So Templeton is still doing this.
Religion News Foundation has received a two-year $210,000 grant from the West Conshohocken, Pa.-based John Templeton Foundation to help inform the public about how science and religion intersect.
Hey, I can do that for nothing:
They don’t.
You’re welcome.
Stories will investigate the religious, spiritual, ethical and philosophical implications of today’s most talked about developments in science, such as artificial intelligence, robotics, genetic engineering, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and deep-space exploration.
Why not just investigate the ethical and philosophical implications and leave the empty buzzwords out of it? Ethical and philosophical issues are much better discussed and investigated in secular terms; religion adds nothing.
The Religion News Foundation will also produce four ReligionLink source guides to enhance journalistic coverage of complex issues surrounding science and religion on such topics as religion’s role in the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life, the religious and moral implications of artificial intelligence, neuroscience and religion, and animal faith.
Animal faith? Give me a break. Only humans are afflicted with that particular kind of stupidity.
Comments
12 responses to “They arrived at the intersection to find it empty”
A year or so back, there was a film of wild chimpanzees doing the rounds. The chimps were exploring their territory, and came to the boundary of their land with the territory of another band of chimps. Possibly they saw or smelled evidence of recent incursions by their rivals, because they started making the kinds of threatening noises which are common in territorial disputes to scare off the enemy. They shouted, jumped up and down, picked up sticks and rocks and banged them on the ground and on trees, and could be seen approaching a particularly large tree – something of a landmark – and not only hitting it, but grasping it with their arms and scratching it with their feet, clearly marking it in a similar manner to the way cats scratch boundary trees. They could also have been scent-marking it (hugging would certainly get the old arm-pit whiff on the bark!).
So far, so mundane.
Then some religious nuts got hold of the film, and all the subsequent articles discussed ‘tree-worship’, and had titles asking if chimpanzees had religious beliefs. It was so completely stupid, I couldn’t believe that anyone would fall for it.
That is why religion has to be kept away from science; it doesn’t add anything, and actually makes the facts harder to explain through all the nonsense.
I have been watching a preview for this movie about cats that roam the streets in Istanbul; it’s called Kedi, and it looks very interesting. Only one thing…there is a line in the trailer about how cats know there is a god…
No cat I have ever met has even so much as suspected the existence of a god outside themselves. Their world centers around them for the most part, and as far as they know, they are the reason the universe exists. Why do people have to go and spoil everything by dragging god in where it isn’t wanted?
Two excellent comments posted at the same moment. There is a god after all!
And, curiously, both mention cats.
Bastet?
Animal faith. Dog: You feed me! You must be a god! Cat: You feed me! I must be a god!
You have the right of it, Gordon.
And cats are gods.
Cats and the rulers of imperial Britain. Hard to tell the difference really. Except one built roads and railways and the other makes you feel (briefly) good about yourself.
In the movie “Juggernaut,” a character speaks about a theological discussion between two pet goldfish. One goldfish finally ends the discussion with “Of course there’s a God. I mean, who changes the water?”
“Kedi” is a wonderful film. The line “Cat’s know there is a god” is spoken by one of the Turks in the film, who IIRC took himself out of a downward spiral by becoming a caretaker of many cats. It’s his feeling, nothing more. If you go, be on the lookout for an amusing bit of anti-government graffiti, which looks quite professionally done, probably stenciled.
Goddamn autocorrect!
I am planning on seeing Kedi, but it won’t come to my town (small town theatres, grrrr). If it comes to Lincoln at a good time for us to go, we have it on our list. (I wouldn’t let a line like that ruin a good film – if it appeared it was one of those Heaven is Real clones trying to sneak by me, that would be different).
“Kedi” is available on Netflix.