The Templeton Award was granted to Professor Michael Heller of Poland, a cosmologist-Catholic priest on Wednesday, according to the New York Times.

One of Heller's key ideas revolves around the following, taken from an essay by Stanislaw Wszolek:

What follows from the above considerations is a postulate that not only the philosophy of nature but all branches of philosophy including the philosophy of man should be developed on the basis of thorough knowledge of natural sciences.  For example, "a consideration of the sense of human life and other existential problems of man without placing these considerations in the convext of the unity of man and the Universe deprives them of concreteness and can easily lead to fictitious formulations and pseudo-explanations.

Professor Michael Heller urges the union of science and religion, while rejecting the so-called "God of the gaps" philosophy, which grants God as an explanation for all phenomena undefined by known science.

-Edward Merrin