Featured Grant
The World Science Festival
New York City was swimming in science from May 28 to June 1 as host of the inaugural World Science Festival. During the five-day event, more than 120,000 people attended 40 sold-out programs, ranging from lectures by Nobel Prize winners to a street fair for kids. The John Templeton Foundation was a proud supporter of the festival's Big Ideas Series. The five JTF-sponsored discussions featured eminent scientists like Brian Greene, Lawrence Krauss, William Phillips, Leonard Susskind, Francis Collins, Harold Varmus, and Paul Nurse.
WSF Big Ideas Series:
- Echoes from the Beginning: A Journey through Space and Time
- Invisible Reality: The Wonderful Weirdness of the Quantum World
- Faith and Science
- What it Means to be Human
- Beyond Einstein: In Search of the Ultimate Explanation
The New York Times praised the World Science Festival as "a new cultural institution" and noted that the JTF-sponsored discussion of "What it Means to be Human" was "the panel that everyone wanted to be on." The Festival received extensive media coverage, including the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Newsweek, Scientific American, Good Morning America, ABC World News Tonight, BBC World Service, and The Colbert Report.
Videos of the Big Ideas Series will be available online in the coming months. Please sign up here to receive notification.
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Core Themes
In keeping with Sir John Templeton's intent, his Foundation serves as a philanthropic catalyst for research and discoveries relating to what scientists and philosophers call the Big Questions. We support work at the world's top universities in such fields as theoretical physics, cosmology, evolutionary biology, cognitive science, and social science relating to love, forgiveness, creativity, purpose, and the nature and origin of religious belief. We also seek to stimulate new thinking about wealth creation in the developing world, character education in schools and universities, and programs for cultivating the talents of gifted children. Learn more about the Foundation's "Core Themes."
Funding Areas
Click on the funding areas below for an overview and a sampling of grant profiles.
JTF-Supported Book
Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution
Karl Giberson, Ph.D.
Professor of Physics, Eastern Nazarene College and Director of the Forum on Faith & Science, Gordon College
HarperOne, June 2008
Saving Darwin explores the history of the controversy that swirls around the theory of evolution and shows why—and how—it is possible to believe in both God and the latest findings of evolutionary biology.
As Giberson puts it, "I wrote Saving Darwin to build a bit of a bridge between two cultures at odds with each other: the scientific community and American evangelicalism. I have lived in both cultures and am dismayed at how far apart they are. In this climate of misunderstanding the ‘naturalism’ of science looks anti-religious and the anti-evolutionism of evangelicalism looks uninformed. I hope to illuminate the tension that divides these two communities and to contribute to improved communications.”
In a recent interview about his book in the online magazine Salon, Giberson emphasizes that "There's an important distinction between a theory that tells us the way the world is and a theory that tells us the way it ought to be." He has also posted a controversial and much-discussed essay on Salon, titled "What's Wrong with Science as Religion."
