Rowan Williams: A Question of Faith

The night before last, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his first Holy week lecture, at Westminster Abbey, said something controversial. Well, it was partly successful, in that now I, previously mostly ignorant about him, now know something else about him other than whether or not he has the same name as a woman I once had coffee with.

Unfortunately, I don't know he was saying, because the text isn't online. (If you want essay on controversy all over the internet from famous real life person, you could read Barack Obama on his pastor saying "God damn America" in the context of racism.)

However, he was quoted in a Times article, and then all over lots of blogs, as saying "Neo Darwinism and Creationist science deserve each other." I saw it on Rob's journal here

I don't want to argue about exactly what he said about creationism, but he was anti, which has my support.

However, he said "Neo Darwinism is a questionable theology pretending to be science," and is "a pseudo science"[1] and "most problematic" to theology.

Neo-Darwinism refers to the modern accepted theory of evolution. But the article says "Neo Darwinism, a theory supported by Atheist Professor Richard Dawkins" and "Neo Darwinists argue that culture is subject to evolutionary forces which will eventually weed out religion."

I very strongly suspect that that definition in the article, unsupported by any convenient definitions I could find, is a description of what the speech said or implied it meant by the term.

However, many atheist and other blogs, in addition to some good analysis, saw this quote and either were pleased that he admitted that religion (or CoE religion, or theology) had problems, or lambasted him for a complete misunderstanding.

Someone made the good point that it sounded like he was positioning himself as a middle ground between creationism and "Neo-Darwinism". But it's not clear what he actually said about the other extreme.

I get the impression that he was giving the impression that Neo-Darwinism refers to "culture is subject to evolutionary forces", or includes that idea. But I don't know if the speech is talking about that *only*, or has or is trying to give the impression that the extreme of believing in evolution is thinking that "culture is subject to evolutionary forces which will eventually weed out religion", or if he meant something else entirely.

"culture is subject to evolutionary forces which will eventually weed out religion" sounds plausible as an extreme of pro-atheist pro-evolution thought, but it isn't. This theory just sounds plausible because it has evolution in it, as if scientists were overly fond of the idea they might see it where it wasn't. Anti-religion people, eg. Dawkins, (it sounds like the AoC thinks he represents the extreme), may hope for and aim for the weeding out of religion, which I think influenced this confusion. But believing evolution by natural selection has lots of evidence that it happened for life, and hoping everyone will believe that, doesn't mean that you think culture evolves in the same way nor do I know anyone saying it does (Am I wrong?).

Nor do I know whether, if the ideas were confused, if they were confused by the times journalist, or the AoC. Nor whether "culture is subject to evolutionary forces which will eventually weed out religion" as a separate false claim, or seen as part of belief in the theory of evolution. Nor whether he was confused himself, unclear, misquoted, or deliberate. But I remember the last furore, you had to read the transcript to find out.

Does anyone know in any more detail what he really did say? AFAIK the text of the speech will be online, but isn't yet.

After all, if there were a showdown between Dawkins atheists and creationists, I'd want to be on the same side as Dawkins rather than as creationists, but I'd also want to be on the same side as CoE, Buddhists, and Jews... When was the last Jewish massacre, a couple of thousand years ago? Even if you count double points for the son of God, two is an amazingly low score. I deleted this paragraph as it didn't quite fit, and was potentially offensive, but I liked the idea enough I couldn't bear to remove it completely. It doesn't represent my views (and is notably false in some places) but rather what was funniest to write, I'm afraid.

[1] How would you phrase that sentence? I want to show the first quote is continuous and lead into the the second with the same "Neo-darwinism is" as the first, but there's no more context for the second. I could say "Noun" "is X" and "...Y" using the consecutive quotes to show continuous quotation in the first, and ellipsis to show elided quotation in the second. I could say Noun is "X" and "Y", but it gives the idea he gave them equal weight, which may not be true.

(no subject)

Sorry for asking controversial things last thing at night when I'm half-asleep. I don't have time to go on now (and temporarily froze one thread, I'm afraid), but several people helped out a lot, thank you.

Follow up: Rowan Williams on Neo-Darwinism

OK, I've thought about this for a long time, and I've finally thought of something interesting.

Prologue (just because)

Descartes: I have a theory.
Descartes: That it's a demon¹
Descartes: A dancing demon.
Me: No, something isn't right there.
Darwin: I have a theory.
Darwin: More complex organisms evolved from simpler ones.
Me: Hold on. That's not right either. Rewind.
Lamarck: I have a theory.
Lamark: More complex organisms evolved from simpler ones.
Me: Yes.
Lamarck: Spontaneous generation and inheritance of acquired characteristics are a good model of how this could happen.
Me: Agreed so far.
Lamarck: Which is what actually happens.
Me: No. Lets stop you there, and remember your great and good contributions to evolution, not the fact like all good theories, it was later improved upon.
Idiots: No, he was right, don't you see! LAM-ARC-KISM!
Me: Moving right along.
Darwin: Evolution by natural selection.
Idiots: VILLIFY! EVIL! WE AM NOT A MONKEY!²
Many people: What? That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever... hold on, it does kind of explain a lot, doesn't it?

Thesis

If everyone believes Darwin's theory (or a more modern version thereof), they can be described as Darwinist (although that's a little misleading). But if you are Darwinist, what does it mean to be more Darwinist or very Darwinist?

It sounds meaningless but I think most people have an intuitive idea of what it would mean, and that's someone who places more importance on the idea. So if I think women should have equal rights with men I'm feminist, but if I think that's one of the largest injustices of the society and fighting it one of my personal highest priorities, then I might (ambiguously) be described as "more" feminist.

An atheist might be someone who says there is no God. You might describe as "very" atheist someone for whom saying there is no God is something they think about a lot, find it important to persuade other people of, is desirable.

According to the encyclopaedia, "Neo-Darwinism" means the current theory of evolution, ie. what Darwin said with the refinements made since. But since just about all people involved believe that, the term is ripe to be adopted to refer to people who place disproportionate importance on it.

People, both militant atheists who are vociferous about evolution to combat creationism, and people who are decrying militant atheism, sometimes give the impression militant atheism is an extreme of atheism or Darwinism. I don't know who's at fault. Yrieithydd described people having this impression of Dawkins; Miriam linked to an essay which used this sort of language).

But I guess this is what AoC is referring to when he describes things as Neo-Darwinist. That "pseudo-science" means not "evolution" but "people treating evolution as a panacea, using it as a reason not to believe religion, and developing over-the-top theories that societies also evolve, and that religion will be and should be eventually weeded out, and that that's a scientific fact."

However, it's much too late at night to decide if that's at all true -- certainly some militant atheists go too far, but whether that's at all endemic of anything. And anyway, this is all about one sentence, I'll parse it more fully when I know the surrounding.

(Many thanks to the comments of miriam, yrieithydd, robhu, woodpijn, etc. who may have actually said things a lot clearer than I did.)

[1] Reference to (a) the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode Once More with Feeling and (b) Descarte's cartesian demon thought experiment.
[2] Apologies, not that disbelieving Darwin is inherently wrong, but that many people do it for stupid reasons.