{"id":12511,"date":"2011-04-08T17:20:28","date_gmt":"2011-04-08T21:20:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/?p=12511"},"modified":"2011-04-08T17:20:28","modified_gmt":"2011-04-08T21:20:28","slug":"the-templeton-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/the-templeton-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"The Templeton Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.templetonprize.org\/purpose.html\" target=\"_blank\">Templeton prize<\/a> is supposed to honour someone who:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life\u2019s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This year, the winner was Martin Rees, an astrophysicist at Cambridge University who \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/2011\/110406\/full\/news.2011.208.html\">has no religious beliefs<\/a>\u201d, but occasionally attends Church of England Sunday worship \u2013 where he fits right in.<\/p>\n<p>It might be possible for this to be more mixed up, but so far we have Rees who doesn\u2019t believe in God, but attends an Anglican Church sporadically, winning a prize for making an \u201c<em>exceptional contribution to affirming life\u2019s spiritual dimension<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>But wait, there\u2019s more: <em>real<\/em> atheists like Richard Dawkins <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/politics\/blog\/2011\/apr\/07\/martin-rees-templeton-prize-athiests-cross\">reckon he\u2019s let the side down<\/a> by \u201c<em>blur[ring] the boundary between science and religion, making a virtue of belief without evidence<\/em>\u201d. Meanwhile, Dawkins continues to believe, without evidence*, that the excogitations of the grey soup beneath his thinning curly locks are of a weightier substance than <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=q98DX5i-xtI\">Mr Gumby\u2019s flower arranging instructions<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p lang=\"en-CA\">* J. B. S. Haldane: &#8220;If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true\u2026. and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Templeton prize is supposed to honour someone who: has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life\u2019s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works. This year, the winner was Martin Rees, an astrophysicist at Cambridge University who \u201chas &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/the-templeton-prize\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[2049,1059,1114,2238,1508],"class_list":["post-12511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","tag-atheism","tag-martin-rees","tag-mr-gumby","tag-richard-dawkins","tag-templeton-prize"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}