a notch in john templeton's spiritual bedpost
Religious activists in the United States are hell bent on saving your soul whether you want them to or not. Like those caricature salesmen in sitcoms and comedies, they don’t take no for an answer because while they’re trying to save you from eternal hellfire, the most ardent proselytizers of them all are doing it primarily for their personal satisfaction. To them, you are a notch in their spiritual bedpost. A conversion that would add to their body of work in swaying people to their faith. They are the soldiers of God and you are their latest conquest.
With this mindset, the John Templeton Foundation invaded popular science sites, showing flash ads which ask you whether evolution can truly explain human nature and inviting you to check what a team of “experts” has to say on the subject. The short answer to that question is yes. Humans are products of natural selection which means that who and what we are was shaped by climate change, predation and genetic drifts over the millions of years that our branch of the evolutionary tree split from early hominids and ended up with us. What do the experts presented by the Foundation think? I’m not sure since most of them tended to drift into vague musings reminiscent of Renaissance theology with the word evolution randomly thrown in. The goal of the ad is to show that there’s a grand scientific debate about the origins of human nature and that those who held an empirical view are in the minority, the opposite of what actually happens in scientific institutions.
But Templeton doesn’t just throw money around on vague proselytizing. He and his team are looking to invest in projects that tackle what his website calls “the big questions” about the life, universe and everything. It’s as though they’re trying to compete with Wolfram for building Deep Thought with one little twist. The projects they want to promote aren’t the ones currently being done by biologists, psychologists, physicists or astronomers in academic institutions around the world. Instead, they want to use their money towards fuzzy apologetics in scientific guises, projects like Francis Collins’ BioLogos. Much like Deep Thought, they thought long and hard about what the answer to all these questions should be and came up with their own 42; a supreme deity. And just like the number 42, it doesn’t really mean anything. It’s just a a placeholder that makes them feel good.
And so, having decided on the placeholder, the late John Templeton and now his son, John M. Templeton, an Evangelical Christian with a medical degree, went out to spread their beliefs in a roundabout way. Rather than just admit their religious goals, they started recruiting scientists sympathetic to their cause and slyly handing them money to promote their beliefs, to find a way to cram them into scientific theories. See, it’s not enough for the Foundation to support real scientific research. That real research focuses on empirical evidence. It tells us things without having to resort to the meaningless placeholder that makes them feel good which to them is a travesty that must be corrected. So by clumsily disguising their mission in scientific buzzwords and launching advertising campaigns on the sites where skeptics and unbelievers are most likely to be found, they hope to challenge the unbelievers from within and shake their trust in materialistic, objective science. And to think that all this money could’ve been spent on something actually worthwhile…
Man, you really don’t like these people, do you?
You have a point though (I think you explained it in an earlier post), proselytizing and bribing your way into influential positions via religion is sneaky, but it’s an ancient practice and one that has yet shown signs of letting up.
I have issues with dogma of all types though and the evangelical variety wearing science clothing rankles me the worst at times.
Good post Greg.
I had no idea the Templeton outfit was in disguise. I read the essays on evolution and left a comment that must have provoked choking. Thanks for the heads up.
The search for truth requires an open mind otherwise scientific observations are mere opinions. Everyone also has a “frame of reference” or as you put it a “dogma” from which they observe their world. Your statement, “Humans are products of natural selection which means that who and what we are was shaped by climate change, predation and genetic drifts over the millions of years that our branch of the evolutionary tree split from early hominids and ended up with us” is obviously your dogma. Denying a creator flies in the face of reason and intelligence and defines a fool who has said in his heart that there is no God.
How does denying a creator “fly in the face of reason and intelligence and defines a fool who has said in his heart that there is no God? ”
I’d say believing in something you have no evidence of flies in the face of reason.
And a creator can mean many things, a meteor crashes down into Earth and particles on it combine with 10 other amino acids commonly found in warm temperatures. So it’s not as if he doesn’t believe in a creator, it’s just that your vision of a creator and his vision of a creator are two vastly different things.
Sorry I didn’t complete that last thought, DNA is made up of 20 amino acids, 10 of which are found in warm temperatures, particles from the meteorite combine with these 10 amino acids and creates the first basic DNA that we’re all made up of. You should probably read this part first now, I really fucked that up.
Have you ever seen a house that was built without a carpenter? Look at the incredible complexity of the human body and tell me that a rational person can believe that it developed without a designer. Our finite minds are so miniscule compared to the infinite understanding and omnipotence of such a Creator. Isn’t it rather arrogant to say that the the universe and the human body developed over millions of years, yet without a designer, and use that as a cop-out to deny the existence of God?
Obviously your dogma requires the denial of a Supreme Being, otherwise you wouldn’t need to throw out the “billions of years” alibi which is really an evolutionist’s attempt to con those who choose to remain ignorant.
“Have you ever seen a house that was built without a carpenter?”
Sure I have. There are houses made entirely of concrete with plastics and metals all through the building. The question is whether you’ve ever looked up what the word non-sequitur means because that’s exactly the fallacy you’re using.
“Look at the incredible complexity of the human body…”
If humans were designed, they were designed very badly. Any good designer knows that complexity is the trademark of an amateur. A real pro would design the human body much simpler and more straightforward than it’s currently put together.
“Isnt it rather arrogant to say that the the universe and the human body developed over millions of years, yet without a designer…”
Well, they developed over billions but what’s a few orders of magnitude? And isn’t it a little bit more arrogant to say that you were specially build by a deity that looks after you, has special plans for you and put you in charge of the universe?
In both science and religion, humans are said to come from dust. Scientists simply have the humility to admit that we are in fact still just really fancy dust after trillions of permutations while people like you say that the dust was really magic and meant specifically for you to turn out the way you did by a deity that watches your every step with bated breath. Metaphorically speaking of course…
“…and use that as a cop-out to deny the existence of God?”
Prove your hypothesis with tangible, verifiable evidence then we’ll talk. Otherwise all this is just common proselytizing. And it’s not even good or original. Just your run of the mill collection of fallacies.
Don, I assure you that you’re not making your case any better or more persuasive by throwing out ridicule without proof. Calling things cons or dogmas with no tangible evidence to the contrary doesn’t make them such.
Anyway, feel free to join the thread on my latest post. It’s actually all about your original comment here…
I just thought I would add a thought. I’ve always had an issue with the complexity argument. You aren’t comparing apples to apples with humans and, in this case, houses. Houses are not created in a “natural” process, i.e. baby houses aren’t birthed by parents. Houses don’t die, don’t change (and are incapable of doing so on their own) unless changed by others.
Life, however, is a natural process. It is not impossible for life to evolve, change, or die out on its own. Though one might argue it is very improbable. In my mind, at least, that is the fundamental problem with complexity. I do not know of a way that a house may just be born, or come in to existence, though I guess one would could argue that it could just appear due to the weird world of quantum physics (of which I do not consider myself an expert). I wouldn’t call it impossible, just improbable.