March 13, 2008

Polish Cosmologist Wins Templeton Prize for Bridging Science and Faith

Michael Heller, a Polish cosmologist and Roman Catholic priest who studies the origins of the universe, was named on Wednesday as the winner of the 2008 Templeton Prize for Research or Discoveries About Spiritual Realities, which this year is worth more than $1.6-million.

Father Heller was awarded the prize by the John Templeton Foundation for his more than 40 years of work in bridging science and religion, much of which was conducted under the government repression of the Soviet era.

The foundation said Father Heller’s “examination of fundamental questions such as ‘Does the universe need to have a cause?’ engages a wide range of sources who might otherwise find little in common.”

“By drawing together mathematicians, philosophers, cosmologists, and theologians who pursue these topics, he also allows each to share insights that may edify the other without any violence to their respective methodologies,” the foundation said in a statement.

Father Heller managed to be a scholar and a priest under a regime that was both anti-intellectual and anti-religion. He holds master’s degrees in theology and philosophy from the Catholic University of Lublin, in Poland. He went on to earn a doctorate in philosophy and a docent degree, which represents a level of study beyond a Ph.D., from the university. He studied cosmology, but the authorities would not permit the university to grant degrees in physics at the time, so his degrees are in philosophy instead.

Father Heller has taught at several institutions, including the Pontifical Academy of Theology, in Krakow, and studied at the Catholic University of America, in Washington, and the Vatican Observatory at Castel Gandolfo, Italy, among other places.

The Templeton Prize was created by Sir John Templeton in 1972.

Father Heller has indicated he will use his prize money to help establish the Copernicus Center, which will further the study of science and theology, in partnership with Jagiellonian University and the Pontifical Academy of Theology, in Krakow. —Beckie Supiano

Comments

1. I can’t believe this “prize” is being seriously reported by the Chronicle. How disappointing.

   — gir    Mar 13, 11:13 AM    #

2. A remarkable man! Congratulations Fr. Heller.

   — TRB    Mar 13, 12:19 PM    #

3. The convergence of science and theology cannot be dismissed out of hand. When one translates the literal into the metaphorical, ancient religious writings show remarkable insights into cosmological phenomena. The Vedic scriptures and Buddhaic sutras seem nonsensical until they are re-examined in the light of M-Theory and other multiverse, multidimensional cosmologies. Even the Abrahamic religions show flashes of profound insight, though they are horribly muddled with the detrius of primitive totemism, ancient blood sacrifice cults, and deipomorphism.

   — marci    Mar 13, 12:21 PM    #

4. I guess the new purpose of our universities will be to produce spiritual advisors instead of well trained scientists. Galleo must be turning over in his grave.

   — DM    Mar 13, 02:15 PM    #

5. I’m not sure what the problem is in reporting this. The Templeton Prize is an illustrious one, the religious equivalent of a Nobel. Or ought religion not be the subject of legitimate academic inquiry as it has been for the last 1000 or so years?

   — Michael    Mar 13, 03:36 PM    #

6. Of course this prize is a sham. It has no credibility in one of the areas (science) that is purports to represent.

   — john    Mar 13, 03:44 PM    #

7. Very interesting. Once again, the academic community — while extoling the virtues of “tolerance” and “inclusion” — finds a way to be arrogantly intolerant of all religious perspectives.

   — dnm    Mar 13, 03:55 PM    #

8. While the money is very good, there can’t be much honor in receiving a prize previously conferred on the likes of Charles Colson and Bill Bright.

   — Lawrence S. Lerner    Mar 13, 03:59 PM    #

9. The Templeton Prize is about as legitimate an award as Alchemist of the Year.

   — gir    Mar 13, 04:01 PM    #

10. It’s no worse than receiving the Nobel Peace Prize and joining the likes of Rigoberta Menchu and Yasser Arafat; or the Nobel Prize in Literature and joning the likes of Gunter Grass and Harold Pinter.

    — J. Ward    Mar 13, 04:06 PM    #

11. The negative comments above betray (a) massive ignorance of the history of science, of philosophy, and of education, (b) unbelievable intolerance of anyone who is not an absolute materialist, and © complete unawareness of the nature of the Templeton Foundation and its considerable prestige in its areas of interest (such as character development and the interactions of faith and scholarship).

    Or perhaps Copernicus, Galileo, Bacon, et al., who were founders of modern science while remaining men of faith, are an embarrassment.

    To quote gir, “How disappointing.”

    — Bob    Mar 13, 04:08 PM    #

12. There are none so blind as those who will not see.

    — dnm    Mar 13, 04:14 PM    #

13. I always find it amusing to encounter those who forget the religious foundations of Western higher education. In particular, I will note that Harvard was founded by a religiously inclined colony whose people were afraid of eternal damnation because of an ignorant clergy. If we are going to live in a world of billions of believers, clergy who can help both sides understand each other’s views are going to be particularly valuable

    — Amused-Yet Secular    Mar 13, 04:32 PM    #

14. Clearly, DM, your university did not train you on how to spell. Galileo is probably pleased that someone is seriously researching the connection between faith and science.

    — CBT    Mar 13, 04:45 PM    #

15. Perhaps CBT has forgotten that the church threatened to put Galileo to death because of his support for heliocentrism. This must be the link between science and faith to which you refer. Perhaps my spelling wouldn’t win a contest, but at least my university training has instilled a clear understanding of the “scientific method”.

    — DM    Mar 13, 06:55 PM    #

16. As director of TV at a major research university I once invited members of the science faculty and theology faculty to appear together to discuss common issues. The scientists refused while the theologians agreed. What are most scientists afraid of?

    — Norbert    Mar 13, 10:50 PM    #

17. One must be an atheist and an obscurantist at the same time to do such things.

    — Michael Pyshnov    Mar 13, 11:21 PM    #

18. (1) There has been a lot of confusion of religion with the church in these posts. Please Google on “leprous bride” to see the famous quote about this, which has been variously credited to Shelley, Southey, and Wilde. (2) This award is for bridging science and religion. Before we insist that people absolutely must make a choice between the two, we should consider that in doing so we are making common cause with the fundamentalists, who are also insisting on precisely that. Given that most folks profess to believe in religion, the evidence has not been strong that the outcome for science has been happy when people feel they really are forced to make that choice.

    — Bob M.    Mar 14, 08:21 AM    #

19. There is a lot of misinformation out there about the whole Galileo ordeal. From what I have read, he was really quite arrogant and abrasive, which was the source of many of his problems. Furthermore, the Church has apologized for its treatment of him. Yet, all of this is irrelevant to the discussion of the award anyway because, indeed, there has been a lot of confusion between religion and church. I’m not sure DM understands the difference.

    — SM    Mar 14, 09:09 AM    #

20. DM: Historians now recognize that the charges against Galileo were cooked up for reasons of church politics, and not because of heliocentrism. Galileo did not invent it, and other people who believed it were not condemned as heretics. Another red herring across the trail of truth.

    — Bob    Mar 14, 09:13 AM    #

21. The Templeton prize should be broken into categories like the Nobel.

    They could have separate yearly prizes for tea-leave reading, alchemy, necromancy, astrology, glossolalia and have the biggest one for Intelligent Design.

    — Stuart Dryer    Mar 14, 09:47 AM    #

22. The very first comment is a reflection of biased, condescending and narrow-minded contemporary fixed mental attitude. To use G. K. Chesterton’s words, it is “curious in tone, as of random and illiterate heckling”, but unfortunately it is not so random among people who represent academia. It its deepest meaning it does not differ from intolerant, constrained by his own logic, oversimplified communist mind set.

    — Zofia    Mar 14, 10:06 AM    #

23. Congratulations to Father Heller!
    Based on some of the ignorant polemic of some of the responders, I have never been less proud of the readership of the JHE. At least get informed before you spout off.

    — John    Mar 14, 10:07 AM    #

24. Wow, Stuart. Wow. There’s another article on pornography in the news blog (next one after this one, I believe). Maybe you should visit and demonstrate your remarkable wit and maturity over there. It seems right up your alley.

    — SM    Mar 14, 10:18 AM    #

25. So often we see religion and science opposing each other. It is a breath of fresh air when the walk hand and hand.

    The problem comes when either side refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the other. Neither side can answer all questions. Both sides sometimes give incorrect answers.

    Nobody likes their beliefs to be challenged, but it is only by challenging beliefs that we can learn from them rather than be ruled by them.

    — Dan    Mar 14, 10:25 AM    #

26. Science has a method of enquiry anyone having faith or no faith in God can do science. It is basically a problem solving activity. Religion is something outside the purview of science. The beliefs of the religion are all not subject of scientific enquiry. We can not prove the presence of God by ‘Scientific Methods’. Believing religion and science as two poles that can never meet is also not scientific. What many clergy, priests and men of faith have contributed to science is well known. It is good for the scientists to have religious knowledge. And the Clergy should also know the recent advances in science. Religion has been with us since the first man came over this planet. It is and will be with us in future too.

    Objective studies to bridge science and religion is a timely welcome sign.

    — Abdul Rauf    Mar 14, 10:30 AM    #

27. I am waiting for someone to bridge the gap between religion and accounting.

    — Dr. J    Mar 14, 11:10 AM    #

28. Are personal assaults part of intellectual discourse in academia? Perhaps if we were to substitute “dialogue” for “bridging” the issue might be approached differently. Both of these fields attempt to understand the universe through different methods of inquiry; it is easy to confuse the methods for the goal. It is still easier to confuse the motivation for the goal and the goal itself. Take care of where you tread, “know thyself.”

    — gg    Mar 14, 11:10 AM    #

29. Wow. As a Christian, I have felt ashamed when religious people give obviously weak arguments against the findings of science and pooh-pooh those findings. Likewise though, as a lover of science, I am ashamed of the growing number of scientists who seem to feel that if a person is not an atheist, he is an enemy of science. Ugh.

    — Rich    Mar 14, 11:15 AM    #

30. I view many of the comments on this article as nothing more than jeolous “rants” by “scientists” who would give ANYTHING (especially their objectivity) for society to value them as much as society values religion. Get over it.

    — dnm    Mar 14, 11:15 AM    #

31. “By drawing together mathematicians, philosophers, cosmologists, and theologians who pursue these topics, [Heller] also allows each to share insights that may edify the other without any violence to their respective methodologies.”

    It seems anyone who goes by the title “Father” is darned if he does and darned if he doesn’t. How else does one explain academicians’ “violence” to his open-minded approach?

    — Tracy G.    Mar 14, 11:29 AM    #

32. Congratulations Father Heller. You are following in a proud tradition of the dual role of scholar and man of Faith. For those detractors: he is a legitimate scientist (a quick search on the ADS shows he has published several papers in reputable journals just in the last year). George Lemaitre was a Priest, published on relativity, and came up with the idea for the Big Bang (what he called the “hypothesis of the primeval atom”). Lemaitre was a respected scientist. It is only recently (and primarily here in the US) that being a person of faith is something that calls into question your science. There are crack pots out there to be sure, people who advocate (un)Intelligent Design for example, that give scientists who are religious a bad name. Do not be quick to judge until you read his papers. His recent paper on the gravitational Aharonov-Bohm effect in the International Journal of Theoretical Physics, for example. But the tensor calculus I am sure shows the bias of his faith. Give it a rest folks.

    — wlp    Mar 14, 11:49 AM    #

33. First congratulations to Father Heller! And just a little bit of clarification regarding “religion” which is universal, and it manly refers to the inner relationship the majority of us has with that which gives us life, which makes us tick, and which we truly do not know and fully understand. Most serious scientists of the 17th century had no problem with both our spirituality, and the discovery of scientific misteries. The Method is a clear path for both areas in our quest for understanding, and I believe that the lack of its application leads to wrong conclusions and defensive statements that sound agressive, abusive and are wrong. Modern History is extremely clear on this. Again, congratulations to people like father Heller who seek understanding and ultimately Peace!

    — Consuelo O. Walker    Mar 14, 11:50 AM    #

34. I think both ends of the spectrum from science to religion would do well to investigate the relationship between them. There’s plenty of literature from Gould to Dawkins to Plantinga. Then come to make a post. I would hope the religous folk don’t cover their eyes and close their ears to science and that the scientists not fall into scientism.

    — Mike H.    Mar 14, 11:57 AM    #

35. Besides the expected congratulations here, we seem to be sorely lacking in any reasonable, grounded critique of Rev. Heller; instead there are many pre-judgments expressed, bordering on the verge of simple bigotry. If Fr. Heller doesn’t live up to the promise of “bridging science and religion,” certainly this ought to be carefully explained. If the best we can offer instead is expressions of prejudice because of his Catholicism, his formal status as “Fr.,” his intellectual commitment to understanding the possible relationships between faith and science, then I’ll just appreciate the ‘congratulations’ here, and add my own.

    — BD-L    Mar 14, 12:02 PM    #

36. Once upon the time, when visiting what was then known as Leningrad, a Russian friend of mine told me a joke:
    “During the meeting of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union a question arose: what to do about God? After a long and often fiery debate, the First Secretary rose, looked sternly at the expectant masses gathered in the huge Kremlin auditorium, cleared his throat, and decisively proclaimed: “Comrades, if there’s no God, THANKS GOD. If God DOES exist, God help us!”

    Comrades, do not waste time on a discussion whose character is as alien to science as shaving is to glove making, a discussion which also is embarrassing by uncovering a saddening preponderance of oafish (or is it “youthful”?) intolerance, and bigotry combined with a striking lack of wit. Instead, trot off you go to your labs, roll up your sleeves, and do some blindingly impressive science, a task more productive than heaping insults at each other, at the recognition of Fr. Heller’s contributions (indeed quite significant), and at the Templeton Foundation for acknowledging the latter

    — Dag von Lubitz    Mar 14, 12:04 PM    #

37. As a wise person once said, “…some of my friends are for it, and some of my friends are against it, and I’m for my friends.”

    — ech    Mar 14, 12:28 PM    #

38. It is pleasure to read here the laudatory comments of academics who (despite the narrow-minded prejudice on parade in other posts) realize the value and potential of educated discussion between scientific and religious or spiritual perspectives. Joining them, I thank the Chronicle for reporting this news, and offer my congratulations to Fr. Heller. I would also like to direct the attention of anyone interested to the Metanexus Foundation, a global think-tank of scientists and scholars in many fields, engaged in humane, intelligent exploration along these lines. Their website is a treasure trove of informative, interesting discussions — highly recommended for inquiring minds.

    — Brian Akers    Mar 14, 12:38 PM    #

39. Long before there was science—in the Western tradition—there was religion. Both have tried to explain both the physical/phenomenalogical world and the spirtiual world. The truth is, no matter how they arrived at their conclusions, the ancients described a phenomenological world that comes close to scientific descriptions. Granted Indra’s Web is not Wheeler’s quantum many-worlds theory, but both have the exact same insight into the phenomenological world.

    — marci    Mar 14, 02:42 PM    #

40. I hope that these comments do not reflect how you would treat a student that believes in Jesus Christ. Heaven forbid that they try to meld their personal faith as a Christian with their career choices. I find this all very sad. Discrimination of Christians is alive and well in education.

    — conservative in education    Mar 14, 03:58 PM    #

41. Only God can make a blind man see.

    — Gene    Mar 14, 04:18 PM    #

42. The thinking and writing of individuals such as Father Heller have helped religious communities have a better understanding of how science and religion can coexist. In doing so, these individuals have helped individuals better understand and accept the role of evolutionary theory in explaining the nature and history of the natural world.

    — Gerald    Mar 14, 04:30 PM    #

43. Much of this discussion seems to reflect a fundamental ignorance of the disciplines of theology and religion, both of which are academic disciplines in the same vein as many of the other humanities. With the exception of the particularly conservative academic programs designed to train ministers, theology or religion programs don’t necessarily expect that their students adhere to a religious tradition themselves, and some of the more prominent scholars of religion openly state that they do NOT adhere to the religious traditions they study. At the more prestigious academic conferences in religion and theology, a participant who tried to tell his or her colleagues that they should “have faith in Jesus Christ” or assumed they shared his or her personal faith would be dismissed as inappropriate and irrelevant. This doesn’t mean that faith itself is irrelevant to life or that one can’t meld one’s personal faith with one’s scholarship, but that we are discussing some unique disciplines that are not necessarily coterminous and for many scholars may in fact be orthogonal.

    I think the more relevant point here is that this is an interdisciplinary scholar who is engaging multiple disciplines, each with its own methodology that is undergirded by a unique set of assumptions about the world. Scholars who are conversant across multiple disciplines and able to engage multiple disciplines in serious discussions on their own terms are rare, and have a unique role to play in the development of the disciplines themselves and in our understanding of the world. The disciplines are in many ways artificial divisions in the world, and the points of intersection of disciplines are often those in which the richest sources of novel discoveries are yet unexplored. This is also a man of faith and a true scientist, and that combination allows him to bring a third set of methodologies and assumptions to the table for discussion, that of persons of faith. Regardless of one’s own faith, the fact that religious faith is central to the lives of many people suggests that scholars ought to be very interested in this area, at the very least in terms of phenomenology, and perhaps also in terms of addressing problems and questions that are not answerable by way of the methodology of their own disciplines. As a scientist, I greatly value the scientific method, but I’m also very clear that there are some questions that cannot be answered by use of the scientific method. I think the true danger for scholars is to become so bound to one’s own discipline that one is unable to consider that alternate methodologies (e.g. for a scientist this might include methodologies used in literature, philosophy, theology, and those used by people of faith) have anything additional to offer to one’s understanding of the world.

    — sm    Mar 14, 04:57 PM    #

44. The richness of the contributions of Father Heller are in his recognition that science and religion are not methods of either-or. As scholars we often tell our students to think “outside the box” and look for ways that truth can be found using multiple viewpoints, methodologies, and approaches. “Religion OR Science” reflects narrow minded dogmatism, and dogmatism can reflect the unscholarly approach of either side. Creative religious people look for the truth in evolution rather than search for a biblical text that denies it (remember that the Father of Genetics, as recognized by even skeptics like Dawkins, was the Augustinian priest Gregor Mendel). Creative scientific people look for some truth in even the creationism or Intelligent Design approaches – it may be work but it is worth it.

    By the way, for Dr J, who is searching for how to “bridge the gap between religion and accounting” – try a mix of ethics, honesty, and mathematics. Don’t forget that a key contributor to accounting and the father of the double-entry accounting system was Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli, a Franciscan Friar who originally reconciled worldly transactions, mathematics, religion, and ethical practice.

    It has been extremely refreshing to read the many posts that reflect scholars who look beyond the confines of their own narrow fields and seek truth in multiple inter-disciplinary approaches. One reason why I appreciate them is that I grew in a weird world as a mathematics major who minored in chemistry, German language and literature, and theology.

    — Ole Perfesser    Mar 15, 03:21 AM    #

45. Bubba spaeks.. 1, 6 & 9.. john & gir.. man get a life you atheists..you do believe in GOD.. please don’t lie..

    — Buibba    Mar 15, 06:23 PM    #

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