Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowships in Science & Religion

In an upstairs classroom at Stanford University, 35 men and women from the surrounding community silently focus on their breathing, learning the rudimentary steps of meditation as part of an evening continuing-education class on forgiveness.

Fred Luskin, co-founder of the Stanford Forgiveness Project in Palo Alto, has abandoned the research laboratory for another calling. Instead of studying the effects of forgiveness, Luskin now devotes much of his time to teaching people how to forgive. He works in classrooms and businesses, nationally and internationally.

It is a new frontier for a new science: how to actually teach forgiveness. Don’t look for a national curriculum anytime soon. Even in the growing library of self-help books, there is a wide array of approaches. Most settle on a process generally ranging from acknowledging the hurt, trying to understand it, perhaps feeling some compassion and then letting go and moving on. Some experts suggest journaling throughout the process; many suggest a group setting or one-to-one coaching to work through it.

The contemporary version of forgiveness may be difficult to embrace, because the concept is still evolving.

Washington Post staff writer Marc Kaufman and planet-hunter Paul Butler were online Monday, July 21 at 11 a.m. ET to discuss the search for alien life.

Butler, who discovered some of the first extra-solar planets, will be joining the discussion from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii after a night of sky gazing.

Kaufman notes in his story, Search for Alien Life Gains New Impetus, that there is an explosion taking place in astrobiology, in part because of NASA’s Phoenix landing on Mars.

Few believe that the discovery of extraterrestrial life is imminent, writes Kaufman, However, just as scientists long theorized that there were planets orbiting other stars—but could not prove it until new technologies and insights broke the field wide open—many astrobiologists now see their job as to develop new ways to search for the life they are sure is out there.

When Orlando-based missionary and author Grady McMurtry talks about science and the Bible today at St. Cloud Church of the Nazarene, one question is bound to come up: How should evangelicals respond to the burning issue of global warming?

Relying as much on his degrees in agriculture and environmental science as on his theological education, McMurtry uses Scripture to argue his case that there is no global warming, no thinning of the Earth’s ozone layer.

In lectures devoted entirely to climate change, he argues that what warming there may be is cyclical and natural, not caused by human activity. Christians, he insists, should not pay attention to what he calls junk science that argues the contrary, as opposed to his controversial brand of biblical science.

Sir John Templeton, who died last week, gave hundreds of millions of dollars to scientists whom he hoped might put religious beliefs on a more solid foundation. His very substantial Templeton Foundation—with assets of nearly $1.5bn—has attracted particular reprobation in recent years. Some say its aim—to sponsor “human progress” through scientific research in religion—is simply misconceived: in Stephen Jay Gould’s famous distinction, science and religion are two magisteria, fundamental but separate.

Others have been more vociferous in their critique. In Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion, the Templeton Foundation warrants five index entries, one of three-page length. I do not know whether Dawkins has read much Freud, but he seems to be feeling his way towards the link the founder of psychoanalysis made between gold and excrement.

I should confess that I have been a minor beneficiary of Sir John’s largesse, as a Templeton–Cambridge journalism fellow. That said, now might be a good moment to put the aims of the foundation to the test. For what progress has its funding produced in relation to science and religion? It’s a big question, but then Sir John liked the big questions. So consider the thoughts of, say, three of his Templeton prize winners. They are, perhaps, illuminating.