In 1887, the Scottish jurist Adam Lord Gifford made the following provision in his last will and testament: 80,000 pounds to create a lectureship in the four cities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and St Andrews for promoting: “The Knowledge of God, the Infinite, the All, the First and Only Cause, the One and the Sole Substance, the Sole Being, the Sole Reality, and the Sole Existence, the Knowledge of His Nature and Attributes, the Knowledge of the Relations which men and the whole universe bear to Him, the Knowledge of the Nature and Foundation of Ethics or Morals, and of all Obligations and Duties thence arising.” Thus the Gifford Lectures were born. Since then the opportunity to deliver a Gifford lecture is considered a mark of the highest distinction in a philosopher’s career. Today the Gifford Lectures serve as the model and inspiration for the Templeton Research Lectures.


UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
Half a world away from Frankfurt, Andrew Newberg, M.D. and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania are also using the Templeton Research Lectures to explore the critical relationship between the brain and spirituality using a broad range of disciplines.

“We want to understand how people’s religious beliefs effect their mental health,” says Newberg. “The relationship of the human brain to our religious and spiritual experiences has been a passion of mine for over a decade.” By using “Mind, Religion and Ethics” as an intellectual umbrella, Newberg intends to draw together leading thinkers in cognitive neuroscience, bioethics and neuroethics.

“We will bring together psychologists, anthropologists, neuroscientists and religious studies scholars. The Templeton Research Lectures will push the whole
field forward.”

One of the central assumptions of the University of Pennsylvania group is that the true nature of human reality can never be known when approached only from a single perspective. While science provides important information about the mechanisms of the material world, it cannot always address some of our most important questions. Likewise, the perspectives of philosophy and religion are invaluable, but without science, also limited. “I think you need spirituality and science to answer the big questions,” says Newberg. “I’m not sure if its 50/50 or 90/10, but we need to get scholars together on both sides so we don’t get caught with simplistic ways of looking at things.”

The group’s goal is to create a body of work—research papers, collaborative programs, videotapes and educational tools—that galvanize the field by showing the importance of looking at spirituality from the perspective of the human brain. “We think this field is ready for a quantum leap,” says Newberg.

Professor of Psychiatry George Vaillant, M.D. of the Harvard Medical School, gave the first of the University of Pennsylvania’s Templeton Research Lectures. Vaillant suggested that the popular belief that places spirituality in the thinking part of the brain is wrong. Instead, the newer scientific findings suggest spirituality is located in our emotional brain. The title of his address was, “Is Spirituality Just Another Word for Positive Emotions?”
www.mindreligion.com

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In order to look at science and religion through the lens of creativity, Dr. Donald Miller and Dr. Firdaus Udwadia have drawn together an impressive array of scientists and scholars at the University of Southern California. “Theologians refer to revelations, scientists speak of insights, artists have epiphanies,” says Miller. “The language may be different, but the root is the same. Creativity is at the heart of all innovation.”

Even the pairing of the two men, who did not know one another before the Templeton project, speaks to the breadth of disciplines brought together. Miller is a Professor of Religion, Udwadia is a Professor of Civil Engineering. Their original lecture proposal was titled “Creativity: An Inquiry into the Nature of Innovation in Science, Art, Philosophy, and Religion.”

In its second year, the program has already brought together scientists, philosophers, psychologists and anthropologists to explore how creativity occurs, and what conditions are necessary to trigger original, dynamic ideas. Lectures have included renowned thinkers, including psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who gave a lecture titled, “Creativity and the Evolution of Culture,” mathematician George Ellis’s “Modes of Inquiry,” computer scientist Michael Arbib’s “Neuroscience and the Person: A Theology for Nonbelievers,” and philosopher Michael Ruse’s “Science and Religion as Modes of Inquiry.” Lectures are available for download as audio files at: creativity.usc.edu/seminars.html

The first year of the program took an historical approach to creativity. The second year will focus on the neurological basis of creativity, looking at “what is going on in the brain at the neurological and chemical level during moments of insight,” says Miller. The third year will consist of examining how universities might be restructured in order to facilitate creative insight.

“The bottom line reality”, says Miller, “is that universities are very Balkanized. A grant like this allows us to develop an entirely new network of friends and new conversations. We’re creating all sorts of new conversations among different disciplines.”

creativity.usc.edu