see, it's not just american fundie nuts

[rone]

Cambridge University cosmologist and mathematician John Barrow was awarded $1.6-million yesterday to do research into whether God is sitting at the control panel behind the Theory of Everything about the universe.

He won the 2006 Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities, the world's richest individual scholarly research grant.  Its initiator, mutual-fund investor Sir John Templeton, specified that it be worth more than the Nobel Prize (which is worth about $1.5-million) so the media would take it seriously.

Dr. Barrow, 53, author of 17 books and one play (about infinity), believes that monotheistic religious thought about God and creation offers a better explanation than anything else, including most science, of how the universe works.

I can't wait to see the research for this puppy.  I'm sure God's been waiting for the chance to show off his skills.

Comments

[twillis.livejournal.com]

I think my brain is cramping up.

[agentelrond.livejournal.com]

As a Christian, this sort of shit drives me nuts. God cannot be proved or disproved. God cannot be quantified. He/She/It's beyond all that. Hasn't anyone ever heard of faith?

[dwenius.livejournal.com]

That's discouraging. I have enjoyed at least two of his science books, and am in the middle of PI in the Sky : Counting, Thinking, and Being (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316082597/102-6108011-8200934?v=glance&n=283155), which is a fascinating historical/archeological analysis of counting systems. None of those books have given any hint of the wingnuttery. Phooey.

[wisn.livejournal.com]

I'm TRYING REALLY HARD to think good thoughts about this. Upsides:

The award funds the research rather than rewards research already done.

The recipient is a decently-accredited scientist who has a history of knowing what he's talking about.

I haven't heard whether the prize money is contingent on the researcher creating an answer which reinforces core Christian beliefs (see the first point). It doesn't sound like it does, although it's pretty obvious he wouldn't have received the award if he wasn't amenable to the possibility.

It's not the equation of money with significance that's bothering me here ('It's more than the Nobel Prize, therefore it's more important! I WIN TEH INTARNETS!') nearly as much as how many of God's Children could've been saved if that money'd gone to, say, malaria research.

[ptomblin-lj.livejournal.com]

Hey, God is 3733+. He'll pwnzor you good.

[cda.livejournal.com]

haha well at least it's a topic on which he'll be able to find a whole bunch of sources. "looky what it says right here in leviticus! and i'll be damned if it doesn't say it again in the gospel of matthew!"

what a jackass notion.

[tomscud.livejournal.com]

Not entirely surprisingly, I'd like to see what Hitherby Dragons (http://imago.hitherby.com/) would have to say about this. Not that you could really tell if she did address it directly.

I think you are all missing the big picture here

[drieuxster.livejournal.com]

What we are looking at is a chance to revisit the Victorian Era and the struggle between the Classical And Canonical Oxford Movement on the one side and the traditonal low church 'evangelicals' on the other side as they try to resolve what to do with their cosmology.

We will get to see whether the debate moves back to the traditionalists 'mechanistic' world, and with it the notions of monods, or will this be the start of a new round of spiritualisms.

All of which, if done right, should restore the corset to it's proper role of keeeping the cosmos from embarking upon another Big Bang...

Go look at the Killer End Line again:

"There are some who say that just because we use our minds to appreciate the order and complexity of the universe around us, there is nothing more to that order than what is imposed by the human mind. That is a serious misjudgment."

How many folks impose which ever notion of order fits them at the time, because that makes them feel safer - whether we are talking 'the religious' or the more 'religious' those who hold, as a core tenant of faith, that there can be no ThatThingiePoohThatScaresMeMore.

Hence why it is that we really DO need to get going on creating a very creative and constructive "Militant Agnostics" Movement.

[eejitalmuppet.livejournal.com]

Stuff the nukes: we need an international fundie nut non-proliferation treaty.

[agentelrond.livejournal.com]

You mean castration? I like the way you think.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Oh, Templeton again. There has been, so I understand, a certain amount of fretting in the physics and astronomy communities about whether it's ethical to take this guy's money.

Heck, why not?

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

Everybody was happy enough to cash in on Reagan's ridiculous Star Wars grants 25 years ago. Nobody even much minded the Manhattan Project till it was successful. Why not use a much more benign award like this as an excuse to go do some Significant Research and then come back with a report saying nope, sorry, didn't find God there?