Templeton Report: 2011

Picture yourself as a smart kid living on a farm in the countryside, desperate to learn more about science and to share your love for science with others your age—but isolated by geography from educational resources and a peer community. That was Philip Streich's dilemma. And that's when he discovered Cogito, a free, content-rich website and online community for gifted teenagers passionate about STEM—short for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The late Sir John Templeton had a deep and abiding conviction that people have the innate ability to master their own passions and impulses, if only they would take the time to develop them. Rigorous self-discipline helped Sir John make his fortune—and this experience, in turn, inspired his interest in what science tells us about free will and self-control.

Ten years ago, Islamic terrorists murdered thousands of Americans in a Pearl Harbor-like attack undertaken in the name of Islam. Over the past decade, there has been much discussion and debate over the role of Islam in contemporary terrorism. More broadly, scholars, religious leaders and others have thought about how Muslims, Jews, and Christians can work for peace among themselves, and use resources within their own traditions to marginalize radicals of all faiths who advocate for interreligious conflict.

A few years ago, social scientists started noticing a trend that religious observers had seen for some time: Membership in Pentecostal churches was growing rapidly, especially in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Russia.

Research indicates that the more involved people are with religious life, the less likely they are to fall into criminal behavior. Criminologist Byron R. Johnson, whose new Templeton Press book More God, Less Crime: Why Faith Matters and How It Could Matter More documents this phenomenon, admits this is something of a social-science “dog-bites-man” story.

Today, Cambridge University astrophysicist Martin J. Rees will be awarded the 2011 Templeton Prize at a private Buckingham Palace ceremony. To some, Rees, who is Britain’s Astronomer Royal, remains a surprising choice for a prize that rewards positive contributions to spiritual progress. Not only is Lord Rees a scientist (like the three successive Templeton Prize winners before him), but he is also an atheist.

Competition is fundamental to the way we understand the biological world. Mutation generates variation, and natural selection chooses the fittest. In nature’s pitiless calculus, there are winners, and there are losers. And yet, theoretical biologist Martin Nowak points out, at every level of complexity, individual creatures help one another.

In early 2008, the U.S. economy was in the early throes of meltdown. Sociology professor Christine B. Whelan saw a flood of anxious college students rushing into her office atop a wave of anxiety.

The ongoing revolutions sweeping the Middle East and North Africa have observers the world over anticipating a new openness to political freedom in the Arab Muslim world. One Muslim astrophysicist hopes that political and social change will usher in a new openness to science in the Islamic world as well.

What comes to mind when you think “Asian religions”? Buddhism, certainly, as well as Hinduism. Shinto from Japan, and Taoism from China would also make the list. Many people wouldn’t think of Islam, the world’s second-largest faith, which we associate with the land and people of its origin, the Arab Middle East.