updated Friday morning to add Church Times article and Guardian editorial, and again to add Times interview, and in the afternoon another Guardian article.
It was announced yesterday that the astrophysicist Martin Rees had been awarded the 2011 Templeton Prize.
The Guardian covered this story extensively.
Ian Sample: Martin Rees wins controversial £1m Templeton prize
Templeton Prize 2011: Full transcript of Martin Rees’s acceptance speech
Ian Sample interviewed Martin Rees on Tuesday before the announcement that he had won the Templeton Prize. This is a full transcript of the interview: Martin Rees: I’ve got no religious beliefs at all – interview.
The Guardian also has these comment articles
Mark Vernon: Martin Rees’s Templeton prize may mark a turning point in the ‘God wars’
Jerry Coyne: Martin Rees and the Templeton travesty
Michael White: Martin Rees and the Templeton prize: why are the atheists so cross?
Dan Jones: The Templeton Foundation is not an enemy of science
and this editorial: Martin Rees: Prize war.
But there was other coverage.
Michael Banks at physicsworld.com: Martin Rees wins £1m Templeton Prize
Daniel Cressey in Nature: Martin Rees takes Templeton Prize
Steve Connor in The Independent: For the love of God… scientists in uproar at £1m religion prize
Chris Herlinger in The Huffington Post: Martin Rees, British Astrophysicist, Wins Templeton Prize
Ed Thornton in the Church Times: Non-believing churchgoer is winner of Templeton Prize
Hannah Devlin and Ruth Gledhill of The Times interview on YouTube: Martin Rees, winner of The Templeton Prize, on God, life, the universe (21 minutes)
Brilliant news! A serious scientist (unlike Dawkins who gave up science in favour of polemic years ago) who is not only an atheist but sees nothing wrong with their being an ongoing conversation between religion and science. A short, sharp, shock for those who trying to persuade the world that the new PC is to be anti-religion.
Very entertaining. For what it’s worth (obviously, rather little), I read Martin Rees as a believer who does not want to affirm his belief for fear of ridicule but still does it (in the sense of attending services). Very Anglican – of a certain kind, of – perhaps – a certain era.
’In 2006, the Templeton Foundation funded a study to investigate whether heart bypass patients recovered more quickly if people prayed for them. The study concluded that prayer at best had no effect. In this particular study, patients who knew they were being prayed for fared worse than others.’
Any religious orgaisation which conducted such research and moreover published the result surely can’t be all bad?
‘investigate whether heart bypass patients recovered more quickly if people prayed for them’
For myself, I would / do want the prayer — every time. I would nt need to know of it necesarily.
The trouble with these studies is all the imonderables. It sound simplistic.
Death need not be seen as a failure of recovery. It’s probably the ultimate recovery.
Recovery / dies natalis
I dont see that these medical studies on prayer prove very much at all, either way. God doesnt like to be tested. He is not some automatic heaven slot machine. Difficult to see why he would oblige some doctor’s study when what He really wants us to exercise faith and trust in Him. It often surprises me how often God does answer prayer, though in His wisdom perhaps not exactly as you expected.