Earlier this month, there was a great article in the Washington Post on project that is being led by David Blankenhorn, the author of the soon-to-be-released TFP volume, Thrift: A Cyclopedia.

You can read the full text of the article here: Let’s Make it Cool to Save

We’ll have more information on our site about the book as we approach the official publication date (August 2008), but in the meantime, the article will give you a great preview of some of the timely wisdom that will be featured in the book.

Happy reading!

The Neural Buddhists, a recent New York Times op-ed column by David Brooks, covers an amazing array of Templeton Foundation Press core themes and values. In fact, he may just set a record for “Most TFP Subject Areas Covered in a Single Article.” In the column, Brooks offers a very interesting prediction of where the science & religion dialogue is headed in the coming years, and by our count, he touches on at least five of our major subject areas:

1.) Science & Religion

See The Big Questions in Science and Religion, Creative Tension, Science and Religion, and dozens of other titles

2.) The Influences of Buddhism on Science

See Tibetan Buddhism and Modern Physics 

3.) Mankind’s natural inclination towards belief

See Something There

4.) Overflowing Love

See Pure Unlimited Love, Science of Love, Unlimited Love, etc. 

5.) Selfishness vs. Altruism

See Research on Altruism and Love, The Altruism Reader, The Altruistic Species, etc.

I’ve been reading Darwin’s two major books lately. My reading has been done with an eye toward what Darwin might think about love.

I’m somewhat surprised by what I’ve found. Given what Darwin’s critics and followers have been saying, one might get the impression that the theory of evolution dooms love. I’m finding quite the contrary.

It is true that in On the Origin of Species, Darwin emphasizes the competitive side of evolution. Natural selection is the engine of history. And Darwin tends to speak in terms of individuals and their struggle to survive.

But even in this book, Darwin has a fundamental sense of value at play in his writing. Time and again words like “advantage,” “profitability,” “adaptation,” and “improvement” crop up. Those are words that suggest well-being. And my argument has for sometime been that love is the intentional response to others to promote well-being. If the theory of evolution entails the possibility for increased well-being, its compatibility with love seems quite plausible.

But Darwin’s second most important book, The Descent of Man, surprised me even more for its emphasis upon love in relationships and community. The basis for morals, says Darwin, is the social nature of existence. “The so-called moral sense is aboriginally derived from the social instincts,” he says. “Social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services to them.”  In fact, says Darwin, the social instincts, with the aid of active intellectual powers and the effects of habit, naturally lead to the golden rule: Do to others as you would have them do to you.

Morality is not an entirely emergent feature found only in humans, says Darwin. Continuity exists between humans and nonhumans here as well: all social animals have some sense of right and wrong.

Animals perform many services for one another. The most common is warning of danger. Animals also serve one another though parental care. And they often sympathize with each other’s distress. Darwin concludes his discussion by saying that the differences between “man and the higher animals, great as it is, is certainly one of degree and not of kind. We have seen that the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties, such as love, memory, attention, curiosity, imitation, reason, etc, of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes in an well-developed condition, in the lower animals.”

Darwin speculates about how morality – in the sense of acting for the good others at a cost to oneself – might arisen in the first place and then continued to be maintained. He guesses, for instance, that self-sacrificial love emerged in the parent-child relationship. Parents might act self-sacrificially so that their offspring might survive or thrive.

Darwin recognizes that groups comprised of altruists can out compete groups dominated by egoists. This is a theme that David Sloan Wilson and Elliot Sober have been championing lately.

Darwin also suggests that people are altruistic because of the reputational gain they hope to receive. People act in moral ways because of the praise or blame they expect to receive.

Darwin’s emphasis upon the social nature of love and morality needs to be heard today. Too often we speak of love as if it emerges in a vacuum. Darwin reminds us that what is a loving act or attitude is largely determined by the community and context.

Darwin’s these explanations for the emergence and maintenance of morality seem partly true. But I don’t think Darwin captures well all motivations and influences of love.

I don’t think Darwin helps us much, in fact, with understanding the role of theology for morality. He unfortunately thinks that belief in God functions more or less in the way that societal opinions influence one’s moral choices. “With the more civilized races,” writes Darwin, “the conviction of the existence of an all-seeing Deity has had a potent influence on the advancement of morality.” Belief in God is not “innate or instinctive in man.”

In fact, says Darwin, “the idea of a universal and beneficent Creator of the universe does not seem to arise in the mind of man, until he has been elevated by long-continued culture.” Darwin’s point seems to be that belief in God arises in highly civilized societies as a grand form of praise or blame. Such praise and blame writ large is a form of natural selection’s development of morals.

Instead of seeing belief in God as kind of cosmic moral deterrent, I wish Darwin would have conceived of God as an essential part of the community. God might be better understood to be an actual being who acts in nature. In fact, God might be seen as the Ultimate Persuader who calls creatures – both human and nonhuman – to love in ways that promote overall well-being.

This vision of God that I propose Darwin should have embraced would not undermine Darwin’s basic evolutionary scheme. But it would plug a huge hole in Darwin’s theory of the evolution of morality. And it seems to provide a more plausible overall explanation for why love ought to be our mode of operation today.

At least that’s what I’ve been thinking as I read Darwin these days . . .

Thomas Jay Oord
Northwest Nazarene University

Thomas Jay Oord is the author or editor of several books, including Science of Love and The Altruism Reader.

Congratulations to the winner of the 2008 Templeton Prize: Michael Heller!

Heller is professor of philosophy at the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Cracow, Poland, and an adjunct member of the Vatican Observatory staff. He is an ordained Roman Catholic priest, and has earned a master’s degree in philosophy and a Ph.D. in cosmology. He has published more than sixty books, including Creative Tension: Essays in Science and Religion. 

The prize, which is valued at 820,000 pounds sterling (more than $1.6 million), is awarded annually “to a living individual whose lifelong endeavors have made a unique contribution in advancing ideas and/or institutions that have deepened the world’s understanding of God and of spiritual realities.” Prof. Heller announced that he plans to endow the prize money to the development of a new inter-university institution devoted to the study science and religion called the Cracow Copernicus Center.

More information, including a webcast of the announcement press conference, can be found here.

In the UK, March 7-16 is National Science and Engineering Week, and to commemorate the occasion, The British Association for the Advancement of Science has created a blog inviting readers to submit the biggest, most profound, unanswered questions they can imagine. There are a number of scientists on board to tackle these questions, and the project seems to be proving very popular so far. Questions, coming from curious submitters ranging in age from 5 to 55+, run the gamut from “Does matter have an intrinsic property to self-organise into ever more complex forms including life?” to “Will there ever be a chewing gum that never loses its flavour?” (surprisingly, this man does not appear to be on the panel of experts).

This Spring, the Templeton Foundation Press will be releasing our own take on The Big Questions, in the form of a new book. We asked Oxford professor Keith Ward — an expert on world religions — to create his top ten list of Big Questions about the intersection of science and various religious traditions. Exploring concepts from Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam, Hinduism. Judaism, and Christianity alongside the studies of cosmologists, physicians, mathematicians, and philosophers, Ward offers compelling insights into these mysteries in The Big Questions in Science and Religion.

Not surprisingly, readers will find many of the same questions in both the blog above and in Ward’s new book. As the blog’s resident scientists move through the submitted questions (at the moment, it seems that they are being submitted faster than they can be answered), it will be interesting to see how their responses to questions like “How will the universe end?” might compare with say, the teachings of Islam, or how their approaches to a question like “What is the nature of time and space?” compare to those of the various Christian, Semitic, or Indian traditions.

Author Keith Ward

Thanks to the folks over at Science & Religion Today for steering us towards this article from Science Daily. The article a discusses a session from AAAS in which Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller argues that scientists need to embrace the idea of design and reclaim it from the “intelligent design” movement. 

The article quotes Miller as saying, “There is, indeed, a design to life — an evolutionary design . . . The structures in our bodies have changed over time, as have its functions. Scientists should embrace this concept of ‘design,’ and in so doing, claim for science the sense of orderly rationality in nature to which the anti-evolution movement has long appealed.”

This concept of distinguishing between design and intelligent design is one that will be explored in great detail in an upcoming Templeton Foundation Press publication titled Chance or Dance as well as in Miller’s upcoming book with Viking Press, Only a Theory.

Thanks to everyone who came by our booth at AAAS. It was great to connect with our authors and editors, to hear project ideas from prospective authors, and, of course, to share new books and ideas with curious readers.

We hope everyone had a great time, and hopefully we’ll see you next year in Chicago!

If you’re going to be attending the annual meeting of The American Association for the Advancement of Science this week in Boston, we’ll see you there! Both the John Templeton Foundation and the Templeton Foundation Press will be exhibiting, and we hope you’ll drop by to say hello!

When I was a kid, I loved to create “my favs” tapes. You know: recording the top 15 or so songs that really rocked! Or putting together a collection of “slow grooves” tunes to play for that special someone on the way to the movies.

I feel like my newest book, The Altruism Reader: Selections From Writings on Love, Science, and Religion, is like a “my favs” cassette. I had a great time compiling and editing 30+ selections on love and altruism from religious and scientific writings.  

The book isn’t primarily a project for me, of course. I wouldn’t have gone through the trouble to publish something so narrowly self-serving. Instead, I put this book together to provide people with easy access to some of the best writing on love and altruism available. Some of the writing has been around for centuries. But most of the material is very recent.

I also wanted readers to know that research on love and altruism is diverse and increasingly more common. This is due in part to developments in the sciences. Altruism research is HUGE today. But the increase in interest also has to do with the quest to discover commonalities among the world’s major religions. This quest seems pretty important in our religiously pluralistic age, an age noted for interreligious flare-ups and conflict.

The first half of my book provides material from religious traditions, important theologians, and moral philosophers. You’ll find short selections from the Qu’ran, Bhagavadgita, the Bible, Augustine, Anders Nygren, the Dalai Lama, Daniel Day Williams, Stephen Post, and others.

The second half of the book contains scientific research on love. Included are research summaries, theories, and analysis in scientific disciplines such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, neurology, sociobiology, and nonhuman primate studies. You might be familiar with scientific writers on altruism such as Robert Wright, Frans de Waal, Richard Dawkins, Robert Sternberg, Samuel Oliner, and Daniel Batson.

Of course, one problem with the old “my favs” projects is that a 90-minute cassette can only hold so much. You have to skip some really great stuff.The same is true of this Altruism Reader.

A book can only hold so much, and some really great writing was not included. But I’m working on ways to make you aware of some of the material left on the cutting floor (to mix metaphors).I’m hoping that two basic kinds of people will find this book interesting. The first kind is interested in a three-way conversation — a trialogue. Religion, science, and love/altruism together make for intriguing interactions. Those who have heretofore been limited to a dialogue (science and religion) may get excited about what it means to jump in the middle of this three-way.

The second kind of reader is the student. The book is perfect of a variety of higher-education courses. I plan to use this text in my university courses, for instance. It makes a great college, university, and seminary text. In fact, the idea for the project emerged from a discussion involving professors who won awards for their courses on altruism and love from religious and scientific perspectives. Stephen Post, director of the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, and I brought these professors together for a conversation a few years ago.

Professors who really wish that I had included an additional essay or two can easily require that material as supplemental reading. In fact, one could say that this “my favs” collection could be easily coupled with another professor’s mini-collection of “my favs.”A final word of warning: this isn’t the kind of book that you’d read aloud to set a romantic mood.

This book largely explores love in its nonromantic form. Make CD of romantic songs, label it “slow grooves,” and give that a listen if you’re interested in that other kind of love. This book explores a grander set of ideas and actions.

Tom

Thomas Jay Oord Northwest Nazarene University

Charles Birch, author of Science and Soul (March 2008), spoke to Stephen Crittenden for “The Religion Report” on ABC Radio National in Australia on December 19, 2007.

Click here to listen to the broadcast or to read its transcript.