Richest grant goes to cosmologist who says religion best explains laws of universe
Cambridge University cosmologist and mathematician John Barrow was awarded $1.6-million yesterday to do research into whether God is sitting at the control panel behind the Theory of Everything about the universe. He won the 2006 Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities, the world's richest individual scholarly research grant. Its initiator, mutual-fund investor Sir John Templeton, specified that it be worth more than the Nobel Prize (which is worth about $1.5-million) so the media would take it seriously.
Dr. Barrow, 53, author of 17 books and one play (about infinity), believes that monotheistic religious thought about God and creation offers a better explanation than anything else, including most science, of how the universe works.He is one of the leading proponents of the anthropic principle of the universe, the dials-set-right idea -- the notion that the universe is, in Goldilocks's words, "just right" for life on Earth. Because if it were a little bigger or smaller, a little colder or warmer, a little younger or older, then life wouldn't exist.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060316.wxtheory16/BNStory/International/home