Over the weekend, Ruse blogged about the Templeton Foundation for The Huffington Post. The Foundation’s stated mission is “to serve as a philanthropic catalyst for discovery in areas engaging life’s biggest questions. These questions range from explorations into the laws of nature and the universe to questions on the nature of love, gratitude, forgiveness, and creativity.”

This year, the Foundation honored Francisco J. Ayala with its prize for “a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works. It is the world’s largest annual monetary award given to an individual, currently valued at 1,000,000 pounds sterling.” (Past winners included Mother Teresa and Chuck Colson, former Watergate burglar -turned- born-again Christian). Yet no worthy award presentation is without controversy!

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Via The Huffington Post (Religion Section)

Michael Ruse: A Scientific Defense of the Templeton Foundation

Last week, the Templeton Foundation announced this year’s winner of its prize honoring “a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension.” In the early years, the award went to a range of figures in the religious world, including Mother Teresa and Chuck Colson, the Watergate burglar who later became a born-again Christian and a big figure in prison ministry. More recently, the award has been given to academics working on the science-religion interface. It was therefore appropriate that this year the Prize went to Francisco Ayala, a Spanish-born population geneticist at the University of California at Irvine. Ayala (a former Catholic priest) has long been interested in the science-religion relationship, and he has been prominent in the fight against the encroachment of Creationism into state-supported biology classes.

However, the announcement has not been without controversy. The Templeton Foundation was begun by the late Sir John Templeton, who made a great deal of money by starting mutual funds, and is essentially devoted to the promotion of the interaction and harmony between science and religion. It is hardly too strong a term to say that it is an object of derision by many of today’s scientists, including my own colleague here at Florida State University, Sir Harry Kroto who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry (for discovering the structure of complex carbon molecules, “buckyballs”). Richard Dawkins has characterized the president of the Royal Society (of London), Sir Martin Rees, as a “Quisling” (after the war-time Nazi ruler of Norway) for his friendliness to the Foundation. Jerry Coyne, a University of Chicago biologist and a deservedly respected scientist for his work on problems of speciation, runs a blog (Why Evolution is True) where he writes of the foundation’s “history of intellectual dishonesty.” When it was announced that the National Academy of Science’s premises would be used to introduce this year’s prize winner he called it an “outrage.” And then there is Minnesota biologist P. Z. Myers, who runs the blog Pharyngula, and whose splenetic keyboard surely qualifies him for the title of evolution’s answer to Rush Limbaugh. It is not only the Foundation that sends up his blood pressure, but Ayala now also is in his line of fire. He is accused of “intellectual cowardice” and is characterized as “the master of non-committal waffle.” Apparently Ayala received the award purely for “religious apologetics,” even though somewhat inconsistently Ayala is also faulted for not making clear his own position on the God question.

I am a good friend of Francisco Ayala, a bond which goes back even before we together (along with others, including the late Stephen Jay Gould) appeared as expert witnesses in a trial in the State of Arkansas, where on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union we testified (successfully) against a law intended to bring Creationism into the state’s biology classes. However, I know full well that Ayala is fully capable of defending himself, so I will say no more about him. But I would like to say a few words about the Foundation itself.

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Keep reading at The Huffington Post Religion > > >

Michael Ruse

Health-care reform is set to become my King Charles’s Head. I am going to find it difficult to write anything without it coming up in the middle. Fifty-seven million people in the United States of America without healthcare insurance and we — at least those blocking reform — call ourselves a Christian nation. Shame, shame, shame. But, spurred by a well-merited criticism of my last blog, I want to write about something else that has been on my mind and which I intended to raise at some point. So why not now?

I have in my possession a school report from when I was about 10 years old. My mother was a schoolteacher and we took school reports very seriously in my family. They were not glanced at, signed, and then forgotten. They were returned, stored safely, and discussed on pertinent occasions in the future. The report, said he modestly, is pretty good. “Sports” is a bit off, but generally I was nicely on track. However, then we come to “Spelling.”  “B, Michael is improving.” Well, there was room for improvement and I am afraid it did not go far. As my perceptive critic noted, I simply cannot spell. On this occasion, I got “miniscule” for “minuscule,” but this is nothing. Some words I just blank out on. The other day, I could not for the life of me spell “cloathes,” you know those things you put on. I can never spell “campaing,” the thing that was the end of Napoleon in Russia.  And you may ride in an automobile, but I ride in a “vehcule.” And when it comes to, well you know what it is when you have had too many prunes and it begins with a d, I cannot get close enough to look it up in a dictionary.

I don’t know why it is. There are some words I have the hang of. I know how to spell “parallel.” And “embarrassment” is never self predicating. But in general, I am a mess. I think I usually know when I have something wrong, but as miniscule shows not always. And I doubt now that I have lived and misspelt for seven decades that things are going to change much.

Do understand, I am not writing this post in a welter of self pity. Don’t write comments of sympathy — or scorn for that matter. I live with my bad spelling and by and large it does not bother me.  Although there was a nasty moment when I did my test for citizenship and the chap asked me to write: “Abraham Lincoln was president during the Civil War.” I kid you not, I did not know whether to write “Lincoln” or “Lincone.” (Mark you, I was so damn nervous, I could not remember my address.  The poor officer asked, in bewilderment: If you and Lizzie are married, why do you live in different houses?)

Continue reading at Brainstorm >>

Michael Ruse’s Science and Spirituality will be available this Spring.

In 1981, the State of Arkansas passed into law a bill that demanded that if evolution was taught in state-supported schools, then something called “Creation Science” — aka the book of Genesis read literally — had also to be taught. This happened during the interregnum between Bill Clinton’s first time in the governor’s mansion and when he regained it two years later. The bill was debated for all of half an hour by the legislature and signed by the then-governor, a man as unqualified for the post as he was surprised at getting it.

Obviously this law violated the First Amendment separation of church and state, and so the ACLU swung into action to get it declared unconstitutional. After a two-week trial, the federal judge ruled precisely that and so that was the end of the Arkansas “Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Scient Act,” as it was called. I was one of the witnesses for the plaintiff, called in to testify on the history and philosophy of science, showing that whereas evolutionary theory is science, creation science is not science but religion.

Among the other expert witnesses was the late Stephen Jay Gould, the well-known paleontologist and popular-science writer, and the late Langdon Gilkey, the most eminent liberal theologian of his day. But far more impressive than any of us was a local, high school biology teacher. I remember sitting in the courtroom as he testified. The assistant attorney general was trying to tie him into knots over some technical point in evolutionary biology. Finally, the man blurted out: “Mr. Williams, I’m not a scientist. I’m a science educator. I love science, I really do. And I love my students. My job is to take the science and teach it to my students. I am not a leading researcher. I am an educator, and I have my pride and professional responsibilities. And I just can’t teach that stuff [meaning creationism] to my kids.” Sometimes it is just a privilege to listen to other human beings and recognize that they are better people than you are. (I am quoting from memory. I have just looked at the actual transcript of the trial. The teacher’s words are even more moving that I remembered.)

I have been thinking about that man a lot since I wrote my piece on why I am weeping for Florida State University. In that post, I made the point that there is something seriously out of kilter in an institution, claiming to be a place of higher education, that lavishes funds on the football program but starves the academic side. In passing, I made reference to one of the very good things that is happening on the FSU campus,: the project to upgrade the teaching of future school teachers of mathematics and science.

Continue reading at Brainstorm >>

Michael Ruse is author of several Cambridge titles on the intersection of Science and Religion. His Science and Spirituality will be available this Spring.

Ruse’s latest post “Why I am Weeping for Florida State University” ties in neatly to Weisbrod and Asch’s piece on college football coach bonuses. His Science and Spirituality will be available this Spring.

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As we start the New Year, Florida State University is in the headlines for two reasons. The first is that on New Year’s Day, in the Gator Bowl, FSU beat West Virginia. It was the final game of our coach, Bobby Bowden. The lead headline in the New York Times Sports Section is “Bowden Goes Out on Top of Shoulders.” The magazine Science also has news about FSU. “Recession Hits Some Sciences Hard at Florida State University.” We have just fired 20 tenured faculty and another 15 tenure-track faculty.  And don’t think that these were just second-raters or indeed presume that any of them were.  Included was Dean Falk, one of today’s leading paleoanthropologists and, among other things, the expert on the brain of Homo floresiensis (the hobbit). She got a pink slip on her 65^th birthday.  (Disclosure: Dean is a good friend. In this post I am absolutely not making a judgment about whether, given the firings, she was legitimately included or not. If you read the Science article, you will see that decisions were made on the judged vulnerability of departments, and she is a member of one such department, anthropology.)

I don’t know which item of news depresses me the more. At the best of times (and God knows when those are), I look upon collegiate sports in the USA, football and basketball particularly, as deeply corrupting. At FSU we are just emerging from a major scandal about football players taking courses that were rigged. Bowden lost some of the many victories with which he is credited. (Again: In this post I am making absolutely no judgments about who was responsible. These issues are still being contested.)

But of course the actual dishonesty is just a tip of the iceberg. Frankly, what any of this has to do with education beats me. I do know that there are aspects that I — and I of all people am not Mr. Politically Correct — find deeply offensive. Start with the Red Indian (and I use that term advisedly) who starts each game by plunging a burning spear into the ground and go on with the “chop” that the fans give throughout the game. Add in the drinking — Mike’s Beer Barn supposedly sells more kegs than any other outlet in the USA — and don’t forget, as is becoming all too certain, the damage we are doing to young men’s brains in the name of entertainment.

Keep reading at Brainstorm >>

In my seventieth year I find myself in a very peculiar position. Raised a Quaker, I lost my faith in my early twenties and it has never returned. I think of myself as an agnostic on deities and ultimate meanings and that sort of thing. With respect to the main claims of Christianity – loving god, fallen nature, Jesus and atonement and salvation – I am pretty atheistic, although some doctrines like original sin seem to me to be accurate psychologically. I often refer to myself as a very conservative non-believer, meaning that I take seriously my non-belief and I think others should do (and often don’t). If someone goes to the Episcopal Church for social or family reasons, or because they love the music or ceremonies, I have no trouble with that. Had I married a fellow Quaker, I might still be going to Quaker meetings. But I have little time for someone who denies the central dogmas of Christianity and still claims to be a Christian, except in a social sense. No God, no Jesus as His son, no resurrection, no eternal life – no Christianity. As it happens, I prefer the term “skeptic” to describe my position rather than “agnostic,” because so often the latter means “not really interested” and I am very interested. Like Thomas Henry Huxley, I am deeply religious in a total absence of theology. Unlike his grandson Julian Huxley (and others like Edward O. Wilson), I am totally uninterested in a “religion without revelation.” I loathe the term and the idea of “humanist.” One religion in this lifetime is quite enough thank you.

Without burnishing my halo too much, I think – and I warned you that I am a very conservative non-believer – that the most important parable is that of the talents and that in this lifetime, although never succeeding (thanks to my own moral frailty), I have tried hard to use that which has been given to me. In particular, I have striven to move beyond the comfortable life of a university professor – and I have been a full-time philosophy prof since I was twenty five – to engage in the public sphere on issues that I think morally important. Specifically, I have engaged in the science-religion debate – more precisely in the Darwinism-Creationism debate – for over thirty years. I have written on the subject, I have lectured regularly on the subject (on average, I give a talk about every two weeks and many are on this topic), and I have appeared as witness in a court case to defend the US separation of Church and State.

That the Creationists and fellow travelers, notably proponents of Intelligent Design Theory (IDT), would dislike my views I take as axiomatic. They should dislike my views for I spend my life fighting against these people. I say this notwithstanding the fact that, at the personal level, I have good and friendly relations with many of the leaders, including Duane T. Gish, Phillip Johnson, and Bill Dembski. I do not consider these people to be evil or motivated by money – anything but this latter, Gish could have made millions in the motivational speaking arena – although I deplore their beliefs and think them deeply dangerous. I will say however that I was disappointed that when Ben Stein tried to make me seem foolish in his movie Expelled, not one of them sprang publicly to my defense. Anyone who did not condemn that gross piece of distortion of the issues should feel really ashamed.

Read the rest of the article here >>

Ruse’s forthcoming book is Science and Spirituality.

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