Re: online religion test - do you believe in God?

On Wed, 05 Jul 2006 22:27:50 -0700, coaster wrote:
Mitchell Coffey wrote:
Adam wrote:
Hi. I am a psychology professor doing research on people's religious
beliefs. I have developed a study to examine people's religious
beliefs in which the programs asks you to classify objects as real or
imaginary. At the end of the test, the study gives you feedback about
your performance which may give you some ideas about your conscious or
unconscious religious beliefs. It takes about 10 minutes and you can
win an Ipod nano for participating. If you want to help with the
study by participating, the study is described and linked from
http://www.public.asu.edu/~acohen4/cohenstudy.htm I would like to
include people from a variety of religious and spiritual backgrounds.
I thought this group given the topic might be interested in the
research and have interesting perspectives.

Because the study will time your responses, it will ask you to
download a small program to run the study. If you want to check on
the safety of this, you can go to millisecond.com, which is the
company that wrote the software. You can also google me to make sure
I am actually a psychology researcher (add "psychology" or "religon"
to googling my name, or else you get the musician Adam Cohen). My ASU
email address is adamco...@xxxxxxx if you want to get in touch with
me.

Thank you. I appreciate your attention. Adam Cohen, Department of
psychology, Arizona State University

This is one of those tests based on the claim that subconcious processes
can be measured by the speed with which one responds to a word or phrase
before punching a particular key on ones keyboard. Beyond that dubious
methodology, Dr. Cohen's understanding of other people's religious
beliefs is not very thoughtful.

The funding for this study comes from the Templeton Foundation, though
Dr. Cohen never tells you that.

Mitchell Coffey

So what you're saying is that the possibility of winning an iPod Nano is
not enough to distract you from the obvious conflict of interest regarding
Cohen's funding from a council of mostly born-again Christians who
evangelize by means of awarding educational grants and prizes to misguided
professors who do their best to blur the line between naturalism and
spiritualism?


Perhaps we are operating with different definitions of "born-again
Christian", but looking over the biographies of the members of the
Board of Advisors and Board of Directors of the Templeton Foundation,
I don't see a lot of people whom I would label that way. Of the following
people, which ones do you count as born-again Christians?
Board of Advisors:
( http://www.templeton.org/about_the_foundation/advisors.asp )

Ian G. Barbour, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus in Physics and Religion at Carleton College in
Northfield, Minnesota.

Dorothy F. Chappell, Ph.D.
Dean of Natural and Social Sciences at Wheaton College.(...)Dr. Chappell
has received several National Science Foundation grants, as well as a
Fulbright Scholar grant for research at Massey University in New Zealand
and has published on the cell biology and phylogeny of green algae and
some bioethical issues.

Praveen Chaudhari, Sc.D.
Director of the Brookhaven National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of
Energy. Dr. Chaudhari spent 36 years at IBM, as a scientist and senior
manager of research, including vice-president for science.

Rev. Sarah Coakley, Ph.D.
Mallinckrodt Professor of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School in
Cambridge, Massachusetts.(...)Dr. Coakley is an ordained priest of the
Church of England and assists in parishes in Waban, MA, and in Littlemore,
Oxford, U.K.

Ronald Cole-Turner, M.Div., Ph.D.
H. Parker Sharp Professor of Theology and Ethics at Pittsburgh Theological
Seminary, a position that relates theology to developments in science and
technology.(...)He serves on the academic board of the Metanexus Institute
and the editorial board of Science and Theology News.

Rev. George V. Coyne, S.J., Ph.D.
Director of the Vatican Observatory (Specola Vaticana), headquartered at
Castel Gandolfo in Rome, Italy, and director of a research branch at the
University of Arizona.

William Damon, Ph.D.
Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Director of the Stanford Center
on Adolescence, and Professor of Education at Stanford University.

Paul Dietrich, J.D.
Chairman and CEO of Foxhall Capital Management, Inc., Alexandria,
Virginia, which currently manages investments for private investors, union
pension funds, mutual funds and large private institutions throughout the
United States.

Freeman J. Dyson
Now retired, having been for most of his life Professor of Physics at the
Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Lindon J. Eaves, Ph.D., DS.c.
Distinguished Professor of Human Genetics Psychiatry at the Virginia
Commonwealth University School of Medicine. He directs the Virginia
Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics. Dr. Eaves is also a
priest of the Episcopal Church.

Robert A. Emmons, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Davis.

Gerald Gabrielse, Ph.D
Leverett Professor of Physics at Harvard University, Leader of the CERN
ATRAP Collaboration that makes and studies cold antihydrogen atoms.

Owen Gingerich, Ph.D.
See Board of Trustees

Kenneth Seeman Giniger
President of The K.S. Giniger Company, which has published a number of Sir
John Templeton's books. Mr. Giniger is co-editor with Sir John of
Spiritual Evolution and the author of several other books. He is also
chairman emeritus of the National Bible Association and an officer of the
Church Club of New York.

Mary Ann Glendon, J.D.
Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University.(...)In 1994, she was
appointed by Pope John Paul II to the newly created Pontifical Academy of
Social Sciences and in 2004, he appointed her to its presidency.

William Grassie, Ph.D.
Founder and Executive Director of Metanexus Institute.

Peter Gruber
President and Principal of Globalvest Management Company, L.P., a
U.S.-based and SEC-registered investment advisor.(...)In 1993, Mr. Gruber
founded the Peter Gruber Foundation and in 2000, he began a program that
awards annual international prizes. Prizes are currently offered in the
fields of cosmology, genetics, neuroscience, justice, and women's rights.

John F. Haught, Ph.D.
Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Theology at
Georgetown University. He received his Ph.D. at Catholic University in
1970.

William B. Hurlbut, M.D.
Physician and Consulting Professor in the Neuroscience Institute at
Stanford.

Deborah C. Irby
Member of the Board of Regents at Harris-Manchester College at Oxford
University in Oxford, England.

Philip Jenkins, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies at Penn State
University.

Harold G. Koenig, M.D.
See Board of Trustees

Richard M. Lerner, Ph.D.
Bergstrom Chair in Applied Developmental Science and Director of the
Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development in the Eliot-Pearson
Department of Child Development, Tufts University.

Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, Ph.D.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Roosevelt Group, a leading
strategic management and thought leadership company.

Sanford N. McDonnell
Former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of McDonnell Douglas
Corporation, one of America's foremost aerospace companies, which is now
part of The Boeing Company.

Keith G. Meador, M.D., Th,M., MPH.
Professor of the Practice of Pastoral Theology and Medicine at Duke
Divinity School and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral
Sciences at Duke University Medical Center.

Donald E. Miller, Ph.D.
Firestone Professor of Religion at the University of Southern California
where he is the Executive Director of the Center for Religion and Civic
Culture as well as Director of the School of Religion.(...)He is the
author or editor of seven books and is currently the president
of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion

Rev. Glenn R. Mosley, Ph.D., D.Min.
See Board of Trustees

Nancey Murphy, Ph.D., Th.D.
Professor of Christian Philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary,
Pasadena, California.

David G. Myers, Ph.D.
See Board of Trustees

Priyamvada Natarajan, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Astrophysics at Yale University.

Martin A. Nowak, Ph.D.
Professor of Mathematics and Biology at Harvard University and Director of
the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics.

Robert Pollack, Ph.D.
Professor of Biological Sciences, Lecturer in Psychiatry at the Center for
Psychoanalytic Training and Research, Director of the Center for the Study
of Science and Religion at Columbia University, and Adjunct Professor of
Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary.

Up to here I've just listed every name, but this grows tedious. I will
just select a few more and then go on to the Board of Trustees:

Charles H. Townes, Ph.D.
Professor in the Graduate School at the University of California,
Berkeley, and the 1964 Nobel Prize Recipient in Physics.

Donald G. York, Ph.D.
Horace B. Horton Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University
of Chicago.

Marco Bersanelli, Ph.D.
Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Milan.

Khalil Chamcham, Ph.D., D.Phil.
Professor at the University Hassan II-Ain Chock in Casablanca, Morocco. He
holds a French doctorate in nuclear physics from University Claude
Bernard, Lyon, France, and a D.Phil. in astrophysics from Sussex
University, United Kingdom. He is currently carrying out his research in
astrophysics and theology at Oxford University.

Simon Conway Morris, Ph.D.
Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiolgy at the University of Cambridge. Dr.
Conway Morris is a leading expert in the early evolution of animals and
the Cambrian "explosion", and has published across a wide range of
paleontology.

Noah J. Efron, Ph.D.
President of the Israel Society for History and Philosophy of Science, and
chairman of the Graduate Program for the History & Philosophy of Science
at Bar Ilan University, where he specializes in Jewish attitudes towards
nature and science.

George F.R. Ellis, Ph.D.
Visiting Lecturer and Professor in Cosmology, Physics and Astronomy across
the globe, including South Africa, England, Germany, Canada, Italy and the
United States.

Rev. John C. Polkinghorne, KBE, FRS
Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow (and former President) of Queens'
College, Cambridge.

Walter E. Thirring, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus, Department for Theoretical Physics, University of
Vienna.

Archbishop Joseph M. Zycinski, Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic University of Lublin, Poland,
where he is chair of the relationship between science and religion,
Archbishop of Lublin, and Grand Chancellor of the Catholic University of
Lublin.

Some from the Board of Trustees (it's a shorter list):
( http://www.templeton.org/about_the_foundation/trustees.asp )

Paul C. Davies, Ph.D.
Theoretical physicist and cosmologist, who holds the post of Professor of
Natural Philosophy in the Australian Centre for Astrobiology at Macquarie
University, Sydney.

Owen Gingerich, Ph.D.
Professor of Astronomy and the History of Science Emeritus at Harvard
University and a Senior Astronomer Emeritus at the Smithsonian
Astrophysical Observatory.

Harold G. Koenig, M.D.
Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Associate Professor of
Medicine at Duke University Medical Center.

Rev. Glenn R. Mosley, Ph.D., D.Min.
President-CEO Emeritus of the Association of Unity Churches International.

David G. Myers, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology at Hope College, Michigan.

John W. Schott, M.D.
Serves on the faculty at Harvard Medical School.

Jennifer Templeton Simpson
Graduate of Boston University with a B.A. in English Literature. She
received a master's degree from Columbia University in social work with
a concentration on international social welfare policy.

F. Russell Stannard, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of Physics at Open University and a graduate of
University College, London, where he took first-class honors in physics
followed by a Ph.D. in cosmic ray physics in 1956.

Again, this is getting tedious, but I have to include the founder:

Sir John Templeton
As a pioneer in both financial investments and spiritual endeavors, John
Marks Templeton has spent a lifetime encouraging open-mindedness.(...)
During a career that included directorships on banks, businesses, and
insurance companies, he was a trustee on the board of Princeton
Theological Seminary, the largest Presbyterian seminary, for 42 years and
served as its chairman for 12 years.

Hardly looks like a bunch of Bible-thumpers to me. I left some out,
so go check the Web site and look at the others if you think I'm being
tendentious, but I don't see any born-again evangelicals here.

I'm afraid I don't see your objection, Mitch. What do you have against
iPod Nanos?

I suppose I shouldn't complain too much, since the fewer the people who
take the test, the better are my chances to win the iPod, but I am
surprised and disappointed by the volume of snarky hostility this guy's
invitation has generated here, and particularly by the number of usually
rational people who are willing to offer opinions on his experimental
design and methodology without actually looking at his experiment.

John

.

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