To return to Lord Sacks: his book, according to Andrew Marr ”“ not an oracle, admittedly, but still a good barometer of liberal taste ”“ is “the most persuasive argument for religious belief I have ever read.” Sacks argues, not that Dawkins is the “latest pub bore” but that questions of religion and science concern different hemispheres of the brain: science (the left hemisphere) “takes things apart to see how they work”; religion (the right hemisphere) “puts things together to see what they mean”; both activities are vital.
Come to think of it, it is a great pity that the Chief Rabbi can’t, for obvious reasons, apply for the job of being the next Archbishop of Canterbury: he is an intellectual ”“ but with a gift for clear exposition; he believes in God, marriage, the family; he is conciliatory rather than divisive; and from his own religious and historical perspective he sees the marginalisation of faith for what it is.
Well, here is William Oddie in the Catholic Herald:
[blockquote]Dr Williams’s attack on Lord Carey is from the point of view of the Christian cause a more serious matter. But before saying anything about it, I cannot forbear from all comment on his foray into political ethics. He begins with the usual necessary reservations about the authority of theologians to pronounce on matters involving technical political judgments: then he immediately makes a fool of himself by uttering precisely such a pronouncement under the guise of an ethical “awkward questionâ€. “No theologian has an automatic skill in economics,†he says (tick here); “but there is,†he continues, “an ethical perspective here, plainly rooted in theology, that obliges us to question the nostrums of recent decades, and above all persistently to ask the awkward question of what we want growth for, what model of well-being we actually assume in our economics.â€
Well, I will tell him what we want growth for: we want growth, archbishop, to pay off our debts and, more urgently and I would have thought with the most ethically imperative urgency, so that new jobs may emerge in our economy, and the millions now enduring the soul-destroying misery of unemployment may be enabled to emerge from their present state of impotent futility: a “model of well-being†they long to attain one day and which they cannot attain without growth in the economy. Dr Williams has often been accused of Left-wing political leanings; but this is surely to credit his political views with a rationality and a coherence they do not have; on this showing, they are indistinguishable in their ignorance and unreality (as well as in their content) from those of the green party.[/blockquote]
and a blast from the past:
[blockquote]A Synod member from London, Alison Ruoff, said: “He is a disaster for the Church of England. He vacillates, he is a weak leader and he does not stand up for the Church. I would like to see him resign and go back to academia.”
Others have been more sympathetic. The Dean of Liverpool Cathedral, the Very Reverend Justin Welby, told the Newsnight programme he considered Dr Williams one of Britain’s “great thinkers”.[/blockquote]
Mrs Ruoff got her wish; I wonder what we will get?