It was announced this morning that Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, chief Rabbi of the UK and Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013, will receive this year’s £1.1 million Templeton Prize. As the Jerusalem Post noted:
Sacks said the prize money would enable and encourage him to continue his work promoting the voice of religion in the public conversation, strengthening mutual respect between faiths, and inspiring young leaders to take the work forward into the future.
Goody! What’s he doing now? Here are his current jobs:
- Professor of Judaic Thought, New York University, New York (announced 29 October 2013).
- Professor of Jewish Thought, Yeshiva University, New York (announced 29 October 2013).
- Professor of Law, Ethics and the Bible at King’s College, London (announced 5 December 2013).
Did I mention that Sacks opposes to gay marriage?
We had a contest in late February to name this year’s winner, but nobody won (have a look at the guesses). The last four winners before Sacks were theologians or ministers, so it looks as if Templeton is, for the time being, reverting to its original trend of giving the dosh to religionists instead of people like Martin Rees and Francisco Ayala, and Bernard d’Espagnat, scientists who were friendly to religion. That trend is fine with me, for it not only shows Templeton’s underlying leanings, but doesn’t pollute science with faith.
He’s going to continue his work promoting the voice of religion in the public conversation. That’s nice, but what is he going to do with the other £1,099,000
🙂
That’s always been one of my problems with Batman. Trying to do everything yourself is very inefficient. Just hire thousands of SWAT teams and sit back and watch the fun.
Don’t you mean: the other £1,099,999 ?
Well put. His efforts are barely worth a penny.
I’m sure his tax advisor can come up with a more tax-efficient use of the money – for example paying his (sole trader) company substantial consultancy fees for giving himself advice on $EXCUSE$, then pay the maximum he can of those wages into his pension scheme, from which he’d be able to utilise it with an ultimately lower rate of tax later.
Why are ideas like that buzzing around in my head? Has someone been clubbing me with the financial advice stick recently?
Here’s his application to be Chief Accommodationist:
http://tinyurl.com/zhlmshz
And he’s got a funny little hat, like the pope, which hardly looks like it is worth wearing!
It’s too keep the dust away.
cf. Golden Compass Trilogy, by Philip Pullman
Subtle …
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What is the secret to getting those to stay on? Hair pins? Super Glue?
Religious thought: another oxymoron. What a waste of money.
Sacks is also a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s disgraceful ‘Thought For The Day’ slot. Only a select few, religionists all, are deemed to have ‘thoughts’ worthy of this slot.
Those of us who find this particularly galling regularly vent our spleen over at the ‘platitudes’ web-site. Here are some comments on his last performance, and it also contains a link to the ‘Thought’ itself if you fancy listening to three minutes of being patronised: http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/comments.php?y=16&m=02&entry=entry160226-074923
Graham’s link is really worth following. For those not in the UK, BBC Radio four has a news and current affairs program on Monday to Saturday. This program is blighted at 07:50 every day by a three minute sermon by a generally rather stupid religious person.
For several years now, host Peter Hearty has been writing a parody of what was said and inviting readers to comment. Peter eventually gave up with the parodies because the speakers started to repeat themselves, and each other so much. The blog is still maintained so that R4 listeners can still comment on the day’s offering.
There are now some links to earlier examples of Johnny Sachs trying to do science on that thread.
as far as I know, he’s never been in my kitchen. So I was the closest.
That was very sneaky of you. 😀
Speaking of which, Templeton’s old Baylor University series of religious surveys is doing the rounds again.
Ecklund loves to cherry pick its data, and that was what Blake V. Kent, “doctoral candidate in sociology in Baylor’s College of Arts & Sciences” did too. Religion in, religion out. [Paywalled paper, but the article suggests were was no non-religious null group, i.e. it was lying with ‘statistics’.]
I also noticed on BU’s site that the planned 2014 survey seems AWOL. Maybe the money got feet?
Do you have a link to the Baylor paper?
I would guess Torbjörn is referring to this article:
http://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/news.php?action=story&story=166399
…and this paper:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13644-016-0250-9
so they gave it to him for the religion side, and to appear fair to a non-christian, as if these are different religions.
there is no science side of this man.
In Canada many years ago, I had the opportunity to discuss the matter of gay marriage with a man who was Jewish, but not a rabbi, he was a lawyer.
He was the lawyer for a large number of synagogues in the Vancouver BC area and I only needed 3 hours to convince him that the systemic and social prejudice that Jews have faced over the centuries was the same was that us queers have faced.
He ended up writing out a summary of our conversation in his own words for the jewish community newspaper and the synagogs he represented supported the advancement of Canada’s laws and marriage equality happened in 2003.
Congratulations. That’s quite an achievement.
Thank you, I will share that the turning moment for him was telling me about how he was stalked in elementary school in Canada after his family had escaped, and I softly said “So you know exactly what queer children and teens are going through right now, or to a lesser degree, the straight children of gay and lesbian parents.”
It was then that he saw his way to create less harm in the world, and I am unable to recall the correct cultural word Yiddish or Hebrew, but to help seal the cracks in the pain of the world.
I was honoured to be part of the sealant. 🙂
Kudos, dw!!
thank you kindly
Impressive and good work.
Thank you very much
Awesome.
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thank you, kindly eh.
🙂
“”Sacks said the prize money would enable and encourage him to continue his work promoting the voice of religion in the public conversation, strengthening mutual respect between faiths…””
LOL !!! The very concept of ‘mutual respect between faiths’ is a paradox- if not a total absurdity. Just consider for a moment: there’s the Muslims telling the Jews how they falsified scripture, and telling the Christians that Jesus was a prophet of Islam but not divine, while the Christians tell the Muslims how Mohammed is a false prophet and tell the Jews that they executed the Son of God, while the Jews tell the Christians that Jesus was a false messiah and tell the Muslims that there is nothing new in any of their revelations . . . . and that is before we even get started on Protestant/Catholic, Sunni/Shia, Orthodox/Reformed etc., etc., let alone the polytheists…..!!!!
the first time someone explained the idea of “inter-faith” committeess to me in the 1990s
my response was “so they admit it’s just a ponzi scheme, if it;s all the same deity under different names, then killing each other over cultural variations is ultimate stupidity and nullifies religion as a conceptual framework.
Obvious but I cannot resist lament. What a terrible waste of resources. This money can be used to fund scientific research or go towards the training of doctors and surgeons that can make a REAL difference in people’s lives. How very disappointing.