c. 1999 Religion News Service
NEW YORK _ Theologian and physicist Dr. Ian G. Barbour, who is credited with breaking age-old barriers between religion and science, Wednesday was awarded the $1.2 million Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.
Barbour, 75, an emeritus professor of religion and physics at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., was cited for pioneering a framework for discussing scientific issues with significant moral and ethical implications. Those issues include genetic engineering, cloning, the impact of technology on the environment and the development of artificial intelligence.
His landmark book”Issues in Science and Religion”(Prentice-Hall, 1965) is regarded as having launched a new interdisciplinary field and its concepts have influenced a generation of scientists, religious scholars, church leaders and lay people.”Ian Barbour is, quite literally, a founder of the emerging field of science and religion, contributing not only encyclopedic understanding and fair, insightful scholarship but also a firm conviction in the importance of religious belief within contemporary society,”guest editor Ernest L. Simmons wrote in a special 1996 issue of Zygon, the journal of religion and science, devoted to Barbour’s work.”He is indeed the epitome of a modern rarity: a scholar with both breadth and depth of comprehension and insight,”Simmons added.
Throughout his 50-year academic career, Barbour has written or edited a dozen books and 50 articles including the two-volume Gifford Lectures,”Religion in an Age of Science”(1990) and”Ethics in an Age of Technology”(1993), which received the 1993 book award of the American Academy of Religion.
Barbour decades ago was a lone voice in academia, promoting the idea that the most profound questions about the origins of humankind and the creation of the universe could be explored by drawing on the wisdom of both the scientific and religious communities.”Forty years ago, few scientists had even a passing tolerance for religion and few theologians had any interest in science. More than anyone else, Dr. Barbour has changed all that,”said Robert Russell, executive director of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, which is affiliated with the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif.
Today there are scores of college and graduate-level programs that bring together both disciplines, said Russell, whose 18-year-old center has 700 members and hosts dozens of conferences and public forums on topics in science and religion each year.
The Templeton Prize, named for its founder, global financier John Templeton, is funded in such a way that it is always larger than the Noble Prizes. Templeton created the award to honor those who helped advance the world’s understanding of God and spirituality because he felt the Noble Prize overlooked spirituality as a human discipline.
Three other scientists _ the astrophysicists Paul Davies and Stanley L. Jaki and physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker _ have won the prize since its creation in 1973. But Barbour is the first winner who has dedicated his career to integrating scientific and religious ideas.
Among the most well-known recipients of the Templeton Prize are Mother Teresa (1973), the Rev. Billy Graham (1982), and Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (1983).
British businessman Sir Sigmund Sternberg won the prize last year for his lifelong efforts to resolve interreligious conflicts around the globe.
Born in what is now Beijing to a Scottish Presbyterian father and an American Episcopalian mother _ both professors at Yenching University _ Barbour was raised in the United States and London. He described his upbringing in a home where”religious values were treasured but in an ecumenical way. “My father was a geologist, a committed Christian and working scientist _ but they were separate domains,”Barbour said.”Later I would find out I wanted to see how they tied together.” After receiving an undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College and an M.A. in physics from Duke University, Barbour enrolled in the doctoral program in physics at the University of Chicago where he was a teaching assistant to world-renowned physicist Enrico Fermi during the heyday of nuclear research.”It was the beginning of ethical concerns,”he said.”I didn’t work on the A-bomb, but others around me did and there was a debate about whether to work on the H-bomb. It was no longer just a scientific question but a political and ethical one.” Two years after being appointed a professor of physics at Kalamazoo College, Barbour enrolled in Yale Divinity School where he received a Master of Divinity degree in 1956.
While Barbour says the debate raging at the University of Chicago didn’t directly influence what was a personal decision to study theology, it raised issues that he realized needed attention.”As scientists we assumed that what we did contributed to world knowledge and knowledge contributed to human welfare,”he said.”We didn’t worry about how it was used.” In 1955 he went to Carleton College as a professor of both religion and physics, founding the school’s program in Science, Technology and Public Policy in 1972.
Barbour said he feels scientists and theologians have a great deal to learn from each other, especially at a time when scientific frontiers are being broken at a lightning pace and new ethical issues raised every day.”There needs to be more openness on both sides because neither community has the whole truth,”he said.”Theologians need to rethink their concepts of God. Scientists need more humility, they need to understand limitations of science. Why is there a universe at all? Science raises questions it can’t answer.” Barbour said he will donate $1 million of the award to the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences. The gift will establish an endowment and support scholarships for students and teachers who attend programs at the center.
DEA END WORDEN
