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

[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?