dreher left Templeton as communications director to return to writing. “Big Questions” is dead. Although the site was a source of endless accommodationist LOLs for me, it’s better off dead than as a living source of unintended humor.
But the site’s logo, which says a lot about the Templeton Foundation’s priorities, is still at the top:
Lolz. Maybe the questions got too big even for jeezuz
Though I had the site bookmarked, I had not noticed its demise. I guess that shows how rarely I visit it.
MOMa.
Much-overlapping magisteria.
Dr. Coyne’s term is “COMA”: Completely Overlapping MAgisteria.
Maybe reviving “Big Questions” is a project for Alain de Botton.
If you cross-relate the items on the logo, you get religion hitched to markets and science hitched to morals. Could be!
I read it like: “Science is to Religion as Markets are to Morals”. Could be, no?
(forgot the damn subscription check box)
Any system based of usury is immoral. If I “share” a bushel of wheat with you, should I demand 2 bushels back within a Procrustean payment schedule? 4 bushels? Garrett Hardin’s PPCC ethics of the commons: Privatize-the-Profits: Commonize the Costs.
What is “markets” doing in there with the rest of them? Is part of their mission showing that capitalism is as totally compatible with Christianity as science?
For that matter, shouldn’t they have just gone with a trinity here instead?
Or maybe not. This way they get to sneak a little Greek Cross into the logo.
Now, I looked at it and saw DIVIDING lines, not joins.
In my mind, that logo read as: “These four things never the twain shall meet”
which, in case it isn’t obvious, is quite ironic I think, given their stated “mission”.
Exactly my thought.
I don’t know if you want to compete with PZ in the poll-crashing business, but there’s a doozy in my hometown paper: Should the Catholic Church be allowed to refuse medical care that includes birth control, etc.?
http://www.news-sentinel.com/section/OPINION
Have fun.
That’s a poorly worded poll, as most of these are:
“Should the Catholic church be able to refuse government health care that allows sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs and contraception?”
The correct answer is “yes…provided that they don’t accept any government funds.”
no, the correct answer is:
They have to abide by whatever secular laws exist on the books wherever their churches exist.
If, say, a “moral” decision to avoid an abortion is forced in a case where the mother’s life is at stake, and she dies, in the states a person who made that decision could be charged with manslaughter.
so, other than the overriding SECULAR laws, sure, they can make whatever “moral” decisions they wish.
it’s got nothing to do with whether or not they receive government money.
and by churches I mean hospitals.
They don’t pay taxes, that is acceptance of government funding.
Perhaps they are waiting for a revelation.
…or pining for the fjords?
Biologos wouldn’t “voom” if you put 10,000 volts through it!
…if it wasn’t nailed to the cross it’d be pushing up daisies.
ha!
No can haz Hooj Kweshuns?
Actually I always felt that was “Big Questions – for Small Minds”. But that is so … strident.
What a stupid logo.
And so grossly transparent in hypocrisy.
But perhaps they didn’t mean a cross? Perhaps it is a chart of Mendelian descent? 🙂