“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind,” Albert Einstein once remarked. But where can the resonances he discerned be found? Can we take the genius of general relativity at his word, in a world often dominated by narratives of conflict between science and religion? Think-Write-Publish Science and Religion, a new project at Arizona State University, funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, will explore how the two domains describe reality in ways that are mutually reinforcing.
Advances in contemporary medicine are tremendous. Yet, alongside almost daily, welcome improvements, there has developed a sense that technology alone cannot deliver the physical wellbeing for which we hope.
Individuals who have a history of problems with alcohol are more likely to stay sober if they help others. This is the conclusion of research carried out by Maria Pagano, associate professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, in a projected called Service to Others in Sobriety (SOS), supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.
Human beings are the creatures who plan for, dream about, and evaluate their future prospects. But can this characteristic of our species—called prospection—be studied scientifically?
ArticlesCredit: Religious Freedom and Security Comes to VietnamReligious Freedom and Security Comes to Vietnam
In 2004, the United States State Department designated Vietnam a country of particular concern. This meant that Vietnam exhibited ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom. However, just over a decade later, it is rapidly becoming a model nation in Southeast Asia for dealing with issues of religious freedom and the law.
It is a common thought that the worldviews of science and religion are very different and are best not mixed. This is one way to summarize the “non-overlapping magisteria” view of the relationship between these two great quests for understanding, associated with the late American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. But is this assessment accurate?
Grit and self-control. These two personal qualities are at least as predictive of success in life than IQ or socioeconomic advantage, according to research conducted by Angela Duckworth, associate professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, a John Templeton Foundation grantee, and now a 2013 MacArthur Fellow—the award also known as a “genius grant.”
The detection of hundreds of exoplanets is one of the most exciting stories in contemporary astronomy. These planets, which are orbiting stars other than our sun, are fascinating for many reasons, not least for the possibility that they may offer homes to extraterrestrial life. But how can we know?
