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Grant Recipients Announced for 2005 Templeton Research Lectures; Frankfurt University and Vanderbilt University Win Competition

Posted on: Tuesday, 15 March 2005, 15:00 CST

PHILADELPHIA, March 15 /PRNewswire/ -- The Philadelphia-based Metanexus Institute announced today the 2005 recipients of the Templeton Research Lecture Grants. Selected to receive this year's awards are the Frankfurt University in Germany and Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. The grants promote the constructive engagement of science and religion through interdisciplinary study groups and an annual distinguished lectureship.

Made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation, the Templeton Research Lecture competition targets projects at 200 distinguished research universities worldwide. The 2005 winners join past recipients including Bar Ilan University, Columbia University, Stanford University, the University of Arizona, Universite de Montreal, University of California at Los Angeles, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Southern California.

Thomas M. Schmidt, professor of philosophy of religion and director of the Institute for Philosophy of Religion, will head the winning program at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitat Frankfurt. Entitled "Co-Creator or Product of Nature? The Human Person in the Light of Neurophilosophy, Biofacticity, and Evolutionary Biology," this project will explore the challenges and opportunities that recent advances in biology, in particular neuroscience, offer the science-and-religion dialogue: challenges to the way human beings have understood themselves, to the philosophical notions of human freedom, dignity, and responsibility, to historic Christian and Jewish understandings of human persons as creatures who can freely relate to God, themselves, and others, and to our understanding of the meaning of life itself. The initiative will also examine how, in spite of these challenges, these sciences are providing new opportunities for understanding the evolutionary and cognitive basis of religion and hence for interpreting religion in a scientific age.

"At Frankfurt we are humbled, grateful, and very enthusiastic about being a part of the exciting and prospering religion and science dialogue," said Professor Schmidt. "It is such a great honor to be the first European university to receive this prestigious award. Philosophers at Frankfurt University have always been very interested in the impact that the progress of science has on our culture, on religion, and on the self-understanding of the human person in general. Drawing our inspiration from that tradition, we are deeply committed to contributing to the exciting and demanding discourse between religion, science, and philosophy."

Heading the Vanderbilt initiative based at the Center for the Study of Religion and Culture are Richard F. Haglund, Jr., professor of physics, and Volney P. Gay, who holds joint appointments in the departments of religious studies, anthropology, and psychiatry and is director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Culture. Their project "Scales and Hierarchies: Implications for Science and Religion" will use the model of the hierarchy of nature to traverse disciplinary boundaries and to examine scientific and religious discourses. Using this heuristic device the program will explore emergence or levels of being, causality or interactions across these levels, and progress in religion and the future of the human being.

"Hierarchies of knowledge have been at the heart of many of the challenges facing those who engage in dialogue about science and religion," said Professor Haglund. "At bottom, the questions are often, 'Whose narrative will be taken as the definitive response' to such issues as end-of-life and beginning-of-life questions, evolution and the meaning of human life. Organizing these questions around scales of size and duration, cutting across the social, natural and life sciences, gives us a way to address these issues systematically."

Added Professor Gay, "Our core mission is to bring to a focal point very different conceptions of religion and science. We look forward to an exciting and creative three years together."

Administering the 2005 Templeton Research Lectures initiative is William Grassie, executive director of the Metanexus Institute. Commenting on the significance of the lectures, Grassie notes, "The challenges of the 21st century require new interdisciplinary collaborations, which place questions of meanings and values on the agenda. We need to put questions about the universe and the universal back at the heart of the university."

The Metanexus Institute advances research, education and outreach on the constructive engagement of science and religion. Metanexus is part of a growing network of individuals and groups exploring the dynamic interface between cosmos, nature and culture in communities and campuses throughout the world. Metanexus sponsors lectures, workshops, research, courses, grants, and publications. Metanexus runs some 300 projects in 30 different countries. Projects include the Local Societies Initiative, the Templeton Research Lectures, the Spiritual Transformation Scientific Research Project, Spiritual Capital, Religion and Health, Religion and Human Flourishing, Foundational Questions in Physics and Cosmology, and other endeavors.

Metanexus hosts an online journal with over 140,000 monthly page views and 7000 regular subscribers in 57 different countries at http://www.metanexus.net/.

The John Templeton Foundation supports global initiatives, which pursue new insights at the boundary between theology and science. Using the "humble approach," the Foundation embraces a rigorous, open-minded and empirically focused methodology, drawing together talented representatives from a wide spectrum of fields ranging from cosmology to healthcare. For more information about the Templeton Foundation, go to http://www.templeton.org/.

Metanexus Institute

CONTACT: Pamela Thompson, Vice-President for Communications, JohnTempleton Foundation, +1-610-941-5194

Web site: http://www.templeton.org/

Web site: http://www.metanexus.net/

Source: PRNewswire

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