Free Republic

“The Democrats doth protest too much, methinks.” Hamlet. Act III, Scene II. 2019 adaptation. Nancy Pelosi’s dramatic tone was planned and well-rehearsed. “No one is above the law,” she said. The Speaker also said, “No one comes to Congress to impeach the President of the United States.” That was a blatant lie, but Pelosi was obfuscating, as usual. She held a vote to move forward on impeachment hearings without even reviewing the documents she was referencing as the reason to do so.It was weird. How can a Speaker of the House be so devoid of intellectual honesty? Wait. Never mind....

In 1946, Billy Graham had a friendly rival for the title of the most up and coming evangelist in the world. The friendly rival was, in fact, Billy Graham’s best friend Charles Templeton.Charles Templeton was from Canada and was co-founder of the organization Youth for Christ, which hired Billy Graham as its first full time evangelist.  Templeton and Graham led rallies together in America and in Europe.  Many thought that Templeton was the more talented preacher of the two.  However, what followed was a truly sad story.By the late 1940’s Templeton began to doubt the Genesis account of creation.  Further,...

Alexis Templeton has been on the front lines of the Ferguson protest movement since its inception. KCUR reported: Twenty-year-old Alexis Templeton has been on the front lines of protests since she arrived in Ferguson, five days after Brown was shot. “I was in Phoenix, Arizona, when Michael Brown was shot and killed. When I got back, I immediately hit the ground, standing at the front of riot lines, being face to face with the police,” she said. “That was me for the last 89 days. Tomorrow, it will be three months, the days start to blend together.” She is a...

The “scientific fundamentalism” promoted by the atheist Richard Dawkins was criticised yesterday by the winner of a prize he had attacked. Professor Francisco Ayala, who won the £1 million Templeton Prize for scientific thought, said that attacking religion and ridiculing believers provided ammunition for religious leaders who insisted that followers had to choose between God and Darwin. “Richard Dawkins has been a friend for more than 20 years, but it is unfortunate that he goes beyond the boundaries of science in making statements that antagonise believers,” he said.

On March 16, 2009, the Templeton Foundation announced the winner of its annual 1 million pound sterling (1.42 million USD) prize, an amount that exceeds the payoff of the prestigious Nobel Prize...Dr. d’Espagnat was awarded the prize for his work using theoretical physics to predict the reality of a hypercosmic god, who exists outside of the physical universe...

As "annus horribilis" 2008 recedes into the background it might be timely to look back a few years and ask: Who really saw all of this coming? Was such an economic and financial disaster foreseeable? What kind of financial sage would have predicted it three or four years ago, in the middle of the "go-go" years? Well, it turns out there was such a prescient, counterintuitive person, keen of mind and generous of soul. That person himself passed away at age 95 in mid-2008. He was, Sir John Templeton, stock picker of the century, innovator, renowned philanthropist, and always a...

The majority of youths in the world say they are spiritual and think religion and spirituality are both positive, according to an extensive, first-of-its-kind survey. Fifty-seven percent of young people (ages 12-25) see themselves as being spiritual, reported the survey by Search Institute’s Center for Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence that was sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation. The research surveyed more than 7,000 young people from a wide range of cultural and religious backgrounds, spanning 17 countries and six continents. It took two years to complete the study that offers one of the first snapshots of spiritual development...

Sir John Templeton agreed with the proverb that it's "easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." "There's a lot of truth in that," the billionaire philanthropist once said. "When people trust in something other than God, it's difficult to be truly spiritual. ... Don't fall in love with money." Sir John, a pioneering mutual fund manager, global investor and founder of the Templeton Prize, died Tuesday of pneumonia in the Bahamas, a spokeswoman at his foundation said. He was 95. Sir John was born...

The $1.6 million Templeton Prize, the richest award made to an individual by a philanthropic organization, was given Wednesday to Michael Heller, 72, a Roman Catholic priest, cosmologist and philosopher who has spent his life asking, and perhaps more impressively answering, questions like “Does the universe need to have a cause?”... Much of Professor Heller’s career has been dedicated to reconciling the known scientific world with the unknowable dimensions of God. In doing so, he has argued against a “God of the gaps” strategy for relating science and religion, a view that uses God to explain what science cannot. Professor...

Arlington, VA, March 12, 2007 – Think tanks from the United States and 13 other countries have been named winners of 2007 Templeton Freedom Awards, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, which manages the competition, announced today. Winning institutions come from a widely diverse geographical area, ranging from Montana to Montenegro, Brazil to Belarus, Sweden to Japan. The multi-faceted awards program, which attracted this year more than 200 entries from 53 countries, recognizes innovative civil society programs sponsored by independent research institutes around the world. The program is named in honor of famed investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton. “Economic and...

The John Templeton Foundation, a $1.1 billion philanthropy devoted to bringing science and religion together, is launching an ambitious international effort to fund physics research with potential theological implications. Based in Cambridge and led by an MIT physics professor, the new Foundational Questions Institute is scheduled to announce its first round of grants today -- a total of $2.2 million to 30 physicists at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and other top institutions. The institute will not tackle explicitly religious questions like ``Does God exist?" but will instead focus on deep questions in physics that may be too speculative or philosophical for...

Roman Catholic priest Fr. Georges Lemaître, working off Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, first proposed the “Big Bang” explanation of the universe’s origin in 1927. It took decades for the theory to win general acceptance. Einstein himself opposed it bitterly for years, in what he would later call “the biggest mistake of my life.” The theory was finally proved experimentally only in 1965 by Penzias and Wilson. For their pains, they were awarded the Nobel Prize. Fr. Lemaître, on the other hand, never received the public recognition that was his due. Nevertheless, in the 1970s several apparent problems with the...

The mechanisms driving the process of evolution have always been subject to rigorous scientific debate. Growing in intensity and scope, this debate currently spans a broad range of disciplines including archaeology, biochemistry, computer modeling, genetics & development and philosophy. A recent $2.8 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation to the Cambridge Templeton Consortium [link] is providing the resources for further investigation into this complex and fascinating area. The funds will support 18 new grant awards to scientists, social scientists and philosophers examining how complexity has emerged in biological systems. Attracting 150 applications, the grant process has generated much interest...

Just around the Templeton Curve can be found the best argument for reforming Social Security now. The Templeton Curve, a contribution to the Social Security debate by Dr. John Templeton, Pennsylvania philanthropist and chairman of Let Freedom Ring, illustrates two starkly different futures for the Social Security system. And does it so clearly that it makes the issue perfectly understandable for the average American who is bombarded with mountains of rhetoric, much of it misleading. As you can see by clicking here, http://www.nationalreview.com/moore/moore200502160842.asp, there are two parts to the curve. The first part shows what will happen to Social Security...

Physicist Is Awarded the Templeton Prize in Spiritual Matters By DENNIS OVERBYE Published: March 10, 2005 Dr. Charles Townes, a physicist who shared the Nobel Prize for helping to invent the laser, added another and most unusual prize to a lifelong storehouse of honors yesterday. In a news conference at the United Nations, he was announced as the winner of the $1.5 million Templeton Prize, awarded annually for progress or research in spiritual matters. Dr. Townes, 89, a longtime professor at the University of California, Berkeley, has long argued that those old antagonists science and religion are more alike than...

Charles Townes, the UC Berkeley professor who shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in physics for his work in quantum electronics and then startled the scientific world by suggesting that religion and science were converging, was awarded the $1.5-million Templeton Prize on Wednesday for progress in spiritual knowledge. The co-inventor of the laser, Townes, 89, said no greater question faced humankind than discovering the purpose and meaning of life — and why there was something rather than nothing in the cosmos.

Charles Townes, co-inventor of the laser and a Nobel Prize-winner in physics, was named Wednesday as the recipient of a religion award billed as the world's richest annual prize. Townes, 89, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, won the Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities. The award is worth 795,000 British pounds — more than $1.5 million — and Townes was honored for talks and writings about the importance of relating science and religion... He first addressed that topic in 1964, the same year he shared the Nobel with two Russians for research...

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 25, 2005 – The winners for the prestigious $50,000 John Templeton Foundation Epiphany Prizes for Inspiring Movies & TV were announced last evening at the 13th Annual Movieguide® Faith & Values Awards Gala in Beverly Hills, with Dr. John Templeton, Jr., presenting THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST with the $50,000 Epiphany Prize for the Most Inspirational Movie of 2004. The $50,000 Epiphany Prize for the Most Inspirational Television Program of 2004 was awarded to the “Happy Trails” episode of DOC, broadcast by PAX-TV. “This is a very special night for us,” said Jim Caviezel, star of THE...

Simply Templeton Two financial futures for Social Security. Last week I debated New York Times columnist Paul Krugman at the National Press Club on the future of Social Security. This was about as much fun as trying to eat corn on the cob with braces. Krugman is the leader of the opposition to personal investment accounts. He argues, and most liberals agree with him, that the Social Security system is not facing a financial crisis and that minor tweaks to the system will pull it out of the red for at least the next 50 years. A recent USA Today...

Famous financier Sir John Templeton has donated $1 million through his foundation to a political group that will encourage political conservatives to vote this November. Templeton’s significant donation is another sign the hotly contested 2004 race may turn out to be a battle of billionaires for the hearts and minds of Americans. The John Templeton Foundation, launched in 1987 by philanthropist, author and financier Sir John Mark Templeton, has earmarked the donation to kick-start an independent-expenditure group that will “counter the millions of dollars being spent to attack and discredit President Bush by leftist organizations such as those supported by...