…a politically brilliant choice, Francisco Ayala. He’s a former priest who has argued for respect for religion while not going quite as far as some of the other possibilities in endorsing it, he’s been fairly circumspect about not presenting ridiculous rationales for religion, but he’s also an excellent and reputable scientist.

It’s definitely an astute decision. The foundation went for someone whose primary claim to renown is as a scientist, not as an apologist. They are a canny bunch, those rascals — they avoided the obvious targets and picked someone who isn’t quite as easily mocked.

Imagine that a well-funded astrology organization were to establish a prize awarding a good chunk of money to a scientist who best affirmed the validity of astrology, all as part of a campaign to bestow a whiff of credibility to the belief that the position of the stars at the time you were born influenced your fate. Astrologers certainly want to pretend that they are scientific, so it’s exactly the kind of thing many of them would love to do; their only problem is that real scientists would laugh them away, and they certainly wouldn’t get the support of any of the major scientific institutions.

So why is the National Academy of Sciences supporting an organization claiming to reconcile science and superstition, and why is the president of the NAS nominating scientists for such an award? It’s exactly analogous; religion has no more validity than astrology, is openly unscientific, and I would argue is anti-scientific, so no legitimate scientific institution ought to be endorsing it. I know that some of their members may be church-goers, but some of them will also be following their horoscope in the newspapers, so that’s still no reason to pander to folly.

Here’s something else that’s odd: we’ve got the Templeton Foundation desperately looking for respect by marrying ancient superstitions to modern science, but we’ve got nothing on the other side. You don’t see American Atheists or the American Humanist Association funding research that would promote the idea that godlessness and science are compatible; they don’t have as much money, for one thing, but also we take it for granted that not invoking supernatural forces is a pretty reasonable thing to do in science. The godless don’t have to strain to wedge their ideas into a domain that excludes them.

We also don’t have an organization awarding a prize to the scientist who “has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s [natural, material] dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works” (that’s the description of the Templeton Prize, with one little change). It would be redundant, since that’s what science does. We also don’t have a major atheist organization giving out awards specifically to the scientist of the year who has made the greatest contribution to actively promoting secularism, even though they could: Dawkins, Harris, Kroto, Atkins and many others would be on the shortlist, easily. Maybe they should, but most atheists aren’t so insecure that they need to make a special effort to show that their ideas are compatible with science.

One reason they should, though, is just to see what would happen when they asked a major scientific institution to host the award ceremony. I predict a very rapid back-pedal from an organization that wouldn’t want to get into a political tangle…a consideration they apparently don’t worry about when what is being promoted is religion, despite the fact that religion is a fraud.

The Templeton Prize is going to be awarded soon, and they’ve found a venue for it: the National Academy of Sciences. Please note that last word, science — the Templeton Prize has no connection to that subject. Previous winners include Mother Theresa, Chuck Colson, and Billy Graham — professional frauds. Richard Dawkins has an excellent piece on the subject.

The US National Academy of Sciences has brought ignominy on itself by agreeing to host the announcement of the 2010 Templeton Prize (see below). This is exactly the kind of thing Templeton is ceaselessly angling for – recognition among real scientists – and they use their money shamelessly to satisfy their doomed craving for scientific respectability. They tried it on with the Royal Society of London, and they seem to have found a compliant Quisling in the current President, Martin Rees, who, though not religious himself, is a fervent ‘believer in belief’. Fortunately, enough Fellows made a stink about it to ensure that the Royal will not flirt with Templeton in future. Now Templeton are apparently trying the same trick with the US National Academy. If you know any officers, or elected members, of the Academy, please write in protest.

That’s not my favorite part, though. The Templeton Foundation has invited people to guess who’s going to win.

Well, let’s all guess away to our heart’s content. Which leading scientist has done the most to betray science in favour of his imaginary friend? You can rule out the people they’d privately like to honor (such as Intelligent Design “theorists”) because that would go against the official policy of courting respectability among scientists. Nowadays they target genuinely good scientists (like Freeman Dyson, winner of the 2000 Templeton Prize), whose subversion provides more bang for the (mega)buck than primarily religious figures who happen also to be scientists. In the early days they didn’t even make a pretence of finding a scientist at all: the 1982 winner was the notorious creationist Billy Graham!

“Which leading scientist has done the most to betray science in favour of his imaginary friend?” is exactly the criterion they’ll use. In that case, the shoo-in would have to be Francis Collins. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ken Miller is solidly in the running, though, and if he doesn’t get it now, he probably will in the next few years.

I bet Michael Ruse lusts after that prize, but his drooling is just a little too obvious.

A Lutheran church in Wisconsin runs a school (unfortunately). The school council has ‘doctrinal issues’ with the fellow they hired as principal — he seems to think that the idea that men have authority over women is invalid. So they had a meeting to fire John Hartwig, and something at the meeting shocked the audience.

Supporters of Hartwig said they were shocked to learn that women church members would not be permitted to speak during a meeting to decide Hartwig’s fate.

I’d be shocked, too. Except that I’d also be shocked by this, which everyone there seemed to take for granted.

Females do not have voting privileges, but are generally allowed to speak at meetings, according to Klaetsch. Sunday’s meeting was the first time in recent history that St. John’s Council President Don Finseth exercised his authority to prevent females from speaking, church members say.

Please, women of St John’s Lutheran Church of Baraboo, Wisconsin, WAKE UP. Leave that awful institution. Why are you continuing to wallow in a poisonous environment that treats you like scum?

The Pope is planning to visit the UK. He shouldn’t be welcomed; he should be turned away at the border as an undesirable fraud. There is a petition to sign to let the government know what people think. They make a good case:

• That the Pope, as a citizen of Europe and the leader of a religion with many adherents in the UK, is of course free to enter and tour our country.
• However, as well as a religious leader, the Pope is a head of state and the state and organisation of which he is head has been responsible for:
  1. opposing the distribution of condoms and so increasing large families in poor countries and the spread of AIDS
  2. promoting segregated education
  3. denying abortion to even the most vulnerable women
  4. opposing equal rights for lesbians, gay, bisexual and transgender people
  5. failing to address the many cases of abuse of children within its own organisation.
  6. rehabilitating the holocaust denier bishop Richard Williamson and the appeaser of Hitler, the war-time Pope, Pius XII.
• The state of which the Pope is the head has also resisted signing many major human rights treaties and has formed its own treaties (‘concordats’) with many states which negatively affect the human rights of citizens of those states.
• As a head of state, the Pope is an unsuitable guest of the UK government and should not be accorded the honour and recognition of a state visit to our country.

That first point is far too kind.

Dan Dennett has been studying the phenomenon of preachers who don’t believe what they preach, and the paper and commentary are available at the Washington post. Strangely, the newspaper has headlined it as “Skeptical clergy a silent majority?”, which is odd — the work doesn’t attempt to quantify how many unbelievers there are in the ministry, but is more of a case study of those they’ve found…and since they are only describing the in-depth interviews of five people, it’s absurd to try and draw conclusions about proportions.

It’s interesting stuff, but utterly unsurprising to atheists. These are people who entered the ministry out of a sincere desire to do good in the world, and as they delved into religious scholarship, they discovered they couldn’t believe anymore…but hey, they were still humane and concerned about their fellow human beings. They’re also concerned about what will happen to their income if they leave the church, and what will happen to the opinion others have of them. And they engage in some difficult and twisty rationalizations for their situations.

One other interesting point is that several of them came to their atheism by way of reading books by Ehrman and Spong, and also Harris and Hitchens. These works do make a difference. Unfortunately, we also learn that while they have received enlightenment, they’re very, very reluctant to share that shameful knowledge with their congregations, and continue to reassure them about belief in god.

Unfortunately, the WaPo couldn’t just put up Dennett’s bombshell on its own: they’ve surrounded it with a confusing cloud of commissioned articles to answer the question, “What should pastors do if they no longer hold the defining beliefs of their denomination?”. Most of them are believers, except for Rebecca Goldstein and Tom Flynn and Herb Silverman, and most of them are making excuses. You just knew that someone would make the inane argument that “doubt is part of faith.” No, it’s not. Faith is the blunt instrument used to crush doubt.

The comments on Dennett’s article are also fascinating. There are people who are quite upset about his revelation. And there is even a Cracker Catholic there, claiming that an atheist priest at communion turned a wafer into a hunk of bloody meat — therefore, god, apparently.

Just watch. This is news that will provoke protests and complaints and lots of excuses. I hope it also encourages more ministers to come out of the closet and face reality, instead of making it their profession to obscure the truth.

That prior clarification was not intended to exculpate the current pope: Hitchens rips into the guilty monster occupying the Vatican. Good stuff.