Questioning the Integrity of the John Templeton Foundation 1

Introduction

In the last few years, the John Templeton Foundation has garnered substantial attention by advertising in many of the US and UK's most prestigious scholarly magazines and journals. These advertisements have showcased debates on what the Foundation describes as the “Big Questions,” some of which have a scientific theme. Various scientists, philosophers, and theologians have been paid to offer their answers to these questions.

This pronounced visibility has led many scientists and academics to wonder about the Foundation and how it operates. One of its stated goals is to forge a closer relationship between religion and science. To many scientists, this is anathema. They see religion and science as fundamentally incompatible and, therefore, that any relationship between them could only be built on dishonesty or ignorance. To others, the goal is laudable: Some scientists welcome the assistance as they attempt to reconcile their personal religious beliefs with their scientific understanding. To still others, religious or not, any science funding (part of the work of the Foundation involves providing grants for scientific research), from whatever source, is welcome.

For many who do not have a problem with the science/religion agenda of the Foundation, the issue is then one of integrity. Is the Foundation what it says it is? Are its stated goals and its actual goals the same (as judged by who and what it funds)? Does it operate in a transparent and non-corrupt way?

In this commentary, I consider five issues that suggest that the John Templeton Foundation is not what it represents itself to be:

1. The Foundation began as an overtly pro-religious organization. It has since changed its stated aims and goals, and their presentation, in a way that seems calculated to make them appear more “open-minded.” Nevertheless, the Foundation's agenda—based on its actual activities— seems to have remained the same.

2. The Foundation's organizati onal structure and the awarding of its prizes appears to be rife with cronyism.

3. Respondents to the Foundation's “Big Questions” (at least those questions with clear links to science) are disproportionately Foundation advisors and grantees, and yet it is implied that they represent a balance in responses.

4. The Foundation finances prestigious external organizations to run its activities, often without making the participants and/or audience aware of who provided the funding.

5. The Foundation and its current chairman, John (Jack) Marks Templeton, Jr., have a history of funding what could be seen as anti-science activities and groups (particularly concerning climate-change and stem-cell research).

All Things to All Men

The John Templeton Foundation's founder was an American self-made mutual-fund billionaire who became a tax exile in the Bahamas and so a British subject. By this route, he received a knighthood from Margaret Thatcher, and the right to call himself Sir. Not long after this, Templeton founded a prize for religion that eventually gave rise to the US$1.5 billion-endowed John Templeton Foundation. With an endowment as large as many major US universities, including the California Institute of Technology, ² the Foundation dispenses US$70 million in grants every year ³ —money that it uses to fund other religion-science organizations. ⁴

The Foundation started with the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, ⁵ which was “awarded each year to a living person who shows extraordinary originality in advancing humankind's understanding of God.” The prize was founded in 1972, and past recipients include Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain Lord Jakobovits, Reverend Billy Graham, and author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The 1996 winner, Dr. William Bright, was founder of Campus Crusade for Christ International.

The Templeton prize has been generous from the start. According to the Foundation, “Feeling that the Nobel Prizes overlooked one of humanity's most important disciplines—spirituality—Templeton established a foundation that funds the prize in perpetuity at a level guaranteed to exceed the Nobel Prizes… It is the world's largest annual monetary prize.” Today it is worth more than US$1.6 million.

A prize for progress in religion could be seen as straightforward, but at the beginning of 2004 the name of the prize changed. It was no longer for religion, but for “progress about research or discoveries towards spiritual realities.” ⁶ Neither God nor religion were mentioned on the main Templeton Prize web page—though they were still part of the goal of the prize, if you read through the purpose statement (you have to get to paragraph two to see the word “religion” and towards the bottom of the page to see any mention of God).

Today, it's just “The Templeton Prize,” with the “for” clause excised entirely. According to the Foundation, it honors a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works. In practice, since the name change, the prize has been awarded to religious scientists who have either claimed that science is an insufficient explanation for, or who voiced support for religious interpretations of, human experience and how the world works. Here are the seven most recent winners, with their religious affiliation provided in parentheses:

2004	George F. R. Ellis, cosmologist and philosopher (Quaker)
2005	Charles Townes, Nobel laureate and physicist (United Church of Christ)
2006	John D. Barrow, cosmologist and theoretical physicist (United Reformed Church)
2007	Charles Taylor, philosopher (Roman Catholic)
2008	Prof. Michał Heller, physicist and philosopher (Roman Catholic Priest)
2009	Bernard d'Espagnat, physicist (raised Roman Catholic, now self-described spiritualist)
2010	Francis Ayala, biology professor (former Dominican priest)

Of these recent Templeton Prize winners, Charles Taylor is perhaps the most controversial, in that, while Salman Rushdie was hiding from the Ayatollah's death sentence in the late 1980s, Taylor questioned whether freedom of speech should be considered a human right outside of the developed West, especially in countries where religions dominate (Taylor, 1989). Specifically, Taylor argued that blasphemy laws do not inhibit a free society. Charles Colson (winner in 1993) was one of the architects of the plans to spy on the Democratic party that led to the Watergate scandal, and later became a Christian evangelist in prison and founded the Prison Fellowship.

Although the name of the Templeton Prize and the way it is publicized have changed, at no point have the organizers stated that the intent of the prize or the way in which it is awarded have been altered in any way. Templeton said ⁷ that one of his goals in establishing the Templeton Prize was to “influence educated people to wake up to religion.” This agenda seems to have remained intact.

As with the prize, the stated aims of the Foundation have evolved over the years, although there is evidence that its actual aims have not. In 1996, the Foundation said about its own origins: ⁸

When he was growing up in rural Winchester, Tennessee, renowned international investment manager John Marks Templeton considered becoming a missionary. He eventually turned his considerable talents to the business world where he founded the Templeton Growth Fund, one of the world's most successful mutual funds. Throughout his business and financial career, Templeton's early interest in spiritual issues remained a strong influence on his life. Noting how advances in scientific thought dramatically changed the world, he believed advances in religious thought could have a similar impact. In 1972, he established the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion to recognize frontier thinking in religion that contributes to humanity's understanding of God, spirituality and the universe. The annual prize is currently worth more than $1 million.

Sir John Templeton was knighted in 1987 by Queen Elizabeth for his philanthropic efforts. That same year he established the John Templeton Foundation to explore spiritual and moral progress through the use of scientific methods. The Foundation works closely with scientists, theologians, medical professionals, philosophers and scholars to:

• Create and fund projects forging stronger relationships and insights linking the sciences and all religions

• Apply scientific methodology to the study of religious and spiritual subjects

• Support progress in religion by increasing the body of spiritual information through scientific research

• Encourage a greater appreciation of the importance of the free enterprise system and the values that support it

• Promote character and value development in educational institutions

On the Foundation website in 1996, the general information section began with a quote from John Marks Templeton himself:

None of us has ever understood even one percent of the reality of God, the infinity, the eternity of God. All that we have learned is still tiny compared to what is still yet to be discovered if we search for it.

However, today, the Foundation mission mentions neither religion nor God, and a new Templeton quote has been chosen to represent the Foundation's philosophy:

The mission of the John Templeton Foundation 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. Our vision is derived from Sir John Templeton's commitment to rigorous scientific research and related scholarship. The Foundation's motto “How little we know, how eager to learn” exemplifies our support for open-minded inquiry and our hope for advancing human progress through breakthrough discoveries.

The more we discover of science, the more we learn of spirituality.

There is no evidence that, despite this apparent change in mission, there has been an actual change in the goals of the Foundation. For instance, in addition to the Templeton Prize, the Foundation offers the Epiphany Prize ⁹ for movies and television programs that are, “wholesome, uplifting, inspirational, redemptive, and moral.” Though encouraging such movies may sound like a goal of which the majority of the population, religious or not, would approve, it is worth knowing that the prize is intended to, “encourage filmmakers and television producers to create movies and television shows that help increase man's understanding and love of God.” And this is, presumably, not just any God: The prize is administered by the chairman of The Christian Film and Television Commission.

It could be argued that the Epiphany Prize and its stated mission, which sits uneasily with that of the “new” Foundation, is just a harmless anachronism. Except that, as of the beginning of 2009, the Foundation has doubled the prize money from US$100,000 to US$200,000. Among the award winners to date are The Passion of the Christ (a movie that, whatever its merits, is surely not wholesome). The Foundation also sponsors the Kairos Prize for “spiritually-uplifting” screenplays (which has only been running since 2006 offers more than US$50,000 for just three prizes).

Another program, the John Templeton Awards for Theological Promise offers US$10,000 each to a dozen researchers for their theology doctoral theses. Although some scientific research is funded by the Foundation, there is no equivalent program for scientific theses.

The Cambridge-Templeton Journalism Fellowship ¹⁰ is another example of a Foundation award with a reasonable-sounding goal but that some perceive as masking a hidden agenda. The nominal purpose of the award is to “enable up to twelve journalists annually to investigate one of the leading topics of our time: the relationship between science and religion.” Attending journalists receive US$15,000.

John Horgan, a science journalist and Director of the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, wrote about his experiences attending the first Fellowship summer school in 2005. He had, he said, already accepted US$8,800 from the Templeton Foundation for writing three articles, and decided that he might as well accept the US$15,000 for an interesting summer.

He wrote about his experiences at length, ¹¹ but the following quotes are particularly telling. He writes:

My ambivalence about the Foundation came to a head during my fellowship in Cambridge last summer. The British biologist Richard Dawkins, whose participation in the meeting helped convince me and other fellows of its legitimacy, was the only speaker who denounced religious beliefs as incompatible with science, irrational, and harmful. The other speakers— three agnostics, one Jew, a deist, and 12 Christians (a Muslim philosopher canceled at the last minute)—offered a perspective clearly skewed in favor of religion and Christianity.

And later:

One Templeton official made what I felt were inappropriate remarks about the foundation's expectations of us fellows. She told us that the meeting cost more than $1-million, and in return the foundation wanted us to publish articles touching on science and religion. But when I told her one evening at dinner that—given all the problems caused by religion throughout human history—I didn't want science and religion to be reconciled, and that I hoped humanity would eventually outgrow religion, she replied that she didn't think someone with those opinions should have accepted a fellowship. So much for an open exchange of views.

An interesting postscript to this story is that, if you check the Fellowship website, Horgan's name has disappeared, ¹² despite the page being otherwise unchanged since he was listed in 2005. ¹³ His is the only name that has gone missing in this way. I checked with him directly to see whether he had asked for this: He had not. ¹⁴ One could speculate that the organizers did not want to put off potential applicants doing research into the experiences of previous Fellows.

Perhaps the clearest indication of the true agenda of the Foundation is summed up by one of their latest projects: US$2 million for the “Science for Ministry Initiative”. ¹⁵ Organizers write of the project:

At the heart of the Science for Ministry program is the conviction that pastors, in the course of their preaching, teaching, writing, and care, are key catalysts in developing a more fruitful integration of science and faith among their parishioners. ¹⁶

Their current goal, they say, is “Supporting effective science education programs and resources for people in active ministry.” What this means is illustrated by one of the four endorsements that they quote on their website, attributed to Alister McGrath, Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford University:

Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett have opened up a broad cultural debate which no pastor or congregation can ignore or avoid. This excellent initiative will enable the churches to address these issues from a scientifically and culturally informed perspective. We urgently need a new generation of clergy who can handle these burning issues. I believe this initiative will be of immense benefit, and commend it enthusiastically.

In other words, the program is specifically intended to do what the entire Foundation appears to be aimed at: using science and scientists to support a religious agenda.

Looking After Their Own

A striking feature of the list of Templeton Prize winners (recalling that the prize is worth over US$1.5 million) is its remarkable overlap with the Foundation's Board of Advisors. This might not seem surprising, in that you can imagine that prizewinners might be obvious recruits to the Board. But that's not the way it has worked.

In the last 12 years, two-thirds of winners were Board members or very active with Templeton before their big win. These include Francis Ayala, George F. R. Ellis, and John D. Barrow (on the Board from at least 1996 to 2009), Ian Barbour (from at least 1996–2001), Rev. Arthur Peacocke (from 1999–2005), Freeman Dyson and Rev. John Polkinghorne (from at least 1996 to present), and Charles Townes, Nobel laureate and physicist (from 1999 to 2009). ¹⁷ Paul (PCW) Davies, who won the 1995 prize, may also have been on the Board before his big win (he was definitely on the board from 1996–2009), but he says he doesn't remember ¹⁸ when he joined and the Foundation's website does not go back that far. We do know that he was on the Board when details were first posted online in 1996. Either way, he was certainly already friendly with the Foundation before winning the prize in that he had already contributed to a book edited by John Templeton (1994) himself.

Although we cannot know the reasoning for the awarding of any of these prizes, from the outside it certainly looks like a small club of people awarding enormous sums of money to their cronies. Although on the one hand it might be surprising if a member of the Board never won the prize, the fact that that certainly 8/13 and probably 9/14 of the winners have been Board members could be considered cause for concern.

Other winners also had relationships with the Foundation before their million-plus jackpot. 2008 winner Michał Heller published Creative Tension with the Templeton Foundation Press in 2003 and contributed to Science and the Search for Meaning in 2006 (to which Bernard d'Espagnat also contributed). This suggests that getting involved with the Foundation is akin to buying a lottery ticket with a very big prize and extremely good odds.

And it's not just about money. The Foundation is known for creating excellent platforms to promote their prizewinners and advisors. In 2004, for instance, they paid Britain's prestigious Royal Society more than US$281,000 to host a series of lectures that were supposed to end in 2007. ¹⁹ There appears to have been only six lectures, which means that the Royal Society has done very well out of it, and/or it's an extremely expensive place to put on a lecture, and/or the speakers have been lavishly paid and expensed. In any case, despite the series having a seemingly non-religious and broad theme —The Nature of Human Knowledge and Understanding—the organizers appear not to have cast their net widely. Four of the six speakers were current or recent members of the Foundation Board of Advisors (George Ellis, ²⁰ Martin Nowak, ²¹ John Polkinghorne, ²² and V. S. Ramachandran ²³ ). Of the remaining two lectures, one had a clear religious theme: Ziauddin Sardar ²⁴ talked about Islam and science. That leaves just one talk that was not obviously promoting the Foundation's Board members or agenda.

This pattern of funding events that appear to be independent but on closer inspection have a huge weighting towards people in the Foundation stable can be seen across many of the Foundation's activities. For another recent example, the Foundation was a general sponsor of the World Science Festival held in New York in 2009, and the sole sponsor of a panel discussion titled Nothing: The Subtle Science of Emptiness. ²⁵ Of the four scientists who participated, three were Foundation advisors and Templeton Prize winners: Ellis, Barrow, and Davies. The fourth was Frank Wilczek, ²⁶ who is on the Board of Advisors of the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi). The main source of funding for FQXi is the Templeton Foundation. Nevertheless, only one of these four mentioned Templeton at all in their biographies, and this mention did not make it to the main program page.

Keeping it in the Family

Of all the Foundation's recent activities, among the most well known are their advertisements for their Big Questions essays. This was an extremely expensive media buy: The Foundation purchased full-page and sometimes two-page spreads in some of the world's most prestigious mainstream and scientific publications, including Scientific American, American Scientist, Nature, The New Scientist, The Atlantic Monthly, Commentary, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Economist, The Financial Times, The New Republic, Prospect, the Sunday edition of The New York Times, and Skeptic magazine. Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic and participant in the project, says the media buy was over US$1 million, and that was back in 2009. ²⁷ The tenor of these advertisements or advertorials was that there are diverse views on these so-called big questions, and that these views had been solicited from an equally diverse range of people in the scientific community.

In fact, looking at the science-related questions, most of the participants were from the Foundation stable (i.e., had received direct funding from the Foundation for a project or platform) and about one-third—surely a disproportionate number—were then, or had previously been, on the Foundation Board of Advisors. For a full breakdown of which Foundation grants the various participants were named on, the Templeton Press books they authored or contributed to, and the positions they took on the essays, please see the Appendix.

What follows is a summary of participation in the three Big Questions that address science-related issues. It is notable that the Foundation-affiliated participants provided responses clearly leaning towards the religious (as opposed to scientific) side of the “argument.”

i. Does evolution explain human nature? ²⁸

Here there were 12 essays; five that could be described as being more on the “Yes” side, and seven that either responded “No” or were equivocal. Eight of the essays were written by people who were in the Foundation stable, five of whom are or were on the Foundation Board of Advisors. As expected, the majority of the people affiliated with the Foundation doubted that evolution could explain human nature, whereas none of the people not affiliated with the Foundation expressed such doubts (full details are presented in the Appendix).

The contrast between the equivocal answers of most of the Templeton-funded scientists and the positive answers of the others can be considered in different ways. For instance, it might suggest that the Foundation is more likely to fund people who do not believe that straight science has the answers. Another possibility is that the Foundation had to draft in their own people to write essays because if they chose scientists from the community at large, they would find that there was no controversy about evolution and human nature, but near unanimity. Yet another possibility is that they wanted to make their own researchers seem as eminent as the prominent scholars recruited from outside the Foundation by giving them this platform.

ii. Does the universe have a purpose? ²⁹

Any likelihood that the preponderance of Templeton-funded researchers was a coincidence can be dispelled by considering responses to this question. Again, there were 12 essays, with eight taking a more religious stance (it does have a purpose), and the remaining four taking a more scientific stance. Again, eight were written by people who were in the Foundation stable (seven of whom took the more religious stance), and six of these are or were on the Foundation Board of Advisors (see the Appendix for details).

iii. Does science make belief in God obsolete? ³⁰

Though the Foundation might be expected to claim the opposite, this set of essays seems to provide the clearest indication of the extent to which the Foundation has used this project to assert their agenda. These 13 essays were commissioned and edited by Michael Shermer of the Skeptics Society. According to Shermer's own analysis, ³¹ 7 of the 13 essays argued that science did not make belief in God obsolete. Seven authors had not received any Foundation funding that I can discern, and just one member of the Board of Advisors was asked to participate. However, six essays were written by people who had been funded by the Foundation. Two of these were on the “obsolete” side: Shermer and Christopher Hitchens, both of whom have accepted money from the Foundation for debates and forum events. The other four, all on the “No” side, had accepted Foundation money to support their research.

Michael Shermer is on the record as saying:

To answer this latest big question, I was selected by Templeton to not only edit the essays, but to select the participants. We aimed for a wide range of commentators who would provide an equally wide range of answers, from “yes” to “no” to “it depends” to “no, but it should” (the latter by the inimitable Christopher Hitchens). Since I am aware of the reputation that the Templeton Foundation has within the skeptical, atheist, and humanist communities for harboring a right-wing Christian agenda, I would like to note that, in fact, they invited me to select the commentators and edit their essays, and insisted that I include skeptics, atheists, and humanists, which you will see that I did. There was never any hint to me that I should edit the commentaries to come out a certain way to match the alleged agenda; to the contrary, they seemed most eager to give everyone a fair shake … to the tune of over a million dollars spent in a national advertising campaign… ³²

In a more recent communication he reiterated most of this, but added two important things:

Gary Rosen at the Templeton Foundation approached me about the project and suggested the question title, which I liked and agreed to. Gary is a former editor at Commentator and a real professional (and a world-class writer himself), and the folks at Templeton basically gave me carte blanche to do whatever I wanted, as long as there was a wide variety of answers to the question.

This is where Shermer might be accused of naïveté. First, the question itself has a major problem, especially in the context of the huge publicity the essays were intended to generate and receive. Having had time to think about the question, the writers presumably understood that it related to whether belief is obsolete. This means that the resulting answer is almost bound to be equivocal. For instance, had it been written as, “Does science make belief in Santa Claus obsolete?” many who did not think Santa Claus existed might nevertheless say “No, because the belief gives the pleasure of anticipation to children every year.” The problem is that the vast majority of readers will glance at the “Big Questions” advertisement and then turn the page (as they would with any other advertisement). It is not hard to imagine that many of these readers might be left with the impression that it is the fact of God that is not considered obsolete by the majority of the contributors.

Furthermore, the use of the term “science” in the question, and the context of some of the advertisements (many in science-related magazines) could make it appear that the scientific community is divided on the issue of whether God exists. In fact, studies have shown that more than 70% of high-level scientists do not believe in God (Cornwell and Stirrat, 2006; Larson and Witham, 1998). By high-level, I mean those who have been recognized by the scientific community as having made some significant contribution to their respective field, and as a consequence have been invited join the US National Academy of Sciences or the UK/Commonwealth Royal Society.

Finally, although Shermer has several times said that he was given “carte blanche” to do what he wanted with this question, he admits that there was a constraint (though he doesn't see it as such): There must be a wide variety of responses to the question. Journalists are often accused of laziness when they simply present two sides of an argument equally and call that “balance,” despite the fact that the weight of evidence and/or opinion is on one side. Not that it necessarily happened in this case but, hypothetically, what if everybody respectable took effectively the same line on this question? Would that mean one had to recruit from the fringes of the intellectual community to find increasingly spurious arguments that are at least different from the arguments already secured? (Remember, only one or two of these could represent the majority view to get the appropriate “variety”). Would the result be something we could genuinely call balanced?

In addition, by giving Shermer “free rein,” the Foundation gained a powerful advocate. With his integrity on the line (and I do not question it here), he, by default, ends up not only defending the set of essays but, by association, the entire project. This gives a glow of respectability to a media campaign that, as we have seen from the previous two questions, is rife with the same agenda-skewing and apparent cronyism that appears to be typical of the Foundation.

Spinning the Truth

In addition to the Big Questions essays, there are many documented incidents of the Foundation making their activities seem more respectable by hiding behind the organizations or people that they fund or hire. In 2005, for instance, I wrote a negative article about the Templeton Foundation for the British publication, The Times Higher Educational Supplement. I was subsequently told by Paul Davies (by then not just an advisor to the Foundation, but on the Board of Trustees) that there was a film crew doing a “television documentary” about the Foundation that he had been “asked to help with.” Having read my article, he had suggested me as a person to speak against it. “I really do hope you will agree to take part, because there is an important issue here about what is, or is not, an appropriate use of sponsorship in areas where science and religion get tangled,” he said. I agreed to provide the necessary balance. ³³

Despite his clear understanding that I was sensitive about the question of funding (the subject of the Times Higher piece), neither he nor the producer mentioned at any point that the film was entirely paid for by the Foundation. I only guessed this might be the case because of a slip of the tongue of a production assistant when she was making arrangements to start filming: She used the term “we” when referring to the Foundation rather than “they,” after which I asked directly who was bankrolling the production. When I found out it was the Foundation, I refused to take part on the grounds that the journalistic integrity of the project was compromised. The film that they produced, a video tribute to Templeton called “The Templeton Vision,” is showcased on the filmmaker's website. It is not included under the Television Documentary section of their site, but under the Corporate Communications section. Paul Davies had “helped out” by presenting the program. ³⁴

Daniel C. Dennett is another person who feels that he has been misled so that he would take part in Foundation-related activities: more than once, in fact. In 2008, he was invited to give a keynote address to the American Academy of Religion. He accepted, and later learned that his honorarium and travel had been funded by a Foundation grant. As a result, he gave the money to the organizers of the Brights website—a social community website for those with a naturalistic (non-supernatural) worldview. ³⁵ Dennett also learned that a conference at which he delivered a talk at The New School in New York City the previous spring had been funded by the Foundation. “… I learned this after the fact,” he said, “…they had kept this information from the invitees.” As a result, he, “refused to publish my piece in their volume, and refused the honorarium.”

What may be especially galling for some people who, as they see it, unknowingly participate in Foundation events, is that they are listed every two years in the Foundation's “Capabilities Reports.” Thus, even if they disagree with the aims and practices of the Foundation, their participation can be presented as a vote of confidence in the organization.

Of course, one could argue that these are sins of omission. However, the Foundation has been caught on several occassions misrepresenting facts in more obvious ways in order to gain credibility and respectibility. Perhaps the most blatant example was the headline of a press release ³⁶ they issued: “United Nations Press Conference on March 22 will announce 2000 Templeton Prize For Progress In Religion.” The United Nations supports Templeton Foundation activities? Not exactly. It turns out the press conference was at the Church Center for the United Nations, one of the headquarters of the United Methodist Church. ³⁷

Saying One Thing, Funding Another

For a group that claims to be pro-science, the Templeton Foundation, and Jack Templeton, its Chair, seem to fund organizations that have an anti-science bias. For instance, the Templeton Freedom Awards are administered by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, a group that is perhaps most notable for its opposition to taking action against climate change ³⁸ and for being a defender of the tobacco industry that has traditionally given them funding. ³⁹ The issue of climate change, in particular—an issue that many scientists believe is the most pressing of the 21^st century—is one in which the Atlas Economic Research Foundation is still very active. In fact, in October 2009, one of the US$10,000 Freedom Awards was given to:

The Globalization Institute in Poland [which] sparked a national debate questioning the science of global warming by publishing “The Mythology of the Greenhouse Effect,” right before the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Poznań. ⁴⁰

One of the 2010 awards was given to:

The Instituto Juan de Mariana in Spain…for their Green Jobs and Green Energy Campaign. Starting in 2009, the institute launched a campaign to illustrate the consequences of government intervention in the energy market. The campaign included the production of a study on green jobs in Spain, which found that for every green job created by the government, two jobs are destroyed in the private sector. ⁴¹

This is nothing new. In both 2009 and 2010, Atlas co-sponsored ⁴² the Heartland Institute's International Conference on Climate Change. ⁴³ In the background notes to the 2009 meeting ⁴⁴ (which deserve to be read in full), they report:

If global warming is indeed a crisis, billions of dollars taken from taxpayers will flow into the coffers of radical environmental groups, giving them the resources and stature to implement other parts of their anti-technology, anti-business agenda. None of that money will go to actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This explains the paradox that even though the scientific community is deeply divided over the causes and consequences of global warming, every single environmental advocacy group in the U.S. (and probably the world) believes it is a crisis.

Global Warming is Not a Crisis

But global warming is not, in fact, a crisis. Here's how we know this:

• Since 2007, more than 31,072 American scientists, including 9,021 with Ph.Ds, have signed the a petition which says, in part, “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate.”

• A 2003 international survey of climate scientists (with 530 responding) found only 9.4 percent “strongly agreed” and 25.3 percent “agreed” with the statement “climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes.” Some 10.2 percent “strongly disagreed.”

• A 2006 survey of scientists in the U.S. found 41 percent disagreed that the planet's recent warmth “can be, in large part, attributed to human activity,” and 71 percent disagreed that recent hurricane activity is significantly attributable to human activity.

• A recent review of 1,117 abstracts of scientific journal articles on “global climate change” found only 13 (1 percent) explicitly endorse the “consensus view” while 34 reject or cast doubt on the view that human activity has been the main driver of warming over the past 50 years.

• The mainstream of the scientific community, in other words, does not believe global warming is a crisis.

Lest it be argued that the Templeton Foundation is two steps removed from this effort and that they should not be expected to answer for the views of their friends' friends, it should be noted that, according to The Heartlander, ⁴⁵ Dr. John (Jack) Templeton, the son of Sir John Marks Templeton and now head of The Templeton Foundation, is a donor to The Heartland Institute personally (i.e., not just via the Atlas Foundation).

The Heartland institute is also anti-anti-smoking. In fact, they devote a special section of their website to the subject. ⁴⁶ With the headline “Tobacco and Freedom,” they say:

Welcome to the Smoker's Lounge, the place to go for sound science, economics, and legal commentary on tobacco issues. This “issue suite” cuts through the propaganda and exaggeration of anti-smoking groups by giving you access to the best available research and commentary from scores of independent research organizations, publications, and government sources.

Jack Templeton is also the US$1-million-donor, co-founder, and former Chairman of an organization called Let Freedom Ring. ⁴⁷ This group has also been generally skeptical of climate change. This is clear from the tenor of their news headlines on the subject. Consider these news headlines released in early 2009, for instance:

23 January 2009: Gloom and doom over climate change “silly” ⁴⁸

28 February 2009: NASA's Chief Climate Scientist Stirs Controversy With Call for Civil Disobedience ⁴⁹

9 March 2009: Bucking the media trend on global warming “crisis” [Promoting Heartland Institute conference detailed above] ⁵⁰

30 March 2009: Cato Institute takes out full page ad disputing President's stance on climate change ⁵¹

2 April 2009: Do ⁵² New Bulbs Save Energy if They Don't Work? ⁵³

9 April 2009: State Department warns U.S. businesses: Take green path or face heavy economic penalties ⁵⁴

14 May 2009: Memo exposes global warming dispute ⁵⁵

30 June 2009: EPA did not release internal report that dissented from conclusion that carbon emissions cause global warming ⁵⁶

1 July 2009: GOP: EPA hid global warming memo ⁵⁷

Let Freedom Ring has also consistently cited “the sanctity of life” as one of its chief concerns. ⁵⁸ What this means, in the scientific sphere, is that they are opposed to embryonic stem cell research. ⁵⁹ For instance, in a statement issued on March 9, Dr. Don Wildmon stated on behalf of Let Freedom Ring: ⁶⁰

President Obama has given the ok to destroy human life in the name of scientific research.

Embryonic stem cell research is immoral and ineffective. It is immoral because it destroys human life at its earliest stage of development by harvesting the stem cells for body parts. It is ineffective because it has yet to be used a single time in any therapeutic application.

Researchers must get their funding from taxpayers for embryonic stem cell research because they can't convince private sources to invest. Private investors know there are no proven uses for embryonic stem cells. It's all hype, hope and theory.

But adult stem cell research, on the other hand, is ethically benign and is already being used to treat over 70 diseases and conditions. If taxpayer dollars are going to be spent on stem cell research, that's where it ought to go.

By reversing funding restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, Pres. Obama is making every American taxpayer complicit in immoral, life destroying research. This is a terrible example of political ideology trumping sound science.

The one person talking about this techology from the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, Greg Hengler, provides a similar perspective:

Why do Obama and so many others find the “We are following the science” argument hook, line and sinker – especially when Pres. Obama follows it with a dig at moral values and ideology? Science is amoral. It does not have anything to tell us about right or wrong, good or bad, etc. The bottom line is not scientific, it is whether the experimentation on human embryos (by the way, you were one at one point of your life) is right or wrong. Pres. Obama, please don't tell me about “the science behind your decisions,” tell me about the morality behind your decisions. This lift is definitely change but not one I believe in. ⁶¹

The Heartland Institute is in the same camp. ⁶²

I am not aware that either the John Templeton Foundation or Jack Templeton personally has made statements on embryonic stem cell research, climate change, or tobacco. Nevertheless, one could argue that they have put their money where their collective mouths are. While on the one hand they required Michael Shermer (see earlier section) to secure a variety of views on belief in God, their funding of external organizations seems not to show the same level of diversity.

Conclusion

The Templeton Foundation is a private institution that operates by its own rules. Its agenda can at best be called unclear. At worst, its agenda is pro-religion and anti-science. The people who run the Foundation could be said to be media- and academia-savvy, always ensuring to mix enough respectable research/scholars with “research” and “scholars” that might be seen as questionable. This seemingly manipulative strategy not only helps serious researchers feel comfortable receiving funding from the Foundation, but also enhances the reputations of those who might otherwise be considered on the fringes of intellectual endeavors.

Though I recognize that this may cause hardship on the part of some of my colleagues, particularly in cosmology, I call on the scientific community to boycott Templeton Foundation research funding and events. If that is too much to ask, I suggest that all those accepting Foundation funding, through whatever route, investigate the Foundation and the other activities that it funds, and to put on the record what they think about that work. If they genuinely feel that the Foundation is pursuing goals that they share, so be it. If not, then they should at least be willing to say so (even if they continue to take the money).

Scientists should know that if they accept Templeton Foundation funding without investigating the Foundation, or if they keep quiet about their true thoughts on the subject, they may be doing themselves, and the scientific community, an enormous disservice. By default, the Foundation can claim that if researchers are not against them, then they are with them. Again, if that is true, then so be it. If not, then recipients of Foundation funds should be willing to publically state as much.

Of course, if the Templeton Foundation is benign and open-minded, as their advertising claims, then this dissent should not cause anyone to lose their funding. On the other hand if, as I suspect, the Foundation is more interested in promoting pro-religious activities than doing real science, then some people may find that their grants are not renewed when the time comes. Either way, the researchers' integrity—which is one of any serious scientist's most important assets—will remain intact.