Ok, ok, I'll fill in a little back ground.
Basically, it's a prize awarded to the person each year who is judged to have:
"made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension".
The 2010 winner of the Templeton Prize was Francisco J. Ayala, geneticist and molecular biologist, and he has injected a modicum of sense into the proceedings...well to some degree at least.
Ok to a very, very small degree. Like...one comment. But still these are rare and glorified heights for this establishment.
So what am I harping on about? Ayala has basically been asserting that both science and faith are damaged when either invades the proper domain of the other.
And I agree! Amazing!
Except I think if we sat down to a friendly cup of tea and a small slice of some delicious carrot cake our differences would soon show.
Science is certainly damaged by religion poking it's sticky little fingers in and trying to fiddle everything to prove a creator. We have seen this constantly with the likes of Behe try to ascertain irreducible complexity.
And I would like to think science damages religion, as it constantly fills in the blank spaces and makes the "here be monsters", god of the gaps argument the creationists constantly wheel out, whilst simultaneously brushing dust off it, more and more stupid.
The point I think we would differ on is where exactly we think the proper domains of both science and religion are. I am of the Richard Dawkins school of thought, that if there is a creator who meddles in the lives of man, then that directly influences the world around us, and falls right in the middle of science and the scientific method.
If fact i'm not actually sure I can think of the proper domain of religion...saving souls seems a little last millennia. Scaring people into submission? we have wars for that now. Extortion? Pirates.
Anyway the point is religion and science cannot co-exist in each others "territory". So bugger off and let science alone.
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