Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the Anglican spiritual leader, criticized popular atheist writers such as Richard Dawkins on Saturday, saying they misunderstand religious beliefs and unfairly portray faith in God as “an eccentric survival strategy.”
“There are specific areas of mismatch between what Richard Dawkins may write about and what religious people think they are doing,” Williams said in a speech at the Taliesin Arts Center in Swansea, a port city in southwestern England. “There are few things more annoying than people saying ‘I know what you mean.”‘
Williams described Dawkins, a British expert in evolutionary biology and author of the best-selling book “The God Delusion,” as a “wonderfully lively and attractive writer,” but criticized the way he has attacked belief in God as irrational.
“Don’t distract us from the real arguments by assuming that religion is an eccentric survival strategy or irrational form of explanation,” Williams said in a lecture to about 1,000 people in the fully packed auditorium or listening via speakers in nearby rooms.
Recently, militant, atheist writers such as Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the author of “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” have been making an all-out assault on religious faith and the influence of religion in the world among nonbelievers.
Williams said many Christians would not recognize their religion as it is described by such critics.
“When believers pick up Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, we may feel as we turn the pages: ‘This is not it. Whatever the religion being attacked here, it’s not actually what I believe in,”‘ the archbishop said.
Well done Dr Williams. Personally speaking I don’t believe in Atheism.
the man is given to considerable intellectual heft, there’s no doubt. which makes some of his comments/actions all the more mystifying….
When I read transcripts of Presiding Bishop Schori’s interviews and sermons I feel that ‘This is not it, it’s not actually what I believe in,” and when I read John Shelby Spong’s thesis I feel that ‘This is not it, it’s not actually what I believe in”.
Atheism’s position is connected to the problem of epistemic justification. In science, we justify a hypothesis by attempting to falsify it. Since religion and metaphysics defy falsification (theological/metaphysical hypotheses are not directly or empirically falsifiable), is it to be then concluded that religion/metaphysics is irrational?
If metaphysical hypotheses are by their nature irrational (due to their lack of falsifiability), then many important scientific assumptions are also irrational, such as natural selection and the truth content of a hypothesis.
The truth of metaphysical/religious hypotheses resides in their ‘indirect’ explanatory power. Natural selection is an indirect attempt to explain the process mechanism of evolution. Its explanatory power can be ‘criticized’ by disconnecting it from observational phenomena. This attempt at criticism is a rational process.
Religion can also be criticized for its lack of ability to explain certain ontological/existential elements in observed reality. This attempt at criticism is also a rational process.
Fortunately for the ABC, he has had much opportunity to observe that the HOB does not seem to be talking about the same thing as the Anglican Communion. Undoubtedly that prepared him for this lecture in only having to deal with atheists! Non-falsifiability seems to be a mode of ECUSA-speak and what is the defense of Darwinism compared to that!
Nonetheless, well done ABC, you have identified the talking point of contention and elucidated the significance of that point. And you even noted that what the atheists’ attack is not recognized by believers as what they believe. What a polite way to say, “you are wrong” and leave the conversation open.
Science requires rational explanations but scientific proof is dependent on consistent perception. If a reality is not perceived the same by everyone science may consider it disproved but if the proof is relative to human perception it is in reality just not readily perceived by our senses.
Christians believe in a truth, not readily perceived by our finite human faculties. This truth of Christ’s saving Grace has been revealed in Scripture and handed down by His Apostles to this day. We have been blessed with this Faith and we have a responsibility to pass His Word on to those who will follow us.
# 4: You can falsify Christianity – prove to your satisfaction that the Resurrection didn’t happen. Or agree that it did and work backward to …. the Nicene Creed.
Jack Spong, call your office.
This website engages directly with folk like Dawkins and Hitchens, arguing from science and philosophical apologetics:
http://www.bethinking.org.uk/
As a ‘philosopher’, Dawkins is woefully out of his depth.
Y’all may want to look at Abp. Rowan’s writings and conversations with Philip Pullman (I don’t have the references here, but you can find them readily via search engine). This is going to be critical for many of us this December, when Pullman’s [i]The Golden Compass[/i] hits your local cineplex. Pullman consciously wrote the [i]His Dark Materials[/i] trilogy as an atheist response to Tolkien, Lewis, and Rowling… and they are cracking good books, incidentally, which both the Archbishop and I recommend (with caution for the antiChristian elements, of course).
Abp. Rowan points out that Pullman’s viewpoint is actually more theistic in a classical sense that he himself thinks. Pullman’s error is to think that the Christian God is something that Christians themselves classically deny that He is, just the greatest of all beings, rather than the Ground and Source of all Being. As with Dawkins, Pullman is attacking a straw man that he himself has created. It is an interesting dialogue.
#6…If “Christians believe in a truth, not readily perceived by our finite human faculties” (whether directly or indirectly), how can they know that what is ‘revealed’ is indeed truth? There needs to be some criteria of criticisability.
#7…Proving the resurrection didn’t happen is impossible objectively. It was a one time event. Of course, this doesn’t prove that it did happen (argumentum ad ignorantiam). The physical resurrection is not a falsifiable event. If it is true (as an empirical event) then there needs to be a hypothesis that ties it indirectly to an ontological/existential phenomenon in such a way that it can only be explained by a physical resurrection. Failing this, we might opt for associating it indirectly to such an ontological/existential phenomenon as a symbol/myth that has good explanation power of a sociological phenomenon we observe in the world, but isn’t understood as a direct historical/empirical event.