Folks,
Given that Templeton and Intelligent design have both been discussed
on this list, I thought this announcement from Templeton might be of
interest.
-Chuck
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 11:05:15 -0500
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Subject: [NEWS] JTF Response to WSJ, Classes Questioning Evolution Take Hold
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Intelligent Design
Official statement on false and misleading information published in
the Wall Street Journal today.*
By Charles L. Harper, Jr., Senior Vice President, John Templeton Foundation.
*[Monday November 14th, 2005. Article by Daniel Golden:
At Some Colleges, Classes Questioning Evolution Take Hold.]
Today the WSJ ran a front page story mentioning the John Templeton
Foundation in a way suggesting that the Foundation has been a
concerted patron and sponsor of the so-called Intelligent Design
("ID") position (such as is associated with the Seattle-based
Discovery Institute and the writers Philip Johnson, William Dembski,
Michael Behe and others). This is false information. In fact, quite
the opposite is true. The John Templeton Foundation has provided
tens of millions of dollars in support to research academics who are
critical of the anti-evolution ID position. Any careful and factual
analysis of actual events will find that the John Templeton
Foundation has been in fact the chief sponsor of university courses,
lectures and academic research which variously have argued against
the anti-evolution "ID" position. It is scandalous for a
distinguished paper to misinform the public in this way.
This is an immediate response statement put together in 60 minutes
from the time we became aware of the publication of false and
misleading information this morning. We presently are preparing a
further appendix to this statement to document a number of major
programs of the John Templeton Foundation which are fundamentally
critical of the characteristic "ID" position of critique of the
basic scientific facts and logics of modern evolutionary biology.
For example, for almost a decade the John Templeton Foundation has
been the major supporter of a substantial program at the
headquarters of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science (AAAS), one of the chief focus activities of which has been
informing the public of the weakness of the ID position on modern
evolutionary biology. (see: http://www.aaas.org/spp/dser/ ) This
program was founded under the advice and guidance of the prominent
evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala when he was President of the
AAAS, and was also supported by Stephen Jay Gould under his
Presidency. The membership of the John Templeton Foundation's
Advisory Boards and Board of Trustees read as an international honor
roll of the distinguished critics of the ID position. After
investing literally tens of millions of dollars philanthropically,
how strange and bizarre to read gross distortion of the truth in a
distinguished international news outlet.
The Templeton Foundation employs rigorous processes of review using
standard peer review and judging panels by distinguished experts.
However, the Templeton Foundation refuses in its programs to
blacklist scholars based on their ideological positions. We sponsor
research and teaching across a very wide range of positions,
believing in the value of widespread debate and engagement with
important and controversial issues, including that of modern
evolutionary biology and the debates over its meaning and
philosophical significance such as are particularly intense in this
country at this time. Blacklisting is ethically inappropriate in
academic contexts. The Foundation believes that proper academic
adjudication of important and controversial issues is not by
censorship but rather by open scholarly debate and consideration of
positions and arguments on the merits or lack thereof. Research
scholarship does not proceed by processes of censorship and
inhibition of debate. Rather, the best contribution a philanthropic
organization can make is to support and promote research and
rigorous debate. Consequently, it is true therefore that Templeton
Foundation funding support from time-to-time will have been used by
some scholars promoting an ID position whose proposals have passed
muster in independently judged review panels. This is entirely
appropriate in cases where competitive review panels have found
merit in course proposals and have awarded grants. Professors who
are winners of Foundation grants are not kept under ideological
review for purposes of blacklisting but are free to pursue and
debate ideas as they see fit. What is entirely false and misleading
is the way in which the Foundation has been portrayed to have been
in basic support of the ID position, when on balance the precise
opposite is actually the case.
We have observed a pattern in our not infrequent interactions with
high-level journalists, many of whom seem to be operating in a
highly politicized "group-think" frame of reference, and for whom a
"political" storyline seems to be fully clear well in advance of
knowledge of any particular facts such as may be necessary and
illuminating for actual understanding of what the real circumstances
actually are. (We at the John Templeton Foundation have had many
years of actual on-the-ground interaction with the ID movement and
its many and wide-ranging critics. We have detailed understanding of
these matters.) Many in the press appear have entered into this
debate naively without taking care to orient themselves in any
degree of appropriate detail to the actual situation. Today's
coverage in the WSJ would seem to be framed on imagined politicized
conspiracy theory logics following the standard culture wars
hothouse drama of uncovering deep-pocketed support for some or other
social evil the reporter seeks to "unmask." It would be far better
if the media were to report actual facts to the public rather than
to promote half-baked suppositions in the mode of politicizing
propaganda.
The facts will show that in (very probably in excess of) nineteen
out of twenty cases, Templeton Foundation money has supported
critics rather than proponents of the anti-evolution ID position.
The John Templeton Foundation challenges any responsible and honest
scholar or journalistic reporter to check this assertion.
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