Spiritual Information

Spiritual Information is a collection of one hundred essays that explore a portion of the vast interdisciplinary approaches to the study of science and religion. Individually and together, the essays show how the study of ourselves, our planet, and the universe helps us understand our place as spiritual beings within God’s universe.

The book is a tribute to Sir John Templeton and his pioneering commitment toward new research that results in “one hundredfold more spiritual information than humankind has ever possessed before.” It begins with essays that reflect on Sir John’s principal domains of interest and expertise: free-enterprise based finance and accelerating spiritual progress.

Themes of the sections are:

• Science-Religion Dialogue
• Cosmology, Physics, and Astronomy
• Mathematics, Musicology, and Speculation
• Biological Evolution—the Human Being
• Social Evolution—the Human Mind and Heart
• Religion and Health
• The Nature of the Divine
• Theology and Philosophy
• Faith Traditions

“Sir John’s leadership has enabled us to edge ever closer to the frontier where knowledge meets wisdom at the threshold of ‘ultimate reality,’” notes the editor in the preface to this volume. As Spiritual Information presents an overview of how far we have come in the science and religion dialogue, it also opens windows to the vast possibilities for additional research and further advances in spiritual information.

Charles L. Harper Jr. is former executive director and senior vice president of the John Templeton Foundation. Dr. Harper was originally trained in engineering at Princeton University (BSE 1980) and obtained his DPhil in planetary science from the University of Oxford for a thesis on the nature of time in cosmology (1988). He also holds the Diploma in Theology from Oxford (1988) and a Certificate of Special Studies in Management and Administration from Harvard University (1997). Dr. Harper was a National Research Council fellow at the NASA Johnson Space Center from 1988 to 1991. He also was a research scientist in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. Dr. Harper is coeditor of Science & Ultimate Reality: Quantum Theory, Cosmology and Complexity (Cambridge University Press, 2004). His other scientific publications include more than fifty research articles in scientific journals, including Nature, Science, and the Astrophysical Journal.