Regarding Templeton Prize

Snippits Regarding Templeton Prize:

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind_of_God :
“... his [Paul Davies] opinion of the implications of Gödel's incompleteness theorem, that "the search for a closed logical scheme that provides a complete and self-consistent explanation is doomed to failure."
He concludes with a statement of his belief that, even though we may never attain a theory of everything, "the existence of mind in some organism on some planet in the universe is surely a fact of fundamental significance. Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here."”

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson :

“Dyson disagrees with the famous remark by his fellow-physicist Steven Weinberg that "Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things—that takes religion."
“ Weinberg's statement is true as far as it goes, but it is not the whole truth. To make it the whole truth, we must add an additional clause: "And for bad people to do good things—that takes religion."”

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_religion :

Since the era of logical positivism, the philosophy of science has shifted away from scientific realism towards instrumentalism and confirmation holism, both of which weigh in significantly on the relationship of science and religion.
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Instrumentalism postulates that concepts and theories are merely useful instruments whose worth is measured not by whether the concepts and theories are true or false (or correctly depict reality), but by how effective they are in explaining and predicting phenomena. As such, it may accept some methods of inquiry and sources of information, those of a religious variety in particular, which are seen as taboo by the majority of logical positivist and realist scientists. For example, as long as the theory that praying cures diseases can sufficiently explain and predict the phenomenon, it would be taken as a useful theory by instrumentalist scientists, without considering its truth value. Paul Feyerabend's "scientific anarchy" posits a similar view on the nature of scientific inquiry. Under this view, religion is not seen as being, in principle, incompatible with science.

Confirmation holism postulates that no concept or theory stands by itself. In other words, a concept or theory only makes sense, and can only be proven or falsified, in terms of the system of which it is a part. For example, a medical doctor may hypothesize as to why a patient has developed a rash, but this theory may in turn depend upon the patient having been in contact with poison ivy, which may in turn depend upon poison ivy being present in the locale or the person having recently travelled to a region where it was present, and so forth. Some concepts and theories may rest on other proven concepts and theories, while others may require proving (or assuming) the underlying concepts and theories first. This view has primarily developed out of the work of philosopher and logician W. V. Quine, and philosopher of math and science Imre Lakatos (a student of Karl Popper) who was influenced by Quine as well as by Thomas Samuel Kuhn. Lakatos taught that scientists work within an organic system of concepts and theories (Kuhn referred to it as a paradigm, Lakatos called it a research program, Quine called it a conceptual scheme), that the core concepts and theories of this system are held with personal commitment, and that they will resist falsification by ad hoc modification or the addition and deletion of peripheral concepts and theories (a weakness in naïve falsificationism which Popper himself acknowledged). In this view, religion is likewise not seen as being, in principle, incompatible with science.
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Historically, science has had a complex relationship with religion; religious doctrines and motivations have sometimes influenced scientific development, while scientific knowledge has had effects on religious beliefs. A common modern view, described by Stephen Jay Gould as "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA), is that science and religion deal with fundamentally separate aspects of human experience and so, when each stays within its own domain, they co-exist peacefully. Another view known as the conflict thesis, which has fallen from favor amongst historians but retains popular appeal, holds that science and religion inevitably compete for authority over the nature of reality, so that religion has been gradually losing a war with science as scientific explanations become more powerful and widespread. This view was popularized in the 19th century by John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White. However, neither of these views adequately accounts for the variety of interactions between science and religion (both historically and today), ranging from antagonism to separation to close collaboration.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Ellis :

George Ellis proposed a model universe that contains a naked singularity as a recycling mechanism, which he claims gives almost as good a description of the real universe as the conventional model.
The Ellis universe is like a cylinder-shaped universe, except that the Earth is located on one side and a naked singularity on the other. There is no cosmic inflation – the galaxies are arranged very unevenly, with a great deal of material crowded round the singularity, and very little near the Earth. The effect of such a distribution of matter is to produce a red shift of light that, at the Earth, has the same characteristics as if the galaxies were receding.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alister_Hardy :

“Dating from his boyhood at Oundle School, Hardy had a lifelong interest in spiritual phenomena, but aware that his interests were likely to be considered unorthodox in the scientific community, apart from occasional lectures he kept his opinions to himself until his retirement from his Oxford Chair. During the academic sessions of 1963-4 and 1964-5, he gave the Gifford Lectures at Aberdeen University on the evolution of religion, later published as The Living Stream and The Divine Flame. These lectures signalled his wholehearted return to his religious interests.”
“... Hardy did not wish to be reductionist, seeing religious awareness as having evolved in response to a genuine dimension of reality.”
“Hardy's contribution to the scientific study of religion is reviewed in David Hay's book Something There: The Biology of the Human Spirit published in London in July 2006 by Darton, Longman & Todd and in the United States by Templeton Press in 2007.”

From http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=665 :
“The 2008 Templeton Prize was announced today. It goes to Michael Heller, a Polish cosmologist, philosopher and Catholic priest, for “sharply focused and strikingly original concepts on the origin and cause of the universe.”“
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“The Templeton press materials describe Heller as “initiating what can be justly termed the ‘theology of science.’” His nomination for the prize says that:
It is evident that for him the mathematical nature of the world and its comprehensibility by humans constitute the circumstantial evidence of the existence of God.”
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[COMMENTER:] “it’s actually kind of funny that these days physicists construct wild untestable speculations about the universe and have to be reminded about the empirical basis by theologists. well, philosophers at least.”