Psychology[edit]

Positive psychology, religion and medicine[edit]

Harold G. Koenig, Dale Mathews, David Larson, Jeffrey Levin, Herbert
Benson and Michael McCullough are scholars to whom the foundation has
provided funds to "report the positive relations" between religion and
medicine.[53] One field in which the foundation has been particularly
supportive is positive psychology, as developed by Martin
[22]
Seligman, Angela Duckworth and others.  Positive psychology is "the
scientific study of what makes life most worth living", [54] or "the scientific
study of positive human functioning and flourishing on multiple levels that
include the biological, personal, relational, institutional, cultural, and global
dimensions of life".[55] Positive psychology is concerned with eudaimonia,
"the good life", reflection about what holds the greatest value in life – the
factors that contribute the most to a well-lived and fulfilling life. Positive
psychology began as a new domain of psychology in 1998 when Seligman
chose it as the theme for his term as president of the American
Psychological Association.[56][57]
Scientific development of virtue interventions[edit]
In 2019, the foundation awarded $2.6 million grant to Sarah Schnitker
of Baylor University and Benjamin Houltberg of the University of Southern
California to "galvanize widespread scientific development of virtue
interventions for adolescents across a diversity of contexts". [58]
A grant from the foundation supports a study of religion and health
conducted by Tyler VanderWeele of Harvard University. Vander is the John
L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology in the
Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan
School of Public Health, and co-director the University's Initiative on Health,
Religion and Spirituality. His research has focused on the application
of causal inference to epidemiology, as well as on the relationship
between religion and health.[39][40][41]
Science education[edit]
The foundation has provided grants in support of dialogue with scientists in
synagogues,[27] and a grant for advancing scientific literacy in madrasas.[28]
[29][30]

History[edit]
The foundation provided funding for the book Galileo Goes to Jail and
Other Myths about Science and Religion, which was edited by historian of
science Ronald Numbers.[59]

Reception[edit]
The foundation has received both praise and criticism for its awards.
The French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) has been
critical of the foundation for funding "initiatives to bring science and religion
closer together."[60] Science journalist Chris Mooney, an atheist and author
of The Republican War on Science, received a 2010 Templeton-Cambridge
Journalism Fellowship, enabling him to join other journalists for a three-
week lecture program on science and religion at Cambridge University. In a
2010 article on his Discover magazine blog, Mooney wrote, "I can honestly
say that I have found the lectures and presentations that we've heard here
to be serious and stimulating. The same goes for the discussions that have
followed them".[61] Some scholars have expressed concerns about the
nature of the awards, research projects, and publications backed by the
foundation.[62][63][64][65][66][67]
Religious funding[edit]

Paul Davies, physicist and 1995 Templeton Prize laureate, has defended
the foundation's role in the scientific community.
Critics have asserted that the foundation has supported Christian-oriented
research in the field of the scientific study of religions,[68] although the
foundation has awarded both the Templeton Prize and numerous grants to
persons of widely varied religious backgrounds, having provided extensive
funding of Islamic scholarship, Buddhist research, and Jewish public
engagement. Wired magazine has noted that "the scientists who apply to
the foundation for support, though, are not required to state their religious
beliefs, or to have any". [69] In 2006, John Horgan, a 2005 Templeton-
Cambridge fellow then working as a freelance science journalist, wrote
in The Chronicle of Higher Education that he had enjoyed his fellowship,
but felt guilty that by taking money from the foundation, he had contributed
to the mingling of science with religion. [70] Horgan stated "misgivings about
the foundation's agenda of reconciling religion and science". He said that a
conference he attended favored scientists who "offered a perspective
clearly skewed in favor of religion and Christianity." [71] Horgan fears
recipients of large grants from the foundation sometimes write what the
foundation wants rather than what they believe. [71] Richard Dawkins, in his
2006 book The God Delusion, interprets Horgan as saying that
"Templeton's money corrupts science", and characterizes the prize as
going "usually to a scientist who is prepared to say something nice about
religion".[72] Donald Wiebe, scholar of religious studies at the University of
Toronto, similarly criticized the foundation in a 2009 article
entitled Religious Biases in Funding Religious Studies Research?.
According to him, the foundation supports Christian bias in the field of
religious studies, by deliberately imposing constraints to steer the results of
the research.[68]
Paul Davies, physicist and 1995 Templeton Prize laureate, gave a defense
of the foundation's role in the scientific community in the Times Higher
Education Supplement in March 2005.[73] In 2010, journalist Nathan
Schneider published a lengthy investigative article about the foundation,
entitled God, Science and Philanthropy, in The Nation. In the article, he
aired complaints about the foundation, but observed that many of its critics
and grantees alike failed to appreciate "the breadth of the foundation's
activities, much less the quixotic vision of its founder, John Templeton".
Schneider observed: "At worst, Templeton could be called heterodox and
naïve; at best, his was a mind more open than most, reflective of the most
inventive and combinatorial strains of American religious thought, eager to
radically reinterpret ancient wisdom and bring it up to speed with some
version from the present."[74] Though the foundation, in Schneider's view,
"has associated itself with political and religious forces that cause it to be
perceived as threatening the integrity of science and protecting the
religious status quo," these alliances meant the foundation "is also better
positioned than most to foster a conservatism—and a culture generally—
that holds the old habits of religions and business responsible to good
evidence, while helping scientists better speak to people's deepest
concerns".[74] In 2011, the science journal Nature took note of the ongoing
controversy among scientists over working with Templeton. [3] Jerry
Coyne, University of Chicago evolutionary biologist, sees a fundamental
impossibility in attempting to reconcile faith with science. [75] Coyne
told Nature writer Mitchell Waldrop that the foundation's purpose is to
eliminate the wall between religion and science, and to use science's
prestige to validate religion. Other scientists, including Foundation grantees
like University of Chicago psychologist John Cacioppo and Anthony
Aguirre, a University of California—Santa Cruz astrophysicist,
told Nature that they have never felt pressured by Templeton to spin their
research toward religion-friendly conclusions. [3]