Reconciling Religion and The Academy

To the Editor

Religion has long been a bad word in academe, especially when scholars actually attempt to assign real-life relevance to it. So it is predictable and amusing, in “Spirituality Research Backed by Templeton Fosters Plenty of Skepticism” (June 12), to see the academy madly circling its wagons to avoid the taint of religion.

In the article, Lawrence Krauss claims that the John Templeton Foundation tries to wed superstition with scientific fact, and is bothered that Templeton “uses researchers to back up its claims.” Paul Kurtz complains about Templeton, “They’re beginning with a very pro-religious attitude. Those grants exist to prove that God exists.”

Templeton’s detractors should realize, though, that science and all scholarship reflect the researcher’s worldview. Clearly, Templeton’s grants reflect a belief that God exists. Would the grants be more ethically, morally, or academically valid if they began with a presumption that God does not exist? Perhaps that would be a bias that the academy could forgive.

If scientific research based on religious beliefs is flawed, then what are we to make of Francis Crick’s recent admission that his distaste for religion was one of the prime motives that led to his 1953 discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA?

“I went into science because of these religious reasons, there’s no doubt about that,” Mr. Crick said. “I asked myself what were the two things that appear inexplicable and are used to support religious beliefs: the difference between living and nonliving things, and the phenomenon of consciousness.”

In case we didn’t get his point, he gloated, “The God hypothesis is quite dead.” And who is left at the top of the heap, in a world without God?

Crick’s partner, James Watson, has an answer for that one: “Every time you understand something, religion becomes less likely. Only with the discovery of the double helix and the ensuing genetic revolution have we had grounds for thinking that the powers held traditionally to be the exclusive property of the gods might one day be ours.”

What are we to call scientists whose motive in their research is to prove that power belongs to man, and not to God? The 21st-century academy calls those kind of ideology-driven scientists objective, credible, and “fundable.”

Amid their criticisms of Templeton’s methodology and lack of independent research, Mr. Krauss and Mr. Kurtz’s loud-and-clear message is simply that scholarship, to be fundable, must reflect their own atheistic worldview.

Messrs. Krauss, Kurtz, Watson, and Crick couldn’t possibly know what any associate professor who has ever done religious research learns quickly — that religious researchers don’t exactly enjoy a free ride when reviewed by their often-skeptical or hostile peers. A colleague who has published extensively in highly prestigious reviewed journals, and has received funding from Templeton, recently told me, “Most of the reviewers [of my articles] are not religiously oriented themselves, so my research has to reach the same standards as other published research. Templeton typically requires people to earn their scientific credentials in the same jungle of academia that other science must survive in.”

But that friend is an exception. He has been able to have his God, and publish too. Other scholars out there don’t even think of using the name of God. All in the name of objectivity, mind you.

Fritz Kling
Richmond, Va.