Ah Templeton Templeton Templeton, how it does creep in everywhere, like mildew.
There’s this Oxford professor saying why thenewatheists are stupid and wrong. Guess where he comes from.
While “new atheists” Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have been grabbing headlines with their bold claims that modern science has killed off God, an Oxford professor has been quietly chipping away at the ground they stand on. John C Lennox, Professor of Mathematics and Fellow in the Philosophy of Science at Oxford’s Green Templeton College, has been popping up at debates around the globe to take issue with the most prominent new atheists.
At what? At Oxford’s what? Oxford’s Green what?
Can’t be, I thought. Must be just a coincidence of name. Some Admiral Green who showed Napoleon what’s what and some Viscount Templeton who carried the chamber pot for George II. Must be.
So I hastened to look it up…and no. It’s not Viscount Templeton of Steeple Magna, Hampshire. It’s not Georgiana Templeton of Ladbroke Grove, founder of hospitals. It’s not gallant Captain Templeton, protector of women and children during the Siege of Jenkinsabad. It’s just same old same old John moneybags Templeton of Pennsylvania.
1965 Oxford Centre for Management Studies established under the Chairmanship of Sir Norman Chester…
1983 Major benefaction received from Mr (later Sir) John Templeton.
1984 Name changed to Templeton College and first students are matriculated…
2008 Merger with Green College.
2011 Professor publishes book saying why thenewatheists are stupid and wrong.
Comments
37 responses to “Templeton buys whole Oxford colleges? Srsly?”
With an endowment of a billion and a half dollars, you can buy a lot of academic indulgences.
You can and by god you do.
The Templeton Foundation: Funding the New Counter-reformation.
I know, there is something sinister about Templeton money buying an Oxford College, but given the argument he’s making it clearly can’t be a very good one. I mean honestly fine tuning? The argument Douglas Adams demolishes with a puddle analogy? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised any more but you’d imaging that for a college at Oxford you could expect to get a bit more bang for your buck.
What is it about the $1bn Templeton fund that makes it so attractive?
Ummmm… yeah. And the reason that Atheists are gaining ground and billionaire theists are having to buy influence is because even when they buy a college, this is what they produce. I’m sure we’ll be blasted a couple of more times this month, and in every month to follow, that we don’t address real theological thinking and that Gnu atheists avoid confronting the subtle-yet-powerful philosophical and logical underpinnings that make theism the only rational choice. But even when given bought relevance and influence and constant access to unopposed coverage in the media, the best we get is the same old garbage stated the exact same way as every other time we’ve heard it.
“Sophisticated theism” seems to be nothing more or less than repeating poor and discredited arguments with academic credentials after your name in place of a valid argument.
As a small pointer to the reviewer’s acumen, he pays Dawkins a compliment (in para.4) which though richly deserved must have been intended for Lennox.
The funny thing about Templeton is, that it’s too late to the party. We (atheists) have moved on from the debates, we’re simply not interested in listening to yet more ridiculous apologetics. Sorry, we don’t take theology seriously *smirk*.
And of course, Templeton is a great way to identify all those corrupt academics with dubious integrity.
Although science is not immune to corruption, complete and utter lies get weeded out over time, and therefore Templeton is doomed to eventually be perceived as yet another ridiculous attempt by religion to destroy science.
Has Lennox actually received money from the Templeton Foundation? He’s not listed on their website (at least as far as Google site search can see). If anything, he’s beneath them. The above article quickly descends into a stupidest-of-the-stupid attack on evolution. From what I’ve seen, the Templeton Foundation usually avoids creationists.
I see his book is praised – with her usual subtlety – by Melanie Philips, the Daily Mail’s favourite goddist apologist.
Wait around long enough, maybe we’ll find them quoting Jerry Coyne. ‘Twould be much the same; Monod was fiercely naturalist.
It is always so depressing to learn that distinguished intellectuals can fail to think at all critically. There is much unexplained about the universe. One can postulate about a kind of intelligence inherent in the universe. One can assume that, one day, it talked to Abraham. Yeah, that’s it.
Or could it be that they’re making it all up to flatter the emperor?
This is really old hat. It sounds like he is not very good at his own discipline, or else does not understand how to properly apply mathematics to real world problems.
Sounds like a standard issue Creationist.
eye-roll
Archea differ in the constitution of their membranes. Eukaryotes have organelles. The relationships between the various lineages is clearly indicated by genetic comparisons. The genetic code is identical – except when it isn’t. And what about RNA viruses? Lennox is very poorly educated in biology.
That ranks pretty high on the ‘Duh’ scale. Who claims that proteins are formed simply from raw matter and energy? Most biologists claim they are made by ribosomes Does Lennox even know what a ribosome is?
Lennox offers nothing new and nothing intelligent. Standard issue Creationist. William West should be ashamed of himself for reporting it all uncritically.
So Oxford employs a creationist professor of philosophy of science? How pathetic is that?
The section of that article on fine tuning is just ridiculous.
I will assume that the numbers are intended to be read in exponential notation, so that 1016, for example, denotes 10 raised to the power of 16 (or 10^{16}, for short). (Otherwise it becomes hard to explain why every number begins with the digits 10.)
If that is the case, the whole argument is just plain foolish. How is it possible to claim, for example, that a variation of one part in 10^{40} in the ratio of the electromagnetic force constant to the gravitational force constant would make life “impossible” when the gravitational constant itself is only known to an accuracy of one part in 10^{4}?
And how is it possible to calculate a probability distribution for the values of the fundamental constants in the absence of any information about prior probabilities?
Since religion no longer attracts the best and brightest, we should expect nothing more than this. When I took philosophy back in the early 80’s, a very smart Jesuit, who had degrees in Philosophy and Theology from Oxford and the Sorbonne, warned us not to try to prove the existence of God. “You will embarrass yourself and the faith,” he said. Sadly, men of this caliber are no longer drawn to the field, which is why we have to endure this type of puerile nonsense.
To be fair, though, Lennox has been a plonker since WAY before 1983 ;)
Pathetic and disgusting is what I’d call it. I associate Oxford with the analytical tradition in philosophy, as well as that brilliant comic rendition of it by Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett.
Reginald Selkirk – DNA having the same function across all life is evidence FOR evolution, not against it. You’re absolutely right, this guy is a complete buffoon.
I’ve never taken a philosophy class. I probably should. Can anyone recommend the field of philosophy in general? I’ve read some Dennet and quite like his approach. But a lot of philosophy seems to have been superceded by science.
I’m afraid I didn’t get any further than the “Photo of a distant galaxy” which clearly isn’t.
I’m trying to think of an analog in any another philosophical discipline. It’s sort of like being a philosopher of language and believing that language was handed down by God when the Tower of Babel was being built. The scary thing is, on second thought there actually might be such a person at some relatively reputable college somewhere.
Or it’s like being a philosopher of mind who believes that sensory data are processed directly by the soul without the brain playing any role. It’s beyond mere theism, into advocating blatant nonsense out of total ignorance of one’s subject matter.
And the thing that always bugs me to no end about these cases (and about ID hacks as well)? The presumption that someone who hasn’t demonstrated basic proficiency in the relevant fields of biology and biochemistry, even though they accept the legitimacy of those fields and that there’s much more to be learned about them, decide to directly contradict the experts in those fields by wielding an obviously less-than-undergraduate level of understanding.
Admittedly, Lennox is also a mathematician, which seems to be where he started out. Not unlike (ahem, Dr!) William Dembski, who somehow managed to get multiple degrees in mathematics and statistics from a secular university, and then write a series of papers that make high-school level errors in calculating probabilities, when they are actually coherent enough that one can even distinguish one non sequitur from the next (in other words, it’s typical apologetics, only translated into the language of purposefully, almost artfully obfuscated mathematics, rather than purposefully obfuscated natural language).
Yes, these are the folks that are prepared to rescue religion from those atheist scientists, the scientists who are arrogant, make proclamations outside their fields of expertise, and are generally devoid of nuance. After all, as long as hypocrisy survives, monotheism can never die, even while its putrid corpse accuses all others of moral decay.
And the aforementioned Davies, who, mercifully, tends to avoid screwing up his “hard” science, has that nasty way of screwing up history. Remember this?
Right. Because modern physicists all totally think of all physical laws as “perfect” and “absolute”, in some special way beyond just being “universal”. And no pre-Christian sorts, such as Archimedes, successfully described the physical world using mathematical laws. And this perfect absolute higher realm idea obviously comes directly from Christianity, which did not merely adopt pre-existing philosophical ideas that were momentarily convenient to incorporate into an orthodox theology. No, this came straight from the New Testament and no one tried this way of thinking before Christianity, and Isaac Newton was the first scientist to think like this. Don’t bother to go read up on Plato. No one believed in absolute universal perfect immutable anythings in a higher realm that controlled what happened in the physical world. Nope. Never happened. Nah nah nah nah can’t hear you.
Yes, this is what happens when an astrobiologist talks about the history of metaphysics, under the assumption that anyone can do it, no reading required.
I should be clear also: I say that Davies avoids screwing up his hard science purely in that he tends to remember what sort of scientist he thinks he’s supposed to be (more than can be said for Hoyle before him). I have no particular endorsements for, or aspersions upon, his work generally, as I honestly don’t know much about what he’s done other than the SETI thing and his public dronings.
Yesterday the London Observer published a list of 300 contemporary British intellectuals- sadly they missed out some obvious ones like Anthony Kenny – but there was only one ‘theologian’ – Rowan Williams no less. These guys don’t even make the starting block so far as serious critical thinking is concerned which is something to be thankful for. Ever since Templeton Prize winner John Polkinghorne claimed that there was no scientific reason why our bodies should not be resurrected in the physical form we enjoyed on earth at the last Judgement, the Templeton showed it was not a serious intellectual foundation. The whole approach of -if you can find any evidence, however implausible, to link religion to science, we will open the money bags for you- is abhorrent .
Many of us have been trying hard to get a condemnation in Melanie Phillips’ Daily Mail column- it is one of the signs that one has arrived as a serious thinker. . .
This guy has a professorship and his job is writing “Yes, Virginia, there is a Jehovah”? There’s no justice.
I wonder if my comment (under my real name) over there will be posted.
I wonder what Lennox’s speciality is – most mathematicians do seem to appreciate that one needs at least some knowlege of the subject matter in order to develop mathematical models, etc. of things. You would think someone at one of the most well regarded universities in the world world would be especially so familiar. But it sure doesn’t look that way …
And this Templeton putting its name on a college there? Urp.
Melanie Phillips writes that Lennox’s book provides an
and yet the article immediately below this quote reads
So Dawkins is wrong, because he’s stepping outside of his field and that’s very bad and typical gnu atheist hubris, but it’s ok for an apologist to do this, oh yes; those writers can pronounce on any field they choose outside of their official discipline if it supports belief in God.
Just a recycling of familiar arguments then: atheists don’t know enough about theology to comment (but believers don’t need to know any); atheists are being arrogant in demanding evidence (but believers are being humble in thinking they’re the centre of the universe); atheists mistakenly think science is relevant to belief (it isn’t, except on the occasions when it agrees with religion). So much special pleading…
So is the section on biological design.
Furthermore, the inclusion of both fine-tuning cosmological arguments along with biological design arguments poses problems. Fine-tuning claims that the universe is suitable for the natural development of life, therefore God did it. The biological design argument claims that the universe is not suitable for the natural development of life, therefore God did it. The two are philosophically opposed, so the use of both arguments indicates a lack of philosophical consistency.
We’ll root for you, Charles! :- )
Thanks, Ophelia. I don’t think they award the Templeton Prize until they have asked for ‘Mad Mel’s advice.
@8…I have completely banned the word “theology” from my lexicon.
It’s mythology. The only difference I can tell between the two terms is that one involves study of myths that are currently believed by a proportion of the populace.
Other than that … no difference.
So, it’s “mythology” for me. And if someone complains … well, they’re just going to have to show me where the differences lie between modern mythology and “ancient” mythology.
Ah so that’s the secret formula…
Perhaps Oxford’s next new college will be Mad Mel College.
Inkadu, there’s a lot of philosophy that does not suck and that does stuff like invent scientific method in the first place. For modern stuff, if Dennett appeals to you, try Kitcher or Sober.
I’m rather doubtful about whether this guy Lennox is what he claims to be. According to the website of the University of Oxford Mathematical Institute (what normal universities call the math dept) he was made professor ‘by conferment of title’ in 2009, but he doesn’t appear on the list of departmental members. This can’t be because he’s a bit long in the tooth, as the list includes emeritus profs, among them several people who taught me 50 years ago. Also AFAIK Oxford subsumes philosophy-of-science under Philosophy, and he doesn’t seem to be a member of that Faculty either.
Leave the poor man alone. He’s clearly perfectly qualified for – and no doubt very good at – calculating the number of angels dancing on a pin head. Which I believe is the same number as there are Templeton dollars.
He’s got a web page: John C Lennox
His duties include:
Professor of Mathematics
Laing Trust Fellow in Mathematics and Philosophy of Science
Pastoral Adviser
It also appears from his photo that he is the source of the stereotype that the British have bad teeth.
Philosophy, I am told, is a good thing. It teaches you how to think. But I get the impression that the way it is currently practiced, even by many in the higher echelons of the field, are more akin to sophistry: using rhetorical arguments to support a cause, rather than engaging in a true search for knowledge.
William Lane Craig, for example, is a Christian apologist. He makes the most atrocious errors in probability and infinity when he speaks about mathematics. Yet some call him a philosopher. I don’t see how you can call yourself a philosopher when you work at an institution which makes you sign on to a statement of faith.
Alvin Plantinga, for another example, is called a philosopher. He makes the most atrocious errors when he writes about evolution. And yet he has served as the president of the American Philosophical Association, Western Division.
You can handpick a handful of people from *any* discipline and use them to paint the discipline poorly. Reading a broad cross-section of actual journals is a much better way to get a grasp of the depth and quality of the field. Or, really, any field.
I saw Lennox debate Michael Shermer on the topic of whether God exists a couple of years ago in Sydney – singularly uninpressive, even given my low expectations. Videos http://www.sydneyatheists.org/node/257