Quote from Thunderdog:
"The predominant theme in all these considerations is not so much science as it is theological pseudoscience. The Templeton Foundation claims to be apolitical and not to promote religion. However, it is obvious that this Foundation does indeed promote theology, and does so among scientists in particular."
http://atheisme.ca/articles/dr/taylor_templeton_en.html
"The Templeton Foundation is a strange beast indeed. On the one hand, it is not officially committed to any particular religion, it does not support hack religious theories like intelligent design, it funds lots of fundamental theoretical physics that is not otherwise readily funded, and it doesn't explicitly interfere with or influence the scientific results of the various projects it funds.
On the other hand, the foundation's primary goal is to support science that in turn supports religion, to use science as a tool to promote a religious agenda. It's as if rather than fighting against science the way some religious factions - like creationists - do, they figure, we'll just buy science and use it for our own ends.
Consider this: when Sir John Templeton established the Templeton Prize in 1972 he stipulated that the monetary value should always be higher than that of the Nobel Prize -his way of saying that theology is more important than any other intellectual enterprise. Still, Sir John always seemed to be more of an eccentric billionaire than a dangerous force.
Now, however, his son Jack has taken over the foundation, and as Alexander Saxton pointed out in a Free Inquiry article, Jack is a gung-ho Evangelical Christian. In light of all this, some scientists feel it undermines their integrity to accept Templeton money. Others think, why not just take their money and put it to good scientific use?"
http://richarddawkins.net/article,2354,n,n
Templeton has spent his whole life and a lot of money trying to find some scientific proof that there is a god. so far no luck.in fact just the opposite:
The Templeton Foundation, a christian organization, in 2006, set out to prove that prayer works, with a massive study that ended up costing over 2.4 million dollars.
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/vie...
http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/prayer.html#S...
1,802 patients at 6 different hospitals were organized into the study. They'd all received heart bypass surgery so that there would be as much similarity as possible.
Patients were organized into three groups:
1) Patients who weren't prayed for and were told they might or might not be, but were.
2) Patients who were prayed for, and were told they might or might not be, but weren't.
3) Patients who were prayed for, and knew it.
It was a double-blind study, as real science demands. The patients didn't know who the prayers were, or where they were, or in most cases even that they were being prayed for.
On the other side were 3 churches in 3 different states that didn't know each other. They were given the first name and last initial and the condition of the patient they were to pray for.
Prayer started the night before surgery, and continued for 14 days thereafter. As an extra control, congregation members were given the instruction to include the phrase "a successful surgery with no complications" in their prayers.
Here are the results:
http://www.ahjonline.com/article/PIIS00028703...
Not only did the prayer have NO POSITIVE EFFECT AT ALL, it actually had a negative effect on the patients who knew for certain they were being prayed for. The conclusion of the researchers was a psychosomatic effect due to 'performance anxiety'. They made themselves sicker from the pressure of the experiment.
