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Polish priest-cosmologist wins the Templeton prize for “proving” God
Oh dear, oh dear… The Templeton Prize… And the winner this year is…. (drum-roll)… Father Heller! What? What is this Templeton Prize? Why is it awarded? Who awards it?
Well, in a nutshell, the Templeton Prize is a big amount of money (around $1.5 million) that is awarded by the Templeton Foundation and is intended to
Also, resources and manpower allocated to spiritual discoveries only means less resources and less manpower allocated to what really matters: science. Then again, come to think of it, the people that would be allocated to such a hunt for the divine should better stay as far away from science as possible!
Anyway, let’s see what the criteria are for awarding the prize:
And who is Father Heller? Father Heller was “[an] associate of Archbishop Karol Wojtyla, the future pope” and is “a philosophy professor at the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Krakow, Poland”. He has an educational background in physics and cosmology but which he later diluted with theology and philosophy studies.
Father Heller, however, does acknowledge that Intelligent Design proponents (ID-iots) should not create false dichotomies in claiming that either God made the Universe or everything occurred by “mere chance” -enough with the chance thing already! For the millionth time! He also asserts that ID-iots should be better educated -especially in theology. Me, with my humble mind, I fail to see how one can get specialized in theology… But that is just me…
So what is Father Heller’s opinion regarding the improbable creation of life? Quoting Heller from the Templeton Prize announcement:
Of course the Templeton Foundation is praising Heller using various problematic statements:
God is behind everything. No matter what. Get used to it. That is the opinion of the Templeton Prize Winner. But how could we expect something different?
Well, in a nutshell, the Templeton Prize is a big amount of money (around $1.5 million) that is awarded by the Templeton Foundation and is intended to
[...] encourage the concept that resources and manpower are needed to accelerate progress in spiritual discoveries, which can help humans to learn more than a hundredfold more about divinity. The Prize is intended to help people see the infinity of the Universal Spirit still creating the galaxies and all living things and the variety of ways in which the Creator is revealing himself to different people.Okay. This explains a lot. Wait a minute. No, actually it doesn’t explain anything. “…see the infinity of the Universal Spirit…“?!? “…still creating the galaxies…”?!? Sorry but we have a very good understanding and explanation for the formation of galaxies, star systems, and planets, and guess what? It does not involve a supernatural God. None at all. It is purely a natural phenomenon.
Also, resources and manpower allocated to spiritual discoveries only means less resources and less manpower allocated to what really matters: science. Then again, come to think of it, the people that would be allocated to such a hunt for the divine should better stay as far away from science as possible!
Anyway, let’s see what the criteria are for awarding the prize:
The judges consider a nominee’s contribution to progress made either during the year prior to his selection or during his or her entire career. The qualities sought in awarding the Prize are: freshness, creativity, innovation and effectiveness. Such contributions may involve new concepts of divinity, new organizations, new and effective ways of communicating God’s wisdom and infinite love, creation of new schools of thought, creation of new structures of understanding the relationship of the Creator to his ongoing creation of the universe, to the physical sciences, and the life sciences, and the human sciences, the releasing of new and vital impulses into old religious structures and forms.So this is basically an award to someone resembling a scientist, or someone working towards “proving” the existence of God, divinity, creation etc. Trying to add scientific credibility to unscientific claims? As always.
And who is Father Heller? Father Heller was “[an] associate of Archbishop Karol Wojtyla, the future pope” and is “a philosophy professor at the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Krakow, Poland”. He has an educational background in physics and cosmology but which he later diluted with theology and philosophy studies.
Father Heller, however, does acknowledge that Intelligent Design proponents (ID-iots) should not create false dichotomies in claiming that either God made the Universe or everything occurred by “mere chance” -enough with the chance thing already! For the millionth time! He also asserts that ID-iots should be better educated -especially in theology. Me, with my humble mind, I fail to see how one can get specialized in theology… But that is just me…
So what is Father Heller’s opinion regarding the improbable creation of life? Quoting Heller from the Templeton Prize announcement:
Various processes in the universe can be displayed as a succession of states in such a way that the preceding state is a cause of the succeeding one… (and) there is always a dynamical law prescribing how one state should generate another state. But dynamical laws are expressed in the form of mathematical equations, and if we ask about the cause of the universe we should ask about a cause of mathematical laws. By doing so we are back in the Great Blueprint of God’s thinking the universe, the question on ultimate causality…: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” When asking this question, we are not asking about a cause like all other causes. We are asking about the root of all possible causes.But isn’t Mathematics just a human construct? A language for helping us formally describe processes, systems, events, actions, relations etc? What does it mean to ask about the “cause of mathematical laws”? And where does God get in the picture? Further, the “ultimate question” as Heller states is probably outside the realms of science and into the realms of philosophy. Speculations and presumptions about the existence of a deity don’t help at all and definitely don’t explain anything.
Of course the Templeton Foundation is praising Heller using various problematic statements:
With an academic and religious background that enables him to comfortably and credibly move within each of these domains, Heller’s extensive writings have evoked new and important consideration of some of humankind’s most profound concepts.and
It is evident that for him the mathematical nature of the world and its comprehensibility by humans constitute the circumstantial evidence of the existence of GodWell, his credibility pretty much vanishes when he starts introducing supernatural forces into science. Further, this is the argument from authority: just because Heller has studied physics and cosmology doesn’t mean that whatever he says is valid or reasonable! One needs to look at the hard facts, evidence, plausibility, and usability of one’s claims. And this is an area where Heller fails… Quoting from the Catholic News Service:
But “God is also the God of chance events,” he said. “From what our point of view is, chance — from God’s point of view, is … his structuring of the universe.”Okay. So in essence, no matter what we discover, no matter how many scientific theories contradict the God hypothesis and the biblical truth, God has always been behind everything. Do we finally prove that God never existed? Yeap, God arranged for this too. Is everything in the bible a superstitious lie? God wanted this to happen. Evolution? God sparkled that highly improbable event of creating life -the creation myth was only a deliberate misdirection from God in order to test our faith and our capability to reason.
As an example, Father Heller said, “birth is a chance event, but people ascribe that to God. People have much better theology than adherents of intelligent design. The chance event is just a part of God’s plan.”
God is behind everything. No matter what. Get used to it. That is the opinion of the Templeton Prize Winner. But how could we expect something different?
1. Jonathan
$1.5 million for propaganda supporters! At least Heller will donate it for a good purpose
I am not a believer.
I don’t know anything about the Templeton Foundation.
But I think Heller’s ideas should be checked without any bias for or against.
I don’t care if he was friends with Giovanni Paolo II.
I have read a question from him that is really interesting: “why is there something instead of nothing?” I think that our cosmology models don’t quite even try to answer this question. We assume there was a beginning when everything was extremely condensed but we don’t know why. Sometimes you get a suggestion that the sum of the whole energy in the cosmos could be zero (J.D. Barrow) and therefore, the creation of the cosmos out of nothing would not violate any law.
But that’s the furthest cosmologists go.
Still, the question remains unanswered.
Fuck the prize, it is unimportant. The important thing is: can this man’s ideas be interesting? What did he actually say? Did he prove anything at all? Let’s listen to him first.
I don’t know anything about the Templeton Foundation.
But I think Heller’s ideas should be checked without any bias for or against.
I don’t care if he was friends with Giovanni Paolo II.
I have read a question from him that is really interesting: “why is there something instead of nothing?” I think that our cosmology models don’t quite even try to answer this question. We assume there was a beginning when everything was extremely condensed but we don’t know why. Sometimes you get a suggestion that the sum of the whole energy in the cosmos could be zero (J.D. Barrow) and therefore, the creation of the cosmos out of nothing would not violate any law.
But that’s the furthest cosmologists go.
Still, the question remains unanswered.
Fuck the prize, it is unimportant. The important thing is: can this man’s ideas be interesting? What did he actually say? Did he prove anything at all? Let’s listen to him first.
3. Stavros
Hi sesenta,
of course you are right in that we should hear his ideas unbiased. But his ideas and some of the questions he asks are outside science and not testable. Therefore, scientists have no reason to hear those particular questions.
Further, while Heller has a scientific background, it is obvious that he is only trying to use scientific ideas as a means to prove the existence of God.
As a scientist he should very well know that the God hypothesis adds absolutely nothing to our understanding of the Universe. It is merely a personification of our ignorance.
of course you are right in that we should hear his ideas unbiased. But his ideas and some of the questions he asks are outside science and not testable. Therefore, scientists have no reason to hear those particular questions.
Further, while Heller has a scientific background, it is obvious that he is only trying to use scientific ideas as a means to prove the existence of God.
As a scientist he should very well know that the God hypothesis adds absolutely nothing to our understanding of the Universe. It is merely a personification of our ignorance.
This quote by Albert Einstein encapsulates everything wrong with a mathematical proof for God:
“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.” -Quoted in J R Newman, The World of Mathematics (New York 1956).
“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.” -Quoted in J R Newman, The World of Mathematics (New York 1956).
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