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beggars and the scienligion model for business

message to New Agnostics and JTF?

Visit the comic page and get your pointer over the red button for tatwd

p’tite annonce

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Pensez à visiter le Cafepress de Jesus and Mo et l’original en anglais.

Jerry Coyne rocks :-)

In which [he] refuse an invitation to the World Science Festival on grounds of accommodationism.

The second consideration is that the festival is being supported by The Templeton Foundation. I absolutely believe you when you say that there are no strings attached, and that the Foundation is not exercising any editorial judgement. But this is not the issue. The issue is that, by saying it sponsors the Festival, the Templeton Foundation will use its sponsorship to prove that it is engaging in serious discussion with scientists. Like many of my colleagues, I regard Templeton as an organization whose purpose is to fuse science with religion: to show how science illuminates “the big questions” and how religion can contribute to science. I regard this as not only fatuous, but dangerous. Templeton likes nothing better than to corral real working scientists into its conciliatory pen. I don’t want to be one of these. That’s just a matter of principle. But the “no strings” argument doesn’t wash for me, for precisely the same reason that congressmen are not supposed to take gifts from people whose legislation they could influence. It is the appearance of conflict that is at issue.

See why I like him 😉

JTF & B d’E

Si on cherchait des indices indirects de l’approche foireuse de la John Templeton Foundation, on peut regarder qui a obtenu leur grand prix cette année : Bernard d’Espagnat 😀

Si on cherchait des indices indirects de l’approche foireuse de Bernard d’Espagnat, on peut regarder qui lui a attribué son grand prix cette année : la John Templeton Foundation re- 😀

Ca se mord la queue. Franchement hilarant, non ?

Une façon comme une autre, pour la John Templeton Foundation, pour injecter de l’argent à l’environnement de l’Université Interdisciplinaire de Paris pour soutenir le néo-créationnisme en Europe.

Via

Seeing and Believing

Seeing and Believing

The never-ending attempt to reconcile science and religion, and why it is doomed to fail.

Jerry A. Coyne, The New Republic

Jerry Coyne signe un essai pas mal construit, une attaque à l’acide darwinien face aux essais (pitoyables IMO) pour réconcilier Science et Religions. Appuyé sur deux des productions de la John Templeton Foundation, publiées par Karl W. Giberson et Kenneth R. Miller.

Il conclue :

This disharmony is a dirty little secret in scientific circles. It is in our personal and professional interest to proclaim that science and religion are perfectly harmonious. After all, we want our grants funded by the government, and our schoolchildren exposed to real science instead of creationism. Liberal religious people have been important allies in our struggle against creationism, and it is not pleasant to alienate them by declaring how we feel. This is why, as a tactical matter, groups such as the National Academy of Sciences claim that religion and science do not conflict. But their main evidence–the existence of religious scientists–is wearing thin as scientists grow ever more vociferous about their lack of faith. Now Darwin Year is upon us, and we can expect more books like those by Kenneth Miller and Karl Giberson. Attempts to reconcile God and evolution keep rolling off the intellectual assembly line. It never stops, because the reconciliation never works.

De l’huile sur le feu, j’aime ça, les flammes éclairent la situation.

Atheism is science’s only contribution to the ideas of religion

I suspect that the title in Nature an editorial choice : Atheism could be science’s contribution to religion, based on the final phrase of Cobb’s and Coyne’s letter (below the fold and link):

In reality, the only contribution that science can make to the ideas of religion is atheism.

That’s quite different, I mean « religion » and « ideas of religion » don’t equate. Make it sound as atheism is conceptually close to religions. It isn’t.
I changed it for my post, making it more close to Cobb’s and Coyne’s point of view, I think.

John Templeton Foundation censorship

update added at the end of this post

1. Honorable people doesn’t practice censorship and/or heavily truncate comments left on their website.
2. John Templeton Foundation’s people practice censorship and/or text truncation
3. John Templeton Foundation’s people aren’t honorable

A couple of days ago I posted a commentary to JTF’s website, at the « Does science make belief in God obsolete? » page. The commentaries are moderated before publishing and mine was published almost 24 h later. It was slightly modified, the title (which I hadn’t provided) being added: RE: Kenneth Miller. OK, I had Ken Miller’s answer in mind, but I gave my comment a more general take.

That isn’t a problem. But latter, they edited my text, taking out what they didn’t like, leaving a reconstructed paragraph that I never wrote!

Quite the same kind of censorship one could expect from DaveScot at Uncommon Descent. Now, on your screens from John Templeton Foundation people. Enjoy.

Out of context! Truncated to their convenience. Not even the warning one could expect from an editor when editing is necessary, and they do have my e-mail address, you know, just the usual « required field ».

Can one trust that kind of people? I think not.

I was wondering, how comes the JTF is supporting local (French) neo-creationists censoring negative comments. Now I know, same kind of people.

Do I need to say that I’m pissed-off?

For before/after screen captures go here

Just sent this mail :

To: Webmaster Templeton.org

Cc : Pamela P. Thompson (as Vice President for Communications), Clio A. Mallin (as Communications Coordinator), Charles Harper (hoping that this will not be considered as a minor mistake) and Kenneth Miller (my comment being labeled by JTFs staff as RE: Kenneth Miller)

Sir,

A recently posted comment at the « http://www.templeton.org/belief/ » page of JTF’s website, a « Templeton Conversation » about « Does science make belief in God obsolete? » was heavily edited.
I didn’t received any notification about the changes of the content of my message (and yes, I did checked the spam folder of my e-mailer, just in case).
The result is quite afar from my argument. You can check Before/After screen capture at http://oldcola.googlepages.com/johntempletonfoundation%27seditingcapacity

The behavior is unacceptable. A conversation isn’t possible if you reserve the right to edit comments as you like to make them soft and hide critics. The name of such behavior is censorship. Worse than censorship. It would be just censorship if you just had deleted the comment. There is also manipulation of my phrases out of context.

There are two alternatives:
1 – You restore my comment at it’s initial content, and in this case there is a possible conversation.
2 – You delete the reconstructed comment as it does not correspond to my opinion. ASAP.

Whatever your decision, the case was posted at the Web already, and I’ll take care to publicize the way the JTF conceives the term « Conversation ». [https://coffeeandsci.wordpress.com/2008/04/23/john-templeton-foundation-censorship/]

Please, keep me informed,

Antoine Vekris

PS copy will be included at https://coffeeandsci.wordpress.com/2008/04/23/john-templeton-foundation-censorship/

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Update 23 april 2008, 20:00 CEST

Charles Harper replied to my message and he forwarded it to the competent persons. Thank you Dr Harper.
Gary, from the JTF, contacted be to explain the situation he created by editing my comment. He is the one guilty and he apologies for. He deleted the comment (option 2). I would like to thank him publicly for doing so. Below the fold my reply to his message.

Does science make belief in God obsolete?

There is a conversation at JTF‘s website, one of those « Big Questions » that replaced the « Science & Religion » slogan : Does science make belief in God obsolete?

Well, that smells like « Science & Religion » after all, isn’t it? 🙂
For the short version, click the image. For the long one, continue the reading here.