Re: Templeton award

After I had found my motion sickness bag I put John templeton and freemason
into gooogle and got loads of extreme ultra-ultra-ultra fundamentalist sites
(making AIG seem very liberal) and of course T is charged as new age,
occultist, pantheist and everything else. Even Billy Graham got the muck
flung at him, not to mention the board of Christianity Today!!!!!!.

It is untrue to call Templeton awards as freemason. The whole extract is
simply based on weirdo-bigotry. Put a sample into google and it should show
up, even from your translation. If the writer is simply quoting and then
criticising then fine. If that is what the writer holds herself then it is
not worthy of any Christian publication.

Michael
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Ruest" <pruest@dplanet.ch>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2005 4:00 PM
Subject: Templeton award

> Dear ASA friends,
>
> may I request your help in a somewhat unusual way? I have to review a
> paper submitted for publication to a Christian journal. In connection
> with a Templeton award, the author comments on Templeton in a way I
> consider somewhat incompetent. I already told the editor. But I don't
> know Templeton personally. Can any one of you provide me with a few
> objective points about Templeton (not about 'XXX', the recipient of the
> Templeton award under discussion) to give the editor about the snip from
> the author's text I am giving below?
>
> The author wrote (my translation from German):
>
> "...XXX...was distinguished by a high-ranking freemasons' decoration,
> the Templeton award. XXX said 'When we encounter God face to face and
> receive Him into our life, we become a better Hindu, a better Muslim, a
> better Catholic, a better - whatever we are - one has to accept God in
> the way He exists in our ideas.' The Templeton award was founded
> (provided) in 1972 by John Marks Templeton, a new-age adherent and
> pantheist. According to his view, humanity must, in order to attain to a
> spiritualized life, draw from the basic teachings of all religions:
> Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc., as well as Christianity."
> Enlarging on Templeton's supposed philosophy, the author continues: "The
> West urgently needs great men who are able to invent new forms of
> religion. The next stage on the ladder of evolution leading man to
> divinity must needs be prepared by spiritual geniuses for the rest of
> humanity. Templeton provided his award as an encouragement for such
> progress in religion. Earlier award winners included an Indian Hindu
> guru, a highranking Japanese Buddhist, a general secretary of the
> Islamic World Congress, an evolutionist, the Dalai Lama, Mother Theresa,
> an atheist physicist, and others..."
>
> Thanks for any of your comments!
>
> Peter
>
> --
> Dr. Peter Ruest, CH-3148 Lanzenhaeusern, Switzerland
> <pruest@dplanet.ch> - Biochemistry - Creation and evolution
> "..the work which God created to evolve it" (Genesis 2:3)
>
>
>
>
Received on Sat Feb 5 15:27:16 2005