Despite profound disagreements about elevatorism and its fallout, I can’t ignore useful investigations of the Templeton Foundation and similar at Why Evolution is True, like today’s post on Templeton’s ridiculous stealth “Faraday Institute” and its hot new “Test of Faith” project.
The “Test of Faith” project has a Study Guide. The study guide has an introduction. The introduction explains things.
The challenge that has been put forward so many times recently is that God is a delusion and science has removed the need for faith in anything. But there are many practising scientists who have a sincere Christian faith, even at the highest levels of academia. They have all been trained to think and test ideas to the limit. If their faith and their science are both genuine searches for truth, we need to hear from them.
Yes if; but are they?
No, they’re not; not in the same sense. Claiming they are is equivocation; it depends on treating different meanings as if they were the same. Science’s search for truth is not the same kind of thing as “faith”‘s search for truth. The criteria are different. The willingness to admit failure and error is different. The expectation of evidence is different. The very definition of truth is different.
Why bother thinking about science and faith?Ask two or three friends, family members or colleagues if they can think of a situation where science and religion (or beliefs) affect each other. What issues or questions arise?For example, what about: In medicine? (Religious beliefs often affect ethical decisions.)
In education? (Children sometimes ask questions like ‘Who made human beings, God or evolution?
In politics? (E.g., the Archbishop of Canterbury is campaigning on climate change.)
Ah yes the archbish is campaigning on climate change…and the pope is campaigning on (i.e. against) condoms, secularism, reporting of priestly child rape to law enforcement, ordination of women, all abortions including pregnancies in which the fetus would die anyway and so would the mother. Funny that Templeton/Faraday/Test of Faith picks an example of right-on campaigning as opposed to the other kind.
Never trust a Templeton creation.