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Templeton Prize goes to panentheistic Darwinist15 March 2001 The Templeton Foundation awards the Templeton Prize to those who are working toward ‘progress in religion’, i.e. furthering the ‘study and worship of God.’ Its founder, Sir John Marks Templeton, was born in Tennessee in 1912, became a highly successful pioneer of global investing, and is now a British citizen living in Nassau, the Bahamas. The Templeton Prize intentionally has a higher dollar value than the Nobel Prize. Yet many of its recipients are hardly complimentary to historic Christianity in their conclusions. Indeed, it can be seen that their views are actually detrimental to the very foundation upon which Christianity is built—the Bible. For example, the 1999 recipient of the Templeton award, Ian Barbour, had this to say, which undermines the Biblical view on the origin of death and suffering (see Q&A: Genesis; The Curse):
The year 2000 recipient, Freeman Dyson, a self-professed agnostic, believes that if ‘God’ exists, he should be labeled a ‘sloppy manufacturer’, very similar to a claim by Carl Sagan. Those who believe that God created either by evolution (theistic evolution) or by successive acts over millions of years (progressive creation) have no good answer, but Biblical Creation teaches that imperfections are the result of the Fall. See The god of an old earth. Dyson also claims that ‘God’ must be impotent, as he has done nothing to stop famine, disease and suffering. This undermines the doctrine of an all-powerful, all-loving Creator God (see Religion award goes to agnostic!). Of course, Dyson is using this invalid argument: if God has not stopped these evils, then he cannot stop them. Rather, the Bible makes it clear that God can stop them, and will stop them in the future, in the new heavens and the new Earth, which will parallel the pre-Fall paradise in Eden with no more death, tears or pain (Rev. 21:4) — see Q&A: Creation—Why it matters. But currently they are the result of God's curse on creation because of Adam's sin (Gen. 3:17–19, Rom. 8:20–22). And now the year 2001 recipient, Arthur Peacocke, operates under a mistaken belief that the Bible states all things were created in their present form. He reacts against the heresy of deism, the belief that God wound up the universe in the beginning but lets it run without intervention. But instead of correcting deism with Biblical truth, he is so enamoured by fallible 'science' that he continues to destroy the foundations of historic Christianity by supporting the view of theistic evolution. He has said, ‘The processes revealed by the sciences, especially evolutionary biology, are in themselves God acting as creator.’2 This fails on two main grounds:
This accommodation to ‘science', he admits, is likely to cause the ‘review of traditional Christian doctrines of an historical Fall and of sin as the explanation of the existence of death …’.3 Because Peacocke refuses to accept the Biblical account of origins as authoritative, he thinks that, 'We‘re the first generation that has really had any reliable knowledge of the development of the cosmos and of human life and its emergence on this planet.’4 In his book, God and the New Biology, Peacocke makes it clear that his view of ‘god’ has nothing to do with the Bible. Rather, he holds to the heresy of panentheism, i.e. everything is in God (from the Greek pan = all, en = in, theos = God), which is distinct from pantheism, which means everything is God and hence God is everything. A corollary to panentheism is that God evolves as the universe evolves. In Peacocke’s own words:
Panentheism opposes Biblical Christian theism which states that the Creator and creation are distinct (Gen. 1, John 1:1–3), and that the essence of idolatry is giving worship to created things instead of the creator (Ex. 20:4–6, Rom. 1:23,25). In 1985, Peacocke founded the Society of Ordained Scientists, which now has 79 members, and is an ecumenical organisation supposedly bridging the Anglican Church and science. But Peacocke's own writings show that it is really about subjugating Christianity to naturalism. Alas, Peacocke's aberrant theology is not a single isolated instance among theistic evolutionary leaders; rather, trying to reconcile evolution with Christianity often leads to view of ‘God’ contrary to His revelation in Scripture. For example, panentheism is also held by Robert Russell, the keynote speaker at a 1997 conference organized by the Australian theistic evolutionary organisation, ISCAST (which amazingly claims to be evangelical) — see The Skeptics and their ‘Churchian’ Allies. If only these men would learn to accept that plain teaching of Scripture, rather than compromising with a secular, humanistic worldview, how much more ‘progress’ would there be in spreading the true message of Christianity? We continue to encourage parents to use such materials as A is for Adam, Creation magazine, and The Creation Answers Book to teach their children a proper, Biblical worldview, namely:
It is in this way, that we will see a true ‘progress’ in spreading the message concerning the authority of God’s Word and the Creator who became our Redeemer. Related Products
The Creation Answers Book Answers over 60 of the most-asked questions in 20 categories: Does God exist? Six days? Really? What about gap theories? What about carbon-14 dating? How can we see distant starlight in a young universe? What about arguments for evolution? How did bad things come about? Who was Cains wife? Were the sons of God and/or the nephilim extra-terrestrials? Was the Flood global? What about continental drift? What about all that water? How did all the animals fit on the Ark? How did fresh/saltwater fish survive? Where are all the human fossils? How could animals get to places like Australia? Were there really ice ages? How did the different races arise? What about dinosaurs? What can I do? References
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