Category: freedom from religion

SPLC: talk our kind of talk, or we will smear you as a bigot

November 2, 2016 • 10:00 am

by Grania Spingies

Ahnaf Kalam has posted an update to his petition at  Change.org [JAC: it now has almost 9,000 signatures]:

“Today, I was informed that the Southern Poverty Law Center has no intention of removing Maajid Nawaz from their list. ”

You can read the full statement here. This is the bit that makes my hair stand on end.

ministryoftruth

Apart from the frankly bizarre claim of “conspiracy theory” talk which makes me think that Heidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project at the SPLC, has never spent much time listening to Maajid Nawaz speak at all; the more chilling claim is that she (and presumably the SPLC) have already decided what the only acceptable talking points about Islam are. Any deviation from this will be punished.

She’s essentially engaging in rather dangerous and illiberal speech of her own. It is unbelievably chilling and threatening for her and her organisation to publicly denigrate and dismiss the work of Muslim (and ex-Muslim) men and women trying to reform aspects of their own religion.

I’ll leave you with a few clips of the sort of talk that appears to be “dangerous” and laden with “conspiracy theories”.

To uniquely protect Islam against mockery, Sydney newspaper suggests that Muslims be considered members of a race rather than a religion

August 22, 2016 • 10:30 am

I don’t know how popular or respected the Sydney Morning Herald is (Aussies weigh in), but it’s just published an editorial that’s as intellectually misguided as it is poorly written. Have a look at the short online op-ed, “Jedi knights don’t need protection from free speech“, published five days ago. Now the title is provocative, but its message is simple. Muslims aren’t protected from “hate speech” because Australian law doesn’t protect religion. It does, however, protect hate speech against race. Therefore Australia should classify Muslims as “ethno-religious” groups, which apparently fall under the aegis of “race,” so that Muslims—unlike members of other faiths—get special protection from being insulted and offended.

Australia’s “hate speech” laws apparently vary among the states, but there’s also a national law stipulating the grounds for redress. As Wikipedia notes:

The Racial Discrimination Act 1975 forbids hate speech on several grounds. The Act makes it “unlawful for a person to do an act, otherwise than in private, if the act is reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people; and the act is done because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin of the other person, or of some or all of the people in the group.” An aggrieved person can lodge a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission. If the complaint is validated, the Commission will attempt to conciliate the matter. If the Commission cannot negotiate an agreement which is acceptable to the complainant, the complainant’s only redress is through the Federal Court or through the Federal Magistrates Service.

Note that you can be prosecuted or forced into negotiation if you “insult, offend, humiliate, or intimidate” someone when the grounds are race, colour (I presume that’s equivalent to “race,”), nationality, or ethnic origin. You cannot say things to offend Asians, blacks, whites, Greeks, or the like. You can say things that will offend Christians, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, and so on.  Now I object to all such hate speech laws, but at least the Aussies allow you to mock religion without fear of prosecution.

The Sydney Morning Herald doesn’t like that, because it doesn’t protect Muslims enough (they apparently don’t care about protecting other religions). But before they get into the reclassification argument, they also claim that “not all religions deserve equal respect.” They apparently make this argument because Islam isn’t getting enough “respect” (cue Rodney Dangerfield). This is what they say:

Not all religions deserve equal respect.  There are some religions for which severe ridicule of adherents may well be an appropriate response.  Jedi knights, for example? Or Scientologists, perhaps.  Some beliefs which are claimed to be religious, and their adherents, ought to be open to ridicule, even severe ridicule.  The position of adherents to religion is quite different to the position of members of ethno-religious groups.  People choose to believe in a religion, but membership of an ethno-religious group is involuntary.

First of all, they’re wrong. All religions deserve equal respect: NO respect. People deserve respect, but not religions, for all religions that make truth claims and promulgate a morality supposedly derived from gods are fatuous.

Catholicism and Islam are no more deserving of respect than are Scientology or Christian Science. Why is the claim that someone was nailed to the cross, killed, revived, and now is the sole vehicle for eternal salvation in Heaven any more deserving of respect than the claim that the overlord Xenu stashed people in volcanoes and then blew them up, releasing body thetans that now afflict us? Or that disease is merely an instantiation of misguided thinking, and can be cured by prayer. None of the bases of these faiths—their fact claims—survive the merest scrutiny, and none of their behavior claims, including assertions about the afterlife or the efficacy of prayer, are credible to someone not brought up in the asylum. In fact, severe ridicule of doctrine (not “adherents”) is the appropriate response to most religions; or, if you’re not into mockery, calm analysis and rejection of their claims.

Muslims are different, says the Herald, because they belong to an “ethno-religious” group rather than a purely religious group. It’s not okay to criticize the former because, says the paper, membership in their tribe is “involuntary”.

But that won’t wash, either, for adhering to Islam is no less voluntary than adherence to any other faith. You’re a Muslim for the same reason you’re a Hindu or a Baptist: you were brought up that way. Yes, religions have connections with ethnic groups, but belief itself is an ideology that is inculcated into people by similar means, no matter where you live.

And so, to protect Muslims, the paper suggests making Islam, in effect, a “race” (my emphasis below):

The existing law already treats ethno-religious origin as being within the definition of “race” for the purpose of the prohibition on racial vilification. It is time that Muslims are incontestably recognised under NSW law as being members of an ethno-religious group.  Such recognition would resolve the uncertainty that exists about the scope of NSW’s current racial vilification laws. That would be a far preferable way of dealing with the present problem of vilification of Muslims in our society than introducing general laws prohibiting religious vilification.

There is widespread concern about the existing law not being effective because there have been no successful prosecutions in NSW despite several cases, which should have justified the imposition of criminal penalties under racial vilification laws.

. . . It had been hoped that the NSW government would, finally, do the right thing and bring forward legislation that would do more to protect the numerous ethnic communities of NSW from vilifying attacks.  Now it seems that there is every prospect that the push for reform will be derailed by the distraction of calls for protection against religious vilification.  That would be a most unfortunate outcome.

I’m not going to argue here about whether “races” exist or are mere social constructs. I’ve stated my position on this before, which is that humanity is genetically differentiated throughout its range, to the extent that someone’s ethnicity, or geographic origin, can be pretty well diagnosed by their genes, even if we can’t partition humanity into a finite or discontinuous group of “races.” But let’s not get into that. The issue on the table is this: why are Muslims more a “race” than are adherents to other religions?

The answer is that they aren’t.  We have Muslims from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Bosnia, and Albania, who could be considered “Caucasian” in ethnicity, though their cultures and genes are widely divergent; we have Black Muslims in the U.S. as well as Muslims in Somalia and other African nations, who could be considered “black,” though their cultures and genes differ from each other and widely from those of Bosnia; and we have Muslims in Indonesia (the world’s biggest Muslim nation) and southeast Asia, who would be considered ethnically “Asian.” All they have in common is their religious belief, and even that differs among locations, beginning with the divisisons among Shia, Sunni, and Sufi. The claim that Muslims are some kind of homogeneous “race” or “ethnic group” fails even for those who accept a concept of distinct races.

Let us be clear. The misguided Herald op-ed is twisting definitions to one end, and one end only: to protect Muslims more than members of other faiths. I’m not sure why that is. Perhaps it’s because Muslims are more vilified in Australia than members of other faiths (certainly true), or perhaps it’s out of fear of the violent reprisal that often results when Muslims are offended. But it doesn’t matter. All religions deserve equal protection under the law—the right to exist and practice as they will. They do not deserve equal “respect” in any other way. And Islam certainly doesn’t deserve a special status as a race or “ethno-religious” racial subgroup.

h/t: Phil

What’s up with the NASA grant to study theology?

August 17, 2016 • 1:30 pm

This post is to bring you up to date on the the battle over the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) giving over $1 million dollars to a theological organization to study the implications of extraterrestrial life for theology. The Freedom from Religion Foundation is trying to get NASA to rescind the grant on First Amendment grounds, but NASA is fighting back, avoiding disclosing what the grant actually said. I’ve posted three times about this.

First, NASA gave a $1.1 million dollar grant to the Center for Theological Inquiry, an organization at Princeton that emphasizes Christian theology. The CTI’s director crowed about it, but revealed a seemingly illegal entanglement of religion with government (NASA is a government organization):

Announcing the NASA grant, CTI’s director William Storrar said, “The aim of this inquiry is to foster theology’s dialogue with astrobiology on its societal implications, enriched by the contribution of scholars in the humanities and social sciences. We are grateful to the NASA Astrobiology Program for making this pioneering conversation possible.”

I brought this to the FFRF’s attention, and they wrote to NASA, also filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for all materials related to the grant. (See the FFRF’s letter at the link.)

Then NASA largely stonewalled, refusing to provide much information unless the FFRF specified authors, dates, and so on—things that the FFRF couldn’t possibly know. It was at this point that I began to suspect that NASA had something to hide.

Now I suspect that even more. Here are the latest developments:

  • NASA did cough up some information: the notice of the grant award and the contract between NASA and the CTI about the grant. The grant itself was not provided, nor were any emails about it. They also provided an uninformative evaluation of the grant, only two pages long and given it an “E” for excellent.
  • NASA also provided a five-page discussion of how the proposal was evaluated, emphasizing its social aspects and downplaying its religious aspects. (All these documents are publicly available and I can send them, but please don’t ask unless you intend to do something with them.)
  • NASA provided CTI’s ongoing “progress report” of the grant’s accomplishments, which, to me at least, are not impressive. (How could they be? It’s theology, Jake!) The “fellows” arrived at CTI and had some seminars, and now are supposed to disseminate their results. Here’s an excerpt of what has been done so far (my emphasis)

The writing projects undertaken by the CTI fellows this year are book-length projects that will be completed in the coming year or two. Also Lucas Mix has published an article in the June 2016 edition of the journal Zygon; the article is titled “Life-Value Narratives and the Impact of Astrobiology on Christian Ethics.” Zygon, vol. 51, no. 2 (June 2016): 520- 535.

Many of the fellows are planning to incorporate their immersion in astrobiology into their teaching at their home institutions. For example, Ulrike Auga will run a seminar on astrobiology and visual culture at the Humboldt University, Berlin, summer 2016. Others have proposed panels on astrobiology and society at various scholarly conferences.

The results of this project have already been disseminated through the CTI Blog (blog.ctinquiry.org) and through CTI’s Fresh Thinking Podcast, which has featured conversations with Mary Voytek, Edwin Turner, Frank Rosenzweig, and Caleb Sharf, along with the CTI fellows. The podcast was created in October 2015 and since that time it has been listened to more than 1,300 times. 12 episodes have already been published and 4 more episodes will be released this summer. A link to the CTI podcast with Frank Rozensweig and Robin Lovin was also posted on the NASA Astrobiology Program website. The Kluge Center, Library of Congress, webpage also referenced CTI’s Inquiry.

 I read the one tangible result: the Zygon article, which I’ll make available if you want it. The interesting thing about it is that although it’s said to be the fruit of this NASA/CTI collaboration, it neither mentions nor cites the grant or NASA for its support. And its explicit Christian nature can be seen in its abstract:

Abstract. “Pale Blue Dot” and “Anthropocene” are common tropes in astrobiology and often appear in ethical arguments. Both support a decentering of human life relative to biological life in terms of value. This article introduces a typology of life-value narratives: hierarchical narratives with human life above other life and holistic narratives with human life among other life. Astrobiology, through the two tropes, supports holistic narratives, but this should not be viewed as opposed to Christianity. Rather, Christian scriptures provide seeds of both hierarchical and holistic narratives, each of which may flourish in different environments. By attending to which aspects of human life are valued—or disvalued—relative to biological life, we can better understand how life-concepts do work in ethics, anthropology, and soteriology in secular as well as theological contexts.

I’ve never seen any paper that didn’t acknowledge the organization that provided financial support.

Finally, NASA simply refused to provide two important things: the internal and external email communications about the grant, and, most important, the CTI grant proposal (my emphasis). Here’s NASA’s reason for refusal:

A total of 25 pages are being released in full while Center of Theological Inquiry proposal, totaling 14 pages, is being withheld in full pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(3), “. . . specifically exempted from disclosure by statute, (other than section 552b of this title), provided that such statute (A) requires that the matters be withheld from the public in such a manner as to leave no discretion on the issue, or (B) establishes particular criteria for withholding or refers to particular types matters to be withheld.” Statute 10 U.S.C. § 2305(g), “Prohibition on the Release of Contractor Proposals – (1) Except as provided in paragraph (2), a proposal in the possession or control of an agency named in section 2303 of this title may not be made available to any person under section 552 of title 5. (2) Section (1) does not apply to any proposal that is set forth or incorporated by reference in a contract entered into between the Department and the contractor that submitted the proposal. (3) In this subsection, the term “proposal” means any proposal, including a technical, management, or cost proposal, submitted by a contractor in response to the requirements of a solicitation for a competitive proposal.”

Their excuse is that the CTI is in effect a “contractor”, and contractor proposals can by law be kept secret. For proposals to the Departments of Defense, and the four armed forces, that makes some sense as a matter of national security, and these departments are specified. So is NASA, and in some cases that’s justifiable too. But, as Andrew Seidel, the FFRF lawyer handling this case, wrote me, “The problem is that the government was trying to protect defense contractors from certain FOIA provisions, which makes a certain amount of sense given what they do, but lumped NASA in because of some of its sensitive work. CTI’s proposal clearly doesn’t fall within the ambit of that original purpose, it could not be less sensitive either technologically or militarily, but it got swept in anyway.”

Now NASA is arguing that the phrase “may not” means it lacks discretion in releasing the CTI proposal; that it’s prohibited by law from doing so.  The FFRF disagrees, and has appealed NASA’s refusal to release the grant in a letter to NASA that’s highlighted in this press release (the letter is too long to put here).

This is a big chunk of change, and I don’t want money earmarked for space research to be involved in furthering theology. Have a look at Lucas Mix’s paper if you want to see the enormous and ludicrous waste of time and effort involved in pondering the effects of astrobiology on Jesus. What can we do?

It’s not clear if NASA will release the theology grant, as they have some legal standing to withhold it.

But even if NASA won’t release that grant proposal, there’s no reason why the Center for Theological Inquiry can’t. In fact, if they want to be transparent about things, and think they’re doing a public service, they SHOULD release it. I for one will be writing the CTI asking them to release the grant, and perhaps some public pressure will help with this.  If you want the Center for Theological Inquiry to make its grant from NASA public, you can write to Dr. William Storrar, head of the Center for Theological Inquiry. You can send it to him via the address cti@ctinquiry.org

Shenanigans in Illinois: 1. Unique panel set up to give Muslims a voice in state government

August 4, 2016 • 8:30 am

Unless I don’t know the U.S. Constitution, what my own state of Illinois is poised to do is a palpable violation of the First Amendment, designed to avoid, among other things, excessive government entanglement with religion.

According to both The Humanist and The Chicago Tribune, Republican Governor Bruce Rauner is poised to sign a bill, passed by both state legislatures, to create an “Illinois Muslim-American Advisory Council”. Although under Rauner’s predecessor there was such a council, as well as other minority advisory councils, they were all dissolved. And although it’s not clear whether any of these earlier councils—whose existence I didn’t know of—were created by state law, this one will be.

While the motives for creating such a council may be admirable (Muslim leaders say it will provide a corrective for anti-Muslim bigotry), it surely entangles state government with religion in a formal way. The Tribune gives details:

The 21-member council, whose volunteer members would be appointed by the governor as well as leaders in the House and Senate, would advise the governor and General Assembly on issues affecting Muslim Americans and immigrants, including relations between Illinois and Muslim-majority countries. Through monthly meetings and two public hearings per year, members also would serve as liaisons between state agencies and communities across Illinois.

The act specifies that members would serve two-year terms and should bring expertise in a variety of areas including higher education, business, international trade, law, immigration and health care. Staff from certain state agencies would serve as ex-officio members.

You can see the bill, SB 0574, here. The relevant bit:

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There is, of course, no Jewish advisory council (although, on a per capita basis, Jews are subject to twice as many hate crimes as are Muslims), nor is there an atheist advisory council (although atheists are neck-and-neck with Muslims as the most demonized “belief” group in the U.S.). In fact, nonbelievers far outnumber Muslims in Illinois! In fact, I’d oppose all such groups. Let private lobbying organizations do their best to influence government, as is their right, but not as official bodies set up by the government. That gives those groups an unfair advantage. There is no other such council in any state in the U.S., and Humanist writer Luis Granados is unaware of any state council for any  religion. If any exist, they should be abolished.

You might say, “Well, at least it’s not going to cost the taxpayer anything.” According to the Humanist, you’re wrong:

Members of the council will serve without pay. However, it will be far from free from a taxpayer standpoint. The bill itself provides that the council will receive staff support from the office of the governor, and you can bet that the meeting rooms, printed materials, and halal coffee and donuts will be paid for by Illinois taxpayers as well.

They add:

Alabama doesn’t have a Baptist Advisory Council. Rhode Island doesn’t have a Catholic Advisory Council. New York doesn’t have a Jewish Advisory Council. Utah doesn’t have a Mormon Advisory Council (though, on reflection, it doesn’t really need one). Unless someone can produce evidence otherwise, it looks like Illinois is about to set a horrible precedent for official religious entanglement with government.

Granados agrees with me that this bill violates the First Amendment, and notes as well that besides the “entanglement of state and church” provision, it violates the Constitution itself (the First Amendment is an “amendment” to the Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights:

But there’s another clause in the Constitution—Article VI, paragraph 3: “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust.”

Are they planning to appoint non-Muslims to this “office”? That would seem to be utterly contrary to the council’s raison d’etre. But if they don’t, there would seem to be a slam-dunk violation of Article VI. The bill itself says that the council must be “diverse with respect to race, ethnicity, age, gender, and geography”—but says nothing about being diverse with respect to religion, which would be silly.

I have, of course, already called this bill to the attention of those who can contest it. The odious Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which has been accused of having ties to both Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and whitewashes Islam at every turn (think of it as a body of Reza Aslans), is calling on its members to have this bill signed. Of course it would do that! But we cannot let any religion become part of our government. Let all religionists lobby as they are entitled to in a democracy, but we cannot give one religion precedence over another, or over nonbelief, in either national or state government.

h/t: Rodney J.

Update: On NASA, theology, and the Freedom from Religion Foundation

June 30, 2016 • 2:00 pm

On June 6 I reported that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) gave a $1 million grant to the Center for Theological Inquiry to study the societal (read “theological”) implications of looking for extraterrestrial life. In other words, U.S. taxpayer money was going to finance people to figure out how Jesus would save aliens.  To me, this seemed like a violation of the First Amendment: an unconscionable entanglement of church and state.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) thought so too. Only three days after I reported this, and sent it to the FFRF, they sent a letter to NASA laying out the problematic legal issues and asking that NASA rescind the grant. They also filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with NASA to get all the details about how the grant was submitted and approved, and who was involved.  Since then there have been three developments, which I report with permission.

First, NASA said they’d investigate the issue:

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Then NASA quickly responded to the FOIA request. You can do this by filling in an online form (here it is), and NASA’s response came only two days thereafter, saying they couldn’t process the FOIA request because it wasn’t specific enough. You can see in the indented bits what the FFRF’S lawyer, Andrew Seidel, asked for. NASA’s refusal is problematic to me and to the FFRF because it asks the FFRF to specify names and dates, things that nobody outside NASA could possibly know. What they should be sending is everything related to the grant.  In other words, they’re refusing to comply fully.

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Seidel then clarified his request on June 15, asking for all records relating to the application and approval of the grant, including things like emails and phone notes. NASA responded (below) within a day. As you can see below, NASA agreed to send just the “grant file,” which doesn’t include all communications but presumably only the formal application, review, and approval. NASA says they’re “unable to conduct a wide-ranging search for all communications related to this grant.” That, of course, is completely bogus, for they can sweep their servers for emails and the like:
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The question is this: why is NASA being so obstructive in providing the materials that were legally requested? The people at FFRF are being charitable and simply making no assumptions, but I’m not part of this case, so I’ll surmise that NASA is hiding something embarrassing.

Maybe I’m wrong, but we shall see, for the FFRF is going to go after them again when it gets the case file. Their request will presumably include every email and every phone note and communication from every person named in the grant file.

Stay tuned.

 

The Freedom From Religion Foundation goes after NASA for giving a grant to study theology

June 9, 2016 • 11:00 am

On Monday I described how the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a U.S. government agency, gave a grant of $1.1 million to the Center of Theological Inquiry (CTI) for studying the religious implications of finding extraterrestrial life. The other partner who contributed money for this initiative is, of course, the John Templeton Foundation.

The theology aspect is prominent; as the CTI’s announcement noted:

Announcing the NASA grant, CTI’s director William Storrar said, “The aim of this inquiry is to foster theology’s dialogue with astrobiology on its societal implications, enriched by the contribution of scholars in the humanities and social sciences. We are grateful to the NASA Astrobiology Program for making this pioneering conversation possible.”

I considered this not only an unconscionable and ludicrous waste of money, but also a potential violation of the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from advancing religion. When the First Amendment alarm bell goes off, my actions are automatic: I call the matter to the attention of the estimable Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), which can judge if there’s a real problem.

In this case there seems to be. I have heard now from Andrew Seidel, one of the FFRF’s constitutional lawyers, who saw a problem and wrote the following letter to the director of NASA’s Astrobiology Institute and Mary Voytek, a senior scientist at that institute—the agency that gave 5% of their yearly budget to theologians. The letter he sent is below (click to enlarge), or I can send you the pdf if you email me. Feel free to disseminate it; it’s now a public document.

The letter is unusually strong, I think, emphasizing the inability of theology to know anything or resolve any questions, and states clearly the Constitutional law ruling that the government cannot become engaged in matters of theology: “the government cannot fund religion’s pursuit of theological doctrines.” It’s an interesting letter, calling for NASA to take the money back and use it for less wasteful projects. I will of course keep readers informed.

Note also that the FFRF has submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to find out the details of how the grant was given.

I’m pleased to have contributed to the letter a bit about the relationship of science to religion, and perhaps that will be enough to earn me the Discovery Institute’s “Censor of the Year” award, something I dearly want to receive for the second time.

Anyway, congrats to the FFRF, the Official Website Secular Organization™, for being an attentive watchdog as religion tries to creep into our government. (You can join here for only $40 per year, which comes with a great monthly newpaper.) And shame on you, John Templeton Foundation, for wasting money in this way.

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NASA gives $1 million grant to a theological organization to study the religious implications of extraterrestrial life

June 6, 2016 • 11:00 am

Well if this don’t beat all! According to the webpage of the Center of Theological Inquiry (CTI), NASA (the National Aeronautic and Space Administration, a part of the U.S. government), has given a huge grant to the CTI to study the implications of extraterrestrial life for religion. The money will fund a team of scholars, including theologians. I quote the announcement in its entirety:

The Center of Theological Inquiry (CTI) is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a grant by the NASA Astrobiology Program to convene an interdisciplinary inquiry into the societal implications of the search for life in the universe.

The project is intended to refresh and expand scholarly and public dialogue on this subject, which is of growing interest due to the discovery of thousands of extrasolar planets and the ongoing search for potentially habitable environments in our solar system and beyond. With this $1.108 million grant, CTI will oversee a resident team of visiting scholars in theology, the humanities, and social sciences that will conduct an interdisciplinary inquiry on the societal implications of astrobiology, the study of the origins, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe.

This inquiry will extend over two academic years from 2015 to 2017. It will focus on the societal implications of astrobiology’s current research goals and findings, which will be studied in symposia and video-linked conversations with leading scientists in the field. Applications will be welcomed from collaborative scholars who are examining the concerns raised by astrobiology for the humanities, or pursuing research on societal issues related to the evolution and future of life.

Announcing the NASA grant, CTI’s director William Storrar said, “The aim of this inquiry is to foster theology’s dialogue with astrobiology on its societal implications, enriched by the contribution of scholars in the humanities and social sciences. We are grateful to the NASA Astrobiology Program for making this pioneering conversation possible.”

CTI is an independent academic institution for interdisciplinary research on global concerns with an international visiting scholar program in Princeton, NJ. Further information on CTI’s resident program and application process can be found on the Center’s website at: www.ctinquiry.org. The Request for Proposals on this topic for the 2015-2016 academic year can be found here, with the online application window open from December 15, 2014 to January 31, 2015.

On the page that lists the “research team,” you can also read the bit below. Guess who else is part of the program?

Yep, you got it:

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So now we have the U.S. government teaming up with the odious John Templeton Foundation, giving one million dollars of taxpayers’ money for a stupid and meaningless attempt to figure out what will happen if we find life on other planets. I expect they will deal with the Big Questions about whether space aliens could be saved by believing in Jesus, or if they might go to limbo instead of Hell because they never got a chance to hear the Good News. Alternatively, as Michael Ruse has suggested, there might have been an intergalactic Jesus who flew from planet to planet bringing salvation.

Seriously, this is an outrage and a huge waste of money. I also see it as a violation of the First Amendment, for it is an unnecessary entanglement of church and state. But even if it were legal, it’s completely ridiculous. What was NASA thinking? Think how many lives could be saved in Africa or India if that money went to provide food or clean water?

Here are the CTI’s “honorary trustees”:

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