John Horgan’s reflections on the Templeton Foundation
. . . My ambivalence about the [Templeton] foundation came to a head during my fellowship in Cambridge last summer. The British biologist Richard Dawkins, whose participation in the meeting helped convince me and other fellows of its legitimacy, was the only speaker who denounced religious beliefs as incompatible with science, irrational, and harmful. The other speakers  three agnostics, one Jew, a deist, and 12 Christians (a Muslim philosopher canceled at the last minute)  offered a perspective clearly skewed in favor of religion and Christianity. Some of the Christian speakers’ views struck me as inconsistent, to say the least. None of them supported intelligent design, the notion that life is in certain respects irreducibly complex and hence must Read More ›