Templeton jumps the shark—again

October 13, 2015 • 12:00 pm

I keep hearing from Templeton that I’ve severely misjudged them—that they’re really about science and not woo. (I don’t think they like the way I described them in Faith versus Fact.) And I keep waiting patiently for them to keep their promise deep-six the woo. I’m sure that, like the promised “research” of the Discovery Institute, those changes are right around the corner.

But how can I believe their claims of “we’re off in a different direction now” when I get announcements like this, sent by a reader What’s below is sadly typical of much of Templeton’s activity, and comes from an email sent to Oxford University’s Department of Philosophy mailing list (my emphasis)

Essay prize: Metaphysics of the Trinity

The Metaphysics of Entanglement project, based in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Oxford and directed by Dr [NAME REDACTED TO AVOID EMBARRASSING THE PARTY IN CHARGE], offers a series of essay prizes open to students and early career researchers.

The 2016 prize is run in conjunction with the project’s conference on ‘The Metaphysics of the Trinity: New Directions’, taking place from March 14th – 16th 2016 at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. The winning essay or essays will be presented at this conference. Details of the conference can be found here.

The proceedings of the conference will be published, edited through the research group, and it is expected that the winning essay will be published with the invited papers.

Submission requirements:

  1. Submissions are invited from postgraduate students and from early career researchers (understood as being within 8 years of receipt of PhD, though exceptions will be considered – please email for advice in the latter case). Since it is expected that the winning essay will be published with the invited papers, entries should not be under consideration for publication elsewhere.
  2. The topic of the prize is: The Metaphysics of the Trinity. We are especially interested in papers developing new approaches to the Trinity informed by contemporary metaphysics.
  3. The limit is 8000 words.
  4. Anonymised submissions should be sent to EMAIL REDACTED; on or before Monday 1st February 2016 (GMT).

The monetary value of the prize is £250. Papers will be judged by a blind peer-review process by relevant experts. Please contact EMAIL REDACTED with any queries.

The Project, and the prize, is funded by the generous support of the Templeton World Charity Foundation.

Yes, Templeton’s got its sticky hands into the Oxford Philosophy Department now! Note that this project is part of the Templeton World Charity Foundation (TWCF), one of three organizations funded by Sir John Templeton’s mutual-fund billions, the other two are the John Templeton Foundation (JTF) and the Templeton Religion Trust. Here is the “core funding area” of the TWCF:

The Core Funding Area that receives a majority of TWCF’s funding is Humility-in-Theology. This title does not refer to a conventional meaning of theology, but stems from Sir John’s belief that theology encompasses all the Big Questions about reality, the universe, and the nature of human beings. Projects suitable for funding under this area therefore include investigations about the Big Bang, origins of life, quantum theory, and ultimate reality. To find out more about Humility-in-Theology, click the link below:

The theme of “Big Questions” surfaces again in the statement of purpose of the more “science-y” part of Templeton’s activities, the John Templeton Foundation’s “Science and the Big Questions” funding arena. Note that the idea of “humility” also surfaces in the science wing:

In posing the Big Questions, Sir John stressed the need for humility and openness, and he saw the possibility of important contributions from various modes of inquiry. He especially wished to encourage researchers in the natural and human sciences to bring their rigorous methods to bear on the sorts of subjects that he identified, but he was also enthusiastic about the insights that might come from new approaches in philosophy and theology. Whatever the field, he expected research supported by the Foundation to conform to the highest intellectual standards.

For Sir John, the overarching goal of asking the Big Questions was to discover what he called “new spiritual information.” This term, to his mind, encompassed progress not only in our conception of religious truths but also in our understanding of the deepest realities of human nature and the physical world. As he wrote in the Foundation’s charter, he wanted to encourage every sort of opinion leader—from scientists and journalists to clergy and theologians—to become more open-minded about the possible character of ultimate reality and the divine.

 

Clearly, Templeton’s strategy is to farm out the more science-y stuff to the JTF itself, leave the woo and religion to the other two branches. This strategy, which deceives nobody, enables them to claim that they’re really interested in promoting science. But what they’re really interested in is fulfilling Sir John’s own Big Question: seeing how science can tell us about the divine.

My response is simple: it can’t. Can I haz Templeton Prize now?

But this essay project is small potatoes compared to the ongoing multi-year “The Metaphysics of the Trinity: New Directions” project at Oxford, with a big conference scheduled for next March at Corpus Christi College.  That must have cost Templeton some dosh, as three of the six “researchers” are being flown in from the U.S. Why isn’t this embarrassing endeavor run through the University’s Faculty of Theology and Religion at Oxford (yes, there is one, described as a “faculty of researchers”).  Aren’t philosophers supposed to be mostly atheists?

I mean, folks, seriously? Templeton wants new approaches to the Trinity informed by contemporary metaphysics? Why not new approaches to Shiva, Brahma, and Vishnu—the Trimurti of Hinduism—informed by metaphysics? Or new approaches to John Frum and Cargo Cults informed by metaphysics? Before one takes new metaphysical approaches to the Trinity, one should make damn sure there IS a Trinity.

It’s stuff like this that makes me not only doubtful of Templeton’s promises to reform, but also amazed that they have the guts to purvey woo like this—and pay people money for it! It’s a completely worthless exercise in making up stuff about Christianity. And what kind of “charity project” is this? Think of how many children’s lives could be saved if that money were donated to African relief instead! This “Metaphysics of Entanglement Project,” which lasts for several years, must have been expensive, and is part of Templeton’s World Charity Foundation,

Since I know that some of Templeton’s officials read this site, I ask them: how can you be serious about this stuff? Aren’t you ashamed to look at yourself in the mirror when you run competitions like this? And what happened to your repeated assurances that you’re moving away from this kind of stuff.

All I can say is that all three branches of Templeton’s activities appear to be an enormous waste of money. Imagine if all the brainpower and money devoted to reconciling science and religion, and trying to answer the Big Questions through either science and theology, were devoted to real humanitarian questions instead. Imagine no accommodationism: it’s easy if you try.

85 thoughts on “Templeton jumps the shark—again”

  2. I wonder what would happen if I (for example) were to submit a paper showing using (say) David Armstrong’s or Mario Bunge’s secular, materialist metaphysics that the trinity is impossible, according to contemporary metaphysics.

        1. Ha ha. It’s even funnier if you don’t know that “Comfort” refers to a person.

  4. I’m no fan of Templeton, but it seems a bit unfair to hold the JTF accountable for the activities of the TWCF simply because they were founded by the same guy. TWCF’s charter is explicitly theological, so of course that’s what they’re going to support; they don’t have any choice about that. Nor is it within the JTF’s remit to dissolve the TWCF; they’re independent foundations, not branches of the same parent organization. If you want Templeton to keep the science separate from the woo, how else would you structure it?

      1. I agree that JTF should get rid of the woo. I think it’s unreasonable to expect TWCF to get rid of the woo, since woo is their core mission. Nor is it reasonable to scold JTF for woo committed by TWCF.

  5. This is high quality woo. The mysteries of quantum physics meet the holy trinity. It’s all about entanglement! Now I see. That’s how the trio of the trinity interact! How action at a distance is possible. How Jesus can be in many places at once—trillions of places. It’s all obvious. Entanglement. That’s the answer. And all the time I thought it was 42.

    1. I think they’re on to something. Imagine you have two Judeochriston particles (theologians) of unmeasured belief; the only thing you know is that due to pair production, one is Christian and the other Jewish. If you measure the theological state of one by asking “is Jesus the Messiah,” you instantly know the theological state of the other. Measuring the Christian spin determines the Jewish spin.

      Where is my award? 🙂

  6. The link to the site had me baffled because it goes to a link called ‘metaphysics’, and that opens a blurb about quantum entanglement. I did some exploring elsewhere and learned that the term ‘metaphysics’ refers to the ultimate nature of reality. I had thought the term was pretty much a code word for spiritual bullsh*t, but I guess not.
    Anyway, so the ‘metaphysics of the trinity’ is pretty wacky. Its like wanting to explore the laws of thermodynamics in the X-men. I mean, really. When Cyclops takes off his glasses a powerful incinerative beam shoots from his eyes. Where did that energy come from? Someone should do some research on that.

    1. A lot of subjects in philosophy are tarnished by an overflow of flimsy schools of thought. Epistemology is about how we know what we know (or don’t know); meta-ethics is about the nature of good and bad, and what supports everyday moral codes and rituals across cultures; aesthetics is about the nature of beauty, the beholder, and everything in between. These are all great, meaty subjects, but there’s a reason religious apologists resort to philosophy in the face of science, and that’s because it has an unhealthy ratio of bad (or at least unpromising) answers to good ones.

      1. I also learned that a person who studies metaphysics (i.e., reality) is a ‘metaphysician’. That seemed really funny to me given my gut-level thinking that the term refers to woo only.

    3. I did some exploring elsewhere and learned that the term ‘metaphysics’ refers to the ultimate nature of reality.

      The term is something of a misnomer. Aristotle called this subject philosophy, but his writings on it were published after/behind his writings on physics and so got titled Metaphysics (literally translated, “after physics”). Middle Ages scholars then misinterpreted this to mean ‘subjects beyond the ken of physics’ but that’s not really what was meant. Its mainly just some of the big questions in philosophy, and I don’t think Aristotle or earlier writers ever intended to imply that these philosophical questions could not be approached via empiricism.

      1. From what I understand it is worse than that, the Metaphysics was named that because it was *after it on the shelf*.

        Empiricism *and* rationalism both, BTW: you need factual constraints and imaginative hypotheses, for example.

  7. Tom Paine’s description of theology was correct when he first uttered it and is still true.
    “The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion.”

    A writer ( I can’t) remember his name) wrote that “theology is not even a subject”. How can an intelligent person disagree with that?

      1. Even Pope Benedict told a version of that joke:

        APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO MÜNCHEN, ALTÖTTING AND REGENSBURG (SEPTEMBER 9-14, 2006)

        “The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties.
        …
        This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that
        did not exist: God.        “

  8. How about an essay on “The metaphysics of the imagination”. It asks one of the big questions which is frequently ignored. Is what we imagine real or merely an action of our brains? Do human beings have a way to reliably distinguish what is real from what is simply being imagined?

    A fifty word maximum should be sufficient for everyone to answer these questions to the satisfaction of the judges. Failure to adequately answer should be accompanied by the immediate cessation of your studies at the university level because after all; what would be the use?

  9. I used to defend Templeton a lot. (The coolest babysitter ever I had in junior high school is now a senior fellow of the Templeton Foundation.)

    What turned the corner for me is discovering that they gave a $50,000 Epiphany prize to Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ”. That’s when I had my own Epiphany.

    (Though I admit I am now reading a Templeton funded sociology book called “America’s Four Gods” which is pretty good actually, though waffles in its conclusions.)

  10. The original model of Trinity and the Incarnation of Jesus depended a lot for its metaphysics on the Greek concept of hypostases and hypostatic union.

    Neoplatonists believed that beneath the surface appearance of phenomena are hypostases, an unchanging substratum immune to change, sort of like the “soul”.

    In the context of modern science, this is meaningless.

  11. Some chef should just send them a nice mirpoix or sofrito (onions, carrots and celery). That would get me all metaphysical!

  12. My theory is that the Trinity was invented to avoid accusations of God raping Mary and being a deadbeat dad, and Jesus having an incestuous relationship with his mother.

    Splitting into three enables the mental gymnastics of believers. And, of course, it’s more, “Do as I say, not as I do,” from God and his earthly minions.

    I could expand that to 8,000 words and I bet I need the money more than most of the recipients.

    1. Would probably be the most sensible submission, too! (But have you justified the Holy Ghost part?)

      1. That’s the bit about God not being a rapist – it was the ghost what done it! 🙂

        1. Oh, well duh! Of course!

          Kidding aside it actually does make perfect sense–sounds like just the sort of contrived dodge they’d come up with.

  13. I think that Gunter Wagner received in total of 3.7 million dollars from John Templeton Foundation over the past 7 years for his work on genetics and origin of evolutionary novelties. His students produced some cool papers on origins of placentation in mammals and last year he published a book on homology and evolutionary innovation (which is, in my opinion, very good).
    So they can’t be ALL about woo-woo. Right?

    1. You get one spectator of Jehovah addicted to sniffing incense while dressed in his mother’s undergarments.

  15. stems from Sir John’s belief that theology encompasses all the Big Questions about reality, the universe, and the nature of human beings.

    Then why bother with the Trinity? It nature is only a ‘big question’ for some small fraction of the 30% or so of humans that are Christian, and has only been a big question for them for the past 2,000 years at most. ‘What’s the meaning of life’ is a big question precisely because it spans across cultures and times. Everyone asks it. Talking about the trinity seems intentionally provincial. This is kind of like establishing a center for the big problems of human health and then rewarding a grant to talk about the effects of excess martini drinking after a vasectomy.

  16. I am very sorry, but..

    CHORUS

    Let’s get metaphysical, metaphysical, I wanna get metaphysical, let’s get into metaphysical

    Let me hear your TED talk, your TED talk, let me hear your TED talk

    repeat CHORUS

    I’ve been materialist, I’ve been a scientist, tried to keep my mind on reality

    It’s gettin’ hard this holdin’ back, you know what I mean

    I’m sure you’ll understand my point of view, we know each other spiritually

    You gotta know that your money is bringin’ out the theologian in me…

    etc. etc.

    1. Olivia Newton-John is turning in her grave. What’s that? She isn’t dead? You probably just killed her 😉

  17. “In posing the Big Questions, Sir John stressed the need for humility and openness…”

    In order that anyone giving the Wrong Answers can be dismissed on the grounds of “arrogance” and “narrow-mindedness”. Sigh.

    Arguments don’t care if the one making them is humble or arrogant. Evidence doesn’t care if you’re open or closed. This is such an obvious ad hominem that I increasingly wonder who is supposed to fall for it.

    Every time I see these people insist on “humility” and “openness”, I wonder what happened to “intellectual honesty” and “just plain competence”. These potshots fit into neither category and should be dropped.

    2. I noted that too. I fail to see the humility in Templeton’s agenda pushing.

      Conversely I fail to see the humility in science. It is meritocratic within and competitive – nay, winning the quest for knowledge – without. If science is humble, it iz doing it rong.

  19. Jerry, maybe you should host a symposium on the metaphysics of entanglement with Templeton.

  20. “NAME REDACTED TO AVOID EMBARRASSING THE PARTY IN CHARGE”

    Was the only part of the piece that i didn’t understand. Why would one want to avoid embarrassing someone who most needs to be embarrassed?

  21. When I was a woo, I believed that science was incapable of discovering the ways in which the spirit worlds interacted with the physical because science by its nature always looked in the wrong places. But I always thought this was a *good* thing, because just imagine if scientists *did* discover how the soul incarnates or whatever. Suddenly every religious or spiritual belief that didn’t comport with it would be demonstrably wrong. All the mysteries would disappear, and with them all religious freedom. And which ever one had gotten it right would be insufferable for generations.

    Imagine, if it turned out that God did in fact act through quantum physics — how boring that would be. An entirely mathematical God. (Ironically just like Newton’s God who caused gravity — entirely predictable, just bopping little planets along around their orbits and making sure that every vase knocked off a table smashes into the appropriate number of pieces, according to the… yawn…)

    For heaven’s sake, give me a God who is a bit more creative than some gormless quantum drudge who’s a stickler for bureaucratic entanglement, or give me no God at all….

    …No sensible set of priorities in such a quantum god….

    1. ” I believed that science was incapable of discovering the ways in which the spirit worlds interacted with the physical”

      How did you ever recover from this point of view?

      1. A fair question! I think I was lucky. It was a combination of things. One was being forced to study Creationism at high school (in Tasmania it was compulsory for a couple of years). So I managed somehow to intuitively grasp that if you directly contradict science, you can wind up looking like Duane Gish. (Quite seriously, that had an impact!)

        Another was Zen meditation — getting used to the idea of just being aware of the body’s robot-like nature without freaking out about it.

        The final nail in the coffin was embarrassingly recent — 2006 or so. I always felt I’d never quite grasped the nuts and bolts of evolution, so I read the Ancestor’s Tale, never having read Dawkins before. I realized that if there had been spiritual tinkering going on in evolution like I thought there had been, it would have shown up in the genome.

        1. Interesting. It almost seems random in what causes people to reject a lifetime of woo; they can explain away a whole host of contradictions until they hit one particular sticking point that pulls the rug out from under their worldview. Sometimes that sticking point seems trivial to an outsider.

        2. OT: Where in Tasmania? I lived and went to high school in Queenstown ’88-89. Yet another beautiful place spoilt by the inhabitants.

          1. I grew up in Hobart. Lived there for 25 years but never once went to Queenstown — too far away, in Tasmanian miles!

            While Robin Gray was premier, one of the things he did (purely to emulate an infamous right wing QLD premier) was to enforce the teaching of Creationism. I think it only lasted a year or two. I did it in 82 or 83.

            Queenstown must have been, um, yes, beautiful nature…

          2. Let me guess, that infamous right wing QLD premier would have been Joh Bjelke-Peterson, right? He of the brown paper bags full of used banknotes? Came from Dannevirke in New Zealand IIRC, and the Aussies have been taking revenge on Kiwis ever since…

            cr

    3. When I was a woo …

      When I was a woo, I spake as a woo, I understood as a woo, I thought as a woo: but when I became a man, I put away wooish things.

      Paraphrasing 1 Corinthians 13:11 should be right up Templeton’s alley.

  22. Explained below, but the mention of philosophy at Oxford, and the word “entanglement”, had me thinking “My gosh (not quite sure whether Mr. Gosh consists of 3 persons in one gosh), I wonder if any of those guys … ”

    So I looked up the personnel for that well endowed BS ‘subject’, and fortunately my answer is no. But we did have for one of these people at the Templeton/Oxford/Philosophy/theology trough:
    “…His work in the Philosophy of Religion focuses on the ways that contemporary analytic metaphysics can open up conceptual space to make sense of Christian doctrines that have traditionally been philosophically puzzling. This connects to his work on the Metaphysics of Entanglement project. …”

    To explain, I had several weeks ago here referred very positively to a book “The Emergent Multiverse” by David Wallace, in reference to the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics. Entanglement from decoherence is central to the newer treatment of splitting into quasi-classical, largely non-interacting, worlds. Wallace is a physics Ph.D., employed in philosophy at Oxford as are several other leading lights on this (Simon Saunders, Hilary Greaves) in what seems a really interesting intersection of fundamental physics with one of the few genuinely worthwhile areas of modern academic philosophy (pace Ben, but I’d agree when he says this is science disguised as philosophy!). But happily none of these latter people seem to be involved in the theological BS.

    However there is little doubt that Templeton will do all possible to attempt to give credence to the BS by any ‘nearby’ worthwhile intellectual accomplishments. And similarly many people (including Jerry here and Sean Carroll) won’t take money from Templeton even for real science, to avoid being ‘used’ in that manner. This is my answer ‘Wrong!’ to BogiT’s “…So they can’t be ALL about woo-woo. Right?” above.

  23. Why do we need new approaches to the trinity? I thought it was a timeless mystery, unknowable to humans via pure reason, except of course for that attribute about 3 equaling 1…

  24. Projects suitable for funding under this area therefore include investigations about the Big Bang, origins of life, …

    If they want to prove they’ve changed, then start funding Jack Szostak’s group (with which I have no connection).

  25. I can see it now, the sequel, “The Origin of Consciousness Through the Breakdown of the Tricameral Ur-Mind.”

  27. “We believe that theology has the answers to ALL the big questions. What shall we call our program? How about, ‘Humility in Theology.”

    The mind reels.

  28. I am interested in how you think JTF does or doesn’t guide outcomes in human origins research, an area in which they have become increasingly involved. Their grant recipients are directed to keep their mind open to the divine. Indeed, they are forthright in their expectations that researchers be impacted by the Templeton philosophy and vision, they just don’t indicate how much and/or in what ways.

Comments are closed.