---
title: "John Templeton Foundation"
chunk: 4/4
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Templeton_Foundation"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:31:44.745375+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Intelligent design ===
A 2007 article in the Los Angeles Times described the foundation as having "drawn criticism for its early support of intelligent design". Charles L. Harper Jr., a former senior vice president of the foundation, told BusinessWeek in 2005 that the foundation had become one of the "principal critics" of the intelligent design movement and funded projects that challenged that movement. Harper Jr. told The New York Times the same year: "From the point of view of rigor and intellectual seriousness, the intelligent design people don't come out very well in our world of scientific review".
Some organizations funded by the foundation in the 1990s gave book-writing grants to Guillermo Gonzalez and to William Dembski, proponents of intelligent design who later joined the Discovery Institute. The foundation also gave money directly to the Discovery Institute which in turn passed it through to Baylor University, which used the funds to support Dembski's salary at its short-lived Michael Polanyi Center. The foundation funded projects by Bruce L. Gordon, associate director of the center, after the center was dissolved. Some media outlets described the foundation as a supporter of intelligent design during the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District litigation in the mid-2000s, a charge which the foundation denied. The foundation "explicitly warns intelligent-design researchers not to bother submitting proposals: they will not be considered."
In March 2009, the Discovery Institute accused the foundation of blocking its involvement in Biological Evolution: Facts and Theories, a Vatican-backed, Templeton-funded conference in Rome. On the lack of involvement of any speakers supporting intelligent design, the conference director Rev. Marc Leclerc said, "We think that it's not a scientific perspective, nor a theological or philosophical one ... This makes a dialogue difficult, maybe impossible". In 2011, The Times stated that the Templeton Prize is "explicitly critical of such pseudoscientific gibberish as intelligent design".

=== Conservatism ===
A number of journalists have highlighted connections with conservative causes. A 1997 article in Slate written by David Plotz said the foundation had given a significant amount of financial support to groups, causes and individuals considered conservative, including gifts to Gertrude Himmelfarb, Milton Friedman, Walter E. Williams, Julian Lincoln Simon and Mary Lefkowitz, and called John Templeton Jr. a "sugar daddy" for such thinkers. The foundation also has a history of supporting the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank and The Heritage Foundation conservative think-tank, as well as projects at major research centers and universities such as Hernando de Soto's Instituto Libertad Y Democracia and the X Prize Foundation, which is described as "a nonprofit organization that designs and manages public competitions intended to encourage technological development that could benefit humanity".
In a 2007 article in The Nation Barbara Ehrenreich drew attention to the foundation's former president John M. Templeton Jr. funding of the conservative group Freedom's Watch, and referred to the foundation as a "right-wing venture". Pamela Thompson, former Vice President of Communications of the foundation, replied that "the Foundation is, and always has been, run in accordance with the wishes of Sir John Templeton Sr, who laid very strict criteria for its mission and approach", that it is "a non-political entity with no religious bias" and it "is totally independent of any other organisation and therefore neither endorses, nor contributes to political candidates, campaigns, or movements of any kind".

== Templeton Press ==
The foundation also funds an affiliated publisher, Templeton Press, which from 2004 to 2010 published the periodical In Character: A Journal of Everyday Virtues. From 2000 to 2003 it published Research news & opportunities in science and theology, in which Bruce L. Gordon published a piece on the state of "design theory" in the aftermath of the Michael Polanyi Center affair. Templeton Press has a partnership with the Yale University Press, producing books on character and Foundational Questions in Science.

== References ==

== External links ==
Official website