The Non-existent Agenda?

Peter Harrison recently wrote a negative review of Yves Gingras's new book, Science and Religion, An Impossible Dialogue.

Yves Gingras has responded to Harrison, and Harrison has responded to Gingras's response:

Gingras makes some good points, but perhaps wants to have his cake and eat it by suggesting that he is primarily conducting a review of the history of science and religion, and not advocating a conflict thesis, whilst advocating it! I should say that I haven't read Gingras's book yet, so I'm not saying that his book is good or bad.

Harrison is surely in denial, however, when he says, while doubting Gingras's claims that the Templeton Foundation has had a distorting effect on the history of science:

My review sought neither to praise nor bury the Templeton Foundation, but simply offer a factual account of its operations and correct the misconception that it is in the business of funding historical research.

But this claim that, effectively, Templeton has had a neutral effect on the recent history of science is implausible, as Harrison's reviews themselves show. He is no impartial observer here; he was a director of Oxford University's Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, an organisation whose very name is predicated on challenging the conflict thesis, and promoting the 'dialogue' thesis. In his response Gingras writes:

[Harrison] is also silent on the fact that I take care to define the meaning of the word “dialogue,” identify its main apostles, and show that the discourse involving dialogue takes off only after 1979, followed by an exponential growth after 1993, when the Templeton Foundation’s visibility and money was also ramping up. And far from explaining that growth by a single cause (namely Templeton money), as Harrison suggests, I clearly identify (p. 149–152) three other causes of the rise of the “dialogue” rhetoric: 1) the return of the religious after the 1970s (well analyzed in Gilles Kepel’s The Revenge of God), which led to the creation of many organizations promoting a dialogue with science, and which also put organizations like the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) on the defensive; 2) Pope John Paul II’s creation (in 1979) of a committee to reconsider Galileo’s trial and to promote “dialogue” with science; and 3) the emergence of a postmodern lexicon among historians eschewing “false dichotomies” and “conflict” in favor of such terms as “conversation” (as used by Harrison), “meeting,” “exchanges,” and “encounters,” all suggesting that, after all, “everything is in everything,” and that making conceptual distinctions is a bit passé.

A reminder of the mission of the Ian Ramsey Centre:

"Members of the Centre also carry out extensive work on the history of science and religion, often challenging simplistic accounts of what has been a complex and varied interaction." (my emphasis)

We know what 'challenging simplistic accounts of what has been a complex and varied interaction' means in this context. Harrison continues this very mission when he concludes in his response to Gingras's response:

Finally, “there were many cases over the last 300 years of conflict between science and religion.” Quite, although we might quibble about what counts as “science” and “religion,” and how many is “many.” The point is that this is only part of the picture, and leaves out equally decisive cases of creative and mutual support between science and religion, and the more common instances of indifference or peaceful coexistence. Attempting to understand examples of conflict is indeed the role of the historian, but an understanding that considers only instances of conflict will be impoverished and partial, and will likely give rise to the kind of flawed and one-sided perspective that we encounter in Science and Religion: An Impossible Dialogue.

And the Ian Ramsey Centre 'receives significant financial support from the John Templeton Foundation'. Two recent Templeton grants to the Centre:

Special Divine Action, $2.4m

Science and Religion in Latin America, $0.5m

Templeton also supports the The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion at Cambridge University – it has recently given it $2.4m to expand. These are substantial sums of money, and Templeton are welcome to give it. But the rest of us need to be aware that Templeton’s religious underpinning is playing a role, at the very least, in the fostering of this pseudo-discipline of science and religion. And this must surely have an effect on historians of science.

The Institute's role:

The Faraday Institute has a Christian ethos, but encourages engagement with a wide diversity of opinions concerning interactions between science and religion, without engaging in advocacy. It aims to provide accurate information in order to facilitate informed debate.

The Institute says it doesn't engage in advocacy, and it certainly doesn't advocate for the conflict thesis. Consider these research papers:

The Science and Religion Debate - an Introduction - "Science and theology have things to say to each other since both are concerned with the search for truth attained through motivated belief."

Does Science Need Religion? - "Must science constitute a closed system, assuming all reality is within its grasp? So far from science being autonomous, and its method defining rationality, it itself rests on major assumptions. We may take for granted the regularity and ordered nature of the physical world, and the ability of the human mind to grasp it. Yet theism can explain this by invoking the rationality of the Creator."

Models for Relating Science and Religion - "Interactions between science and religion are varied and complex, both historically and today. Models can be useful for making sense of the data. This paper compares four of the major types of model that have been proposed to describe science-religion interactions, highlighting their respective strengths and weaknesses. It is concluded that the model of ‘complementarity’ is most fruitful in the task of relating scientific and religious knowledge."

And so it goes on; papers all suggesting that conflict between science and religion is a myth. So, by consistently denying the conflict thesis, it appears to be advocating something.

All this evidence strongly indicates that Templeton is in the business of funding historical research to counteract the conclusion that science and religion conflict in many ways, and Peter Harrison is being disingenuous if he denies this.

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"Science and Religion" Chairs Proliferate

Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks made a rather silly program for the BBC where he attempted to cosy up to science. Churchmen and theologians have noticed that science keeps stripping away the evidence from their beliefs, and they're left rather embarrassed by their nakedness, as if they have only just eaten from the tree of knowledge. Sacks was repeatedly coquettish when Dawkins asked him if he really believed the story of Abraham and Isaac. He realised, I suppose, that he would look silly if he said yes, but would never live it down if he said no. He gave a non-answer that a politician would have been proud of.

Now he's accusing Dawkins of perpetuating an anti-semitic stereotype when he described the god of the Old Testament as a "vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser", and "misogynist", "homophobic", "racist", "pestilential" and "infanticidal", in The God Delusion:

I was concerned that he was using an anti-semitic stereotype, which has run through a certain strand of the Christian reading of what is called the 'Old Testament' as a result of which thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Jews, died in the Middle Ages because that's how people spoke about the God of the Old Testament.

(This is a sad accusation, but all too readily offered now by the religious and their apologists when they don't get their own way. Allan Dershowitz has launched a poorly spelt attack on the Germans for ruling against circumcision, even though the ruling also goes against Muslim teaching too. Can't they be Islamophobic?) It's an ad hominem, since it casts aspersions on the motives of those making these judgements rather than addressing the arguments. Sacks could just explain why he doesn't think his God is infanticidal, for example. Otherwise he needs to explain why pointing out the truth is anti-semitic. As Dawkins says, the quotes are anti-God rather than anti-semitic.

In the BBC website report, the 'science and religion' meme is given an airing. A quote is garnered from Dr Thomas Dixon, a Senior Lecturer of History at Queen Mary, who has written books on the subject, and another from Dr Denis Alexander, Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion at Cambridge University. The Faraday Institute has been funded by the Templeton Foundation, who have ploughed money into the 'science and religion' meme for years now. Maybe this investment is paying off? Alexander comments on the divisions between science and religion:

In academic discourse, it's never before been more positive. Now there are several science and religion chairs in universities and lectureships and so on, which were never there before.

The implication is that academia has come to its senses, and has realised that, hey! Science and Religion are best buddies really. Really? Well, no, not in my opinion. Let's check out all these science and religion chairs in universities.

I can't say I can find many, at least in the UK. The only one I'm aware of is the Andreas Idreos Chair in Science and Religion, attached to the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, which has been funded by the Templeton Foundation. This is currently held by Peter Harrison, and is being advertised anew. The incomer will be able to take advantage of a generous grant from the Templeton Foundation:

A major review of the undergraduate curriculum is currently under way, for which the Andreas Idreos professor will be able to develop new undergraduate courses in Science and Religion. Following a generous donation from the John Templeton Foundation, the incoming professor will have the opportunity to appoint to a three-year Departmental Lectureship in Science and Religion and to fill three fully-funded three-year doctoral studentships (up to two of which may be for overseas candidates), all to start in October 2013.

I don't think there is a chair in the subject at Cambridge, although I could be wrong. Dr Alexander's base, the Faraday Institute, is there, established by the Templeton Foundation.

Still, I looked further. I remembered that the University of Edinburgh runs a science and religion course. Oh yes, it's funded by the Templeton Foundation too.

After that, I don't see too much going on. I noticed that the University of Exeter has a Dr Christopher Southgate who has taught for the Department of Theology and Religion  "on the science-religion debate". No course funding there, apparently, but Dr Southgate did win a Templeton award in the past. Professor David Knight is at Durham University, and "In 1998 he received a Templeton Foundation award for teaching a module on ‘Science & Religion in the 19th century’". In July 2007, Alan J. Torrance, Professor of Systematic Theology, and Professor Eric Priest FRS were awarded £65,300 by the Templeton Foundation to promote a major series of lectures on science and religion in the University of St Andrews.

Internationally, we can see there are a number of academics interested in the subject by looking at the membership of the International Society for Science and Religion. Note, too, that they receive funding from the Templeton Foundation.

So I think Dr Alexander may be right: the small amount of interest in 'science and religion' in academia probably justifies him saying "it's never before been more positive". But as far as I can see this is almost entirely down to funding from the Templeton Foundation. There is nothing wrong in that, of course, but it's as well to understand how ideas can be sown and propagated. It's a shame the BBC has been roped in to assist.

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Source of Faith

I've previously discussed John Locke's irrationality argument against religious persecution: that it's irrational to persecute non-believers because it's simply not possible to make people believe something they think is untrue. Jeremy Waldron successfully counters this by pointing out that beliefs can be affected indirectly, by, for example, restricting a person's access to material:

A man may be compelled to learn a catechism on pain of death or to read the gospels every day to avoid discrimination.The effect of such threats and such discrimination may be to increase the number of people who eventually end up believing the orthodox faith. Since coercion may therefore be applied to religious ends by this indirect means, it can no longer be condemned as in all circumstances irrational.

By the same token, religious indoctrination can be achieved (without such threats!) through childhood education; this is plain when we consider how religious belief varies according to geography. Climate is not the causative factor, but indoctrination is; simply teaching that the prevailing faith is true. From birth, what we believe grows, bottom up, through interaction with our environment, and with those we mix, and with those who teach us. These foundational beliefs are difficult, sometimes impossible, maybe, to unpick.

Churches and the religious understand this, so expend much effort on early years education to ensure a supply of adult tithers in the future. One such initiative is Test of Faith. This is run by the Faraday Institute of Science and Religion, an institute that is based, sadly, at St Edmund's College, Cambridge. No-one will be surprised to hear, given its pre-occupation with the reconciliation of science and faith, that it is Templeton funded.

It's important to appreciate that this is not some secular approach to education, looking to make space for all faiths and none in our education systems; it specifically pushes Christianity. An illustration of this has just been released by them: a homeschoolers' course in Science and Christianity which 'aims to equip US-based homeschooled high school (and advanced junior high) students to think clearly and biblically about science and faith'. Here's the complete course.

Check out the graphic for chapter 1:

It starts with the old canard that because some scientists have faith, there is therefore no conflict between science and faith. In fact, it says, any conflict is a result of Victorian scientists with an anti-clerical bent! This is slack. Certainly the so-called 'conflict thesis' originated with Draper and co. in the nineteenth century, but to say that any modern day media interest is mainly stirred up by him and his fellows is bizarre.

Here's a graphic for chapter 2:

This is promising, in that it cautions against the God of the Gaps argument, but only applies this to primary explanations; and it does this not because God of the Gaps is just a bad argument, which it is, but because it's not a good apologetic tactic. It then brazenly uses a God of the Gaps argument for the ultimate explanation.

A discussion and questions section follows:

They ask 'How do I know what I know?' and amongst the answers they slip in 'Divine revelation (the Bible)'. There is no evidence that anyone has ever had a divine revelation, and there is no evidence that the Bible, as opposed to the Koran, or the book of Mormon, is divinely revealed; quite the opposite, in fact.

This is the sort of misinformation that Jeremy Waldron might point to if he wanted to justify his counter argument to Locke. Templeton want kids to accept that the Bible tells the truth. There's no mention of the myriad holy texts that claim similar, but contradictory, 'facts' to those that the Bible claims.

These three propositions are not equivalent. The first two are supported by the weight of facts and the last one isn't. But the course material wants to put them on a level footing. This really isn't a fair thing to do to kids, particularly home-schooled ones who are already more closeted than normally-schooled kids.

There's lots more of the same; on evolution, for example, they say:

Some evolutionary biologists say that the world is without design or purpose. They think that it came into being through a meaningless process, ruled by random chance.

Evolutionary biologists aren't the ones to ask about the origin of the world, so the implication here is that they think that evolution by natural selection is ruled by random chance, which is the opposite of the truth. This, in fact, is a standard creationist meme.

It's disappointing to me that this poorly thought out apologia is being marketed to US home-schoolers by an organisation based at a major British university. 

Francis Spufford, in the Guardian and elsewhere, has tried to defend an emotional, rather than a fact-based, faith: 

The point is that from outside, belief looks like a series of ideas about the nature of the universe for which a truth-claim is being made, a set of propositions that you sign up to; and when actual believers don't talk about their belief in this way, it looks like slipperiness, like a maddening evasion of the issue. If I say that, from inside, it makes much more sense to talk about belief as a characteristic set of feelings, or even as a habit, you will conclude that I am trying to wriggle out, or just possibly that I am not even interested in whether the crap I talk is true. I do, as a matter of fact, think that it is. I am a fairly orthodox Christian. Every Sunday I say and do my best to mean the whole of the Creed, which is a series of propositions. But it is still a mistake to suppose that it is assent to the propositions that makes you a believer. It is the feelings that are primary. I assent to the ideas because I have the feelings; I don't have the feelings because I've assented to the ideas.

"I assent to the ideas because I have the feelings". But where do the ideas come from in the first place, for the feelings to attach to? What has planted the seed? Divine revelation, or religiously-motivated schooling? Anyone, from anywhere, could say the same thing, in defence of a faith that contradicts Spufford's. What should someone 'from outside' conclude from that? Surely that the ideas are arbitrary and mostly not true, even if they appeal to those who, like Spufford, let their feelings ride roughshod over precautionary principles.

So Spufford ignores the overwhelming amount of disinformation to which we are all subjected as we grow up in these theistic societies, of which the Test of Faith course is just a drop in the well-funded ocean. Do we have an antidote to this? Yes, to a degree; we've discovered a method that provides some objectivity. A method that sees feelings as a potentially corrupting influence on its conclusions, not a reason to affirm them. 

The Test of Faith course and Spufford's article are more evidence of the incompatibility of science and religion.

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The Tall Tales of Hoffmann

"Hic!"

I'm not sure if this Hoffmann's first love was Olympia, the automaton, (or was it Ophelia? She's certainly no automaton.) or if his further loves were Antonia and Giulietta, but there is more than a whiff of the old Hoffmann about this New Oxonian. It's as if some gnu atheist Lindorff has gone off with his Stella,  leaving him drunk in the tavern crying into his beer, "Muse whom I love, I am yours!". I've been that drunk too, though in humbler company than Hoffmann. He certainly loves the Muse, but perhaps he has spent too long musing while nimbler, more successful courtiers of Stellar Street have taken the plaudits and bouquets. That seems to be part of the complaint (h/t Screechy Monkey):

Part of that has to do with (as I suggested) a record that goes back long before most Americans had heard of Richard Dawkins. Some of us older and old atheists remember what a lonely battle that was. Many who came to the movement since 2000 will not. And that is precisely the pojnt. Without saying jealousy is involved, there are many (not just me) who know that the Dawkins revolution could not have taken place without th almost invisible work of many of my associates in and out of the academy over many many years. On the one hand, we need to be grateful that the New Atheists have been successful in garnering support; on the other hand, and I know this from experience, nothing ensured the death of a book in this country before 1995 like putting the word atheism or humanism in the title. So, there were laborers in the trenches.

But in his latest offering he is far from a-musing, letting off at every gnu he can think of, like a drunk sending texts to former lovers. He starts off with the usual suspects and regurgitates well-worn non-arguments against the Four Horsemen (three of whom he might call Gnu Oxonians?). Interesting that he seems to admire Hitchens the most ("the only true intellectual and by far the best-read of the group"), since Hitch's arguments were always the worst of the four, even if his polemics were the best. More ire is aimed at the gnu bloggers who dare to offer an opinion on religion that has not been informed by years of study in the Divinity School at Harvard. He starts with Jerry Coyne, quoting him comparing religion to leprechauns in their compatibility with science, to which he responds:

Just a flash: While leprauchauns didn’t copy the books that were turned into the books that led to the science Dr Coyne eventually studied, monks and rabbis did. Why does the perfectly reasonable opposition to religious craziness have to descend to this caricaturing of the history of religion?

Strange, isn't it, that religion has morphed into the history of religion? What a befuddled argument. It's difficult to know what Hoffman's point is here. Is it that a deep and complex history justifies an ontology? But Coyne doesn't deny religion's history. It's as if he thinks the involvement of religious people in the history of science invalidates the Conflict Thesis, but none could be that dumb. Leprechauns don't exist so they couldn't have copied early science books, so Hoffmann's comparison doesn't work. Coyne, on the other hand, is pointing out that religion is a superstition, like leprechauns, not that religion doesn't exist, or, even more foolishly, that the history of religion doesn't exist or isn't complex. Hoffmann's argument wouldn't pass muster at infant school, sadly, let alone any philosophy department.

A Gish Gallop of mud-flinging follows, aimed at PZ Myers ("If ever atheism got dumber and less impressive, it is in the work of this dissolute insult- monger"), Greta Christina ("She sees everything as a weird sexual joke"), Ophelia Benson ("...has turned her once-interesting website (I used to contribute regularly) into a chat room for neo-atheist spleen"), Eric MacDonald ("doesn’t seem to know bloody anything about the academic study of religion") and Jason Rosenhouse ("I sometimes wonder why people whose only contribution to blogdom consists of sentences like “Most religious rituals leave me beyond cold,” find themselves titillating?"). Like one or two other misguided critics of new atheism, Hoffmann is often pragmatically self-refuting!

But Hoffmann has an illustrious history, if not an illustrious future, so I do wonder what has got under his skin so much about people who aren't guilty of the things he thinks they're guilty of. Apart from the self-confessed jealousy above, he gives a clue to one of his concerns in a comment below his latest rant:

The new atheists don’t oppose the study of religion. Not true: in fact the famous “Pinker Intervention” at Harvard in 2006 prevented religion from becoming a part of Harvard’s core curriculum, on the premise there was no difference between theology and religion-studies, though Harvard was the first university in America to introduce such study in the 1930′s, apart from its Divinity School. Read all about it here: http://www.somareview.com/godandmanatharvard.cfm Stephen Pinker (who is far more considerate of religion in general) is not the issue here, btw; a number of the newbies have gone on record as saying that the study of theology does not belong in a university, though in some places like Harvard, Yale, and Chicago, this would mean closing down their divinity schools where the study of religion is alive and well. That’s half the problem: the other half is that rank amateurs like the newbies have already pronounced their verdict on such study by mixing up the objectives. Frankly if this confusion is any indication of the state of their information, they’d better hold off on the God thing for a few years. If you want to see the nadir of this imbecilic conversation, here you go:http://www.newstatesman.com/2011/06/dawkins-myers-religion-faith

Interesting. The New Statesman piece compares religion to knitting, which is presumably what upsets Hoffmann, but this is nothing more than Myers's view of what religion's status should be in society, not a judgement of its historic worth, I think. Despite people like Dawkins and Hitchens regularly supporting the study of religion, he genuinely believes they don't, and his evidence is the "Pinker Intervention" and a throw away remark from one of the more strident new atheists. I'm not familiar with the background to the Pinker story, so it would be good to hear some more about this other than what Hoffmann's written, cloaked in dense references as it is ("Pinker Intervention" throws up just one link on Google, to Hoffmann's piece).

So maybe his concern is that divinity schools should not be closed down? But opposition to divinity schools is not opposition to the study of religion, so it's still not clear why he is so exercised about this. In the piece he links to, about the study of religion at Harvard, he says:

In short, all the wrong reasons for studying religion—because it is popular, widespread, and personally significant—triumph over the good reasons for studying it.

I confess, though, that I'm not clear from the piece what the good reasons are for studying it. I could guess at a few. Hoffmann does say earlier:

But religion puts itself forward as something that ought to be studied in its own right, not because in doing so the student learns to value its influence or validate its claims, but so that the student will be able to evaluate it within a particular analytical frame of reference. And it is in providing that context that Harvard excels.

This may be true, but it does not go any way to justifying separate divinity schools - religion can still be studied in its own right without that - so I'm still left struggling to understand the nature of Hoffmann's complaint, once again. Unless he thinks that the only frame of reference that is sufficient for good religious study is in divinity schools? Maybe, but he would have to be clear why he thinks this, or it's just special pleading for religion; something that new atheists are (obviously) against.

I dare say he has other complaints; if only he could write clearly, without so many distracting straw men and errors of fact, then we might have a better chance of understanding them. Maybe one day he'll sober up and tell us fellow drunkards what he means.

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Islamic Templeton?

Oddly enough, shortly after I write a piece pointing out that Templeton is just an organisation that promotes Christianity, not 'science and religion', they announce an initiative to encourage research into science and religion that includes other religions:

As productive as it has been, we at the John Templeton Foundation believe the science-religion dialogue has yet to investigate the full range of possibilities. In particular, it has largely been carried out from a perspective that is theistic (usually Christian), Western, methodologically focused, concerned primarily with the physical sciences, and has often been pitched at an introductory level. We believe that there is value in more work, particularly advanced research, which engages other scientific fields, more of the world’s religions, a wider spectrum of cultural foundations, and a greater breadth of specific topics.

Interesting that there is an admission that the science and religion meme they've pushed has indeed been Christian. I'm sure it had everything to do with my article! Previously there was this million dollar study on Islam and science, but I can't find any fruit for all that cash.

It will be interesting how far they will go with this, particularly with regard to Islam. I don't see that Islam is any less antithetical to science than Christianity, so there really is nothing different about its relation with science - I mean, they're similarly bad for scientific advancement because they promote ways of knowing objective truth that are inscrutable. But, any reconciliation of Islam with science would undermine the efforts that Christians regularly make to establish that Christianity is peculiar in its encouragement of science. It's good to see Ronald Numbers in a lecture for the Templeton funded Faraday Institute say:

...although Christians, as I’ve already pointed out, often contributed and made crucial contributions to the growth of science in the 16th, 17th and later centuries, I think it’s a conceit for Christians to argue that only Christianity could have produced science as we know it today.

However, Peter Harrison, in another Faraday lecture, on The Royal Society, argues for a social legitimacy for science among the religious scientists who founded it:

Whereas we often tend to think of religious influence manifesting itself unhelpfully in the content of scientific ideas, far more important for the period in question is the manner in which religion lent social legitimacy to scientific activities and institutions, provided motivations for key individuals in those institutions and, not least, informed their goals and methods. When we pose these kinds of questions, the importance of religion in the establishment of the Royal Society and in the public justification of its activities seems undeniable. 

He goes on to argue against Harry Kroto's views that "religious commitment, and certainly the clerical vocation, is necessarily inconsistent with ‘the scientific mindset’ and ‘intellectual integrity’". But while Harrison draws on much evidence for how religious people participated in the formation of The Royal Society, and how some of the ideas that sprang somewhat from their religious views informed their scientific approach, and allowed them to work at their science, he does not consider the basic religious proposition that is incompatible with science: that there is something objectively true that must be paramount to one's study of the universe. Surely everyone realises that even the most hardened dogmatist can 'do science' at some level, and most of the time this will not make the slightest difference. This still makes it incompatible in some way to free enquiry. It would be like saying that a football Premiership season is compatible with free competition if all teams competed against each other on an even footing throughout the season, but at the end Manchester United were declared the winners regardless of their standing (OK, sometimes it seems like that happens anyway). What is more likely, one can conclude, is that something mitigated the chilling effects of the religious approach, and with that in mind things look very different for science and religion.

Further, if Harrison's view are to be taken seriously, then presumably he must agree that Islam did not offer social legitimacy for science in the same way (since we're trying to figure out why science sprung up when and where it did, after all), in which case the approach that provided the encouragement for science is independent of religion. Furthermore, we can point out that secular approaches can provide social legitimacy for science too, so, all in all, these arguments for science and religion stand up to very little scrutiny. They go together like oil and water.

So a series of Templeton funded studies on how science and different religions are compatible, or not, would be a worthwhile project and may break the Christian hold on the science and religion meme. They can either hold to the idea that Christianity is pre-eminent and true, or let go and allow that any religion may be true, and Christianity therefore holds no special flame for truth. We shall see.

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Test of Science

Massimo Pigliucci has declined funding from The Templeton Foundation, a decision I applaud, and would urge any academic to follow. The reason he cites is:

...I simply don’t like having my name associated with right wing and/or libertarian organizations like the JTF, the American Enterprise Institute or the Institute for American Values.

Fair enough, and while surely right wing organisations have every right to operate as they see fit, within the law, I think the JTF may be too right wing for comfort. Sunny Bains conducted a study of its activities and noted:

For instance, the Templeton Freedom Awards are administered by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, a group that is perhaps most notable for its opposition to taking action against climate change and for being a defender of the tobacco industry that has traditionally given them funding.

Certainly tobacco and climate change are the typical bugbears of right wingers, but from what I've seen of Templeton, Bain's conclusion is a more disturbing aspect of the JTF:

Its agenda can at best be called unclear. At worst, its agenda is pro-religion and anti-science.

Further she says:

I call on the scientific community to boycott Templeton Foundation research funding and events. If that is too much to ask, I suggest that all those accepting Foundation funding, through whatever route, investigate the Foundation and the other activities that it funds, and to put on the record what they think about that work.

and,

Of course, if the Templeton Foundation is benign and open-minded, as their advertising claims, then this dissent should not cause anyone to lose their funding. On the other hand if, as I suspect, the Foundation is more interested in promoting pro-religious activities than doing real science, then some people may find that their grants are not renewed when the time comes.

Well done to Pigliucci for carrying out his research, but my view is that Templeton are aiming to further the meme of science and religion so as to undermine the proper conduct of science to protect Christianity from criticism. What I mean by this is that Templeton want the Christian presuppositions to be the norm when science is conducted. For science to be untainted, it needs to follow the evidence, wherever it leads. The Christian project makes that impossible, in principle, since a dogmatic belief in the truth of Christ must always trump science, for a believer.

I've written a few times about the Templeton Foundation before, noting the corrupting effect it may well have on the proper conduct of science, and indeed, perhaps, aims to have. For example, here's a 'paper' from the The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion (note the science and religion), a Templeton funded organisation. It's called Human genomics and the Image of God, by Graeme Finlay. In the summary at the very start, it says:

Our DNA tells a story that describes our biological origins during mammalian evolution, but that is not sufficient to account for our origins as persons. We are formed as persons only as we hear and assimilate stories transmitted in our families and communities. Christians believe that the story that is essential to the development of a fulfilled humanity is that which relates God’s redeeming action in Jesus Christ.

What Christians believe is wholly irrelevant to the science of DNA. Now, by all means, Finlay is welcome to  publish papers reconciling with science whatever odd beliefs he has, but to publish such a paper under the auspices of a reputable sounding organisation (with science in its title, don't forget), based at one of the leading universities in the world is calculated to undermine the scientific project. Other dubious papers, in the scientific sense, are also listed.

A recent news bulletin from Templeton pointed me to their Test of FAITH project. Its aim is to supply "accessible materials on science and Christianity for everyone who is interested in these issues". They have sections for youthworkers, schools and kids (a work in progress at time of writing). They have produced a film which "explores the relationship between science and religion, and the generally perceived idea that they are in conflict. Scientist believers discuss how they fit their faith and professional science work together." There is a sample lesson plan for teachers, with session one entitled The myth of conflict. The myth? Oh, really? Under a section discussing evil and suffering, they suggest the teacher:

Point out that science specialises in knowledge, but wisdom tends to be associated with religious traditions. They could use Einstein’s quotation, ‘Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.’

References are made to the good that science has done for us, but apparently only as an excuse to also point out the bad things it has enabled. It's plain that the subtext of the whole project is not science-friendly, but Christian-centric.

Now it may be that there are areas of reality immune to scientific investigation, but that doesn't allow us to claim a compatibility between religion and science. Every claim that religion has made that science can test has been found to be wrong. Religion has no track record of successful epistemology; in fact, since competing religions come to different conclusions, we can be confident that they are more wrong than right, and possibly completely wrong.

More to the point, Templeton isn't pursuing a way to reconcile science and religion, but a way to reconcile science and Christianity. Under the heading Schools & Youth - UK - Test of FAITH: Live!, we find:

This is an exciting new youth and schools initiative led by Chip Kendall, former lead singer of thebandwithnoname, and DJ Galactus Jack. Events include music, video, live science experiments and a short talk from a scientist. If you are interested in hosting Test of FAITH: Live! at your school or youth event, please contact us for details.

Spreading the Christian message to schools - the promo makes it very obvious this is an evangelical operation:

The Chip Kendall Band and Test of Faith: LIVE! in Caithness Promo from Far North Film on Vimeo.

"It's a great way of providing a vehicle for the gospel for people to engage with". That's pretty up front. I must say it disturbs me that these people are visiting schools spreading this unscientific message under the guise of science. I have only found evidence of two school visits though, shown above, to Wick and Thurso High Schools.

This is outside of school time, but is this really an appropriate use of state schools? What about their obligations to religious diversity? These are supposed to be non-denominational schools. The distribution of lesson plans preaching a Christian message, and rock musicians and scientist believers spreading a science and Christian message is just not what I expect our schools to be used for.

Jerry Coyne has posted a quote from physicist Robert L. Park about Templeton:

Not everyone was happy about the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) selling its soul to Templeton. Why had the most important scientific organization in America, perhaps in the world, allowed the voice of antiscience to assume the guise of a dialog between science and religion?

I agree that Templeton are simply promoting science and religion to promote their antiscience voice, as Park says,and I think the evidence above shows that.

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