Rowan Williams: A Question of Faith

[jack]

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.

Comments

[hmmm-tea.livejournal.com]

It all depends on Williams' understanding of the term Neo-Darwinism, which it is conceivable is quite different to yours (especially as his background and beliefs appear to be quite different to yours).

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Err, no it definitely doesn't. I don't redefine what "Church of England" or "Christianity" means because I have a different belief to him.

Neo-Darwinism is the term which refers to the modern theory of evolution. That it means that is not dependent on whether anyone agrees with it, likes it, thinks it opposes their views, or whatever. A quick check of an encyclopedia solves that one.

If we want to redefine words based on what we'd like them to mean we'll become as incomprehensible as Bishop Spong. An atheist who says he believes in god (by cleverly redefining god to mean something completely different).

Maybe in theology you're allowed to play word games to make your point, but that just won't do here. Neo-Darwinism is a scientific term with a defined meaning (see what [Bad username or site: ravingglory' / @ livejournal.com] [who I think is a biologist] wrote).

It can also never be the case that neo-Darwinism is a theology because it is naturalistic, it has no theos, so it can *never* be a theology by definition (of course we could just throw definitions away and make words whatever we want them to mean...)

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

I think, to be very pedantic, "there aren't any gods", "if there are any, they don't have a significant impact on my area of study", are theological statements, just as "there are no Neon compounds" (is this true?) is a statement about chemistry.

Theology is very easy, it's just easy to mess up by making a simple mistake and then you're plunged into something very complicated and messy.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

As Far As I Understand Things, the claim supposedly being made here by Williams, is that neo-Darwinism (aka evolution as we commonly understand it) is something atheistic. AFAIK methodological naturalism and atheism are not synonyms, and there are a whole load of scientists who do not think that science contradicts their religious beliefs.

Science can demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that some religious claims are untrue, but I don't see how science can ever be used to absolutely show that no gods exist in the same way it can't absolutely show that there are no faeries.

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

We're more-or-less agreed - my paragraph 2 was a mere quip, from a personal point of view, and probably out of place; however, I had two "null theology" statements, and the second one, "if there are any, they don't have a significant impact on my area of study", doesn't delete God entirely, but nevertheless it can cause conflicts. Put another way, Williams may feel that current evolutionary thought, though not wholly atheistic, is trying to push religion off bits of turf that he feels religion has a stake in.

[hmmm-tea.livejournal.com]

That's not what I said though.

It's not a case of redefining the word to mean something else. It's a case of understanding it differently.

You can't say you've never misunderstood anything, can you?

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I don't really understand what you're saying. Neo-Darwinism is a term with a very specific meaning. Williams (in your argument) is using the term to mean something else. That's not understanding it differently (as if it has multiple possible meanings he can pick from), it's choosing the wrong meaning either intentionally or due to ignorance.

I have misunderstood things in the past, of course, but I haven't stood up and given a sermon to lots of people including members of the press without doing basic homework on what the term means, which (if your interpretation of how Williams is using the term is correct) is what Williams has done.

[hmmm-tea.livejournal.com]

That's not understanding it differently

But that's exactly what misunderstanding is by definition.

I have misunderstood things in the past, of course, but I haven't stood up and given a sermon to lots of people including members of the press without doing basic homework on what the term means

I go back to what I said earlier. If you don't know that you've misunderstood a term, why would you look it up?

[robhu.livejournal.com]

The difference between "understanding differently" and what misunderstand means is that "understand differently" is neutral with respect to the correctness of the understanding reached.

My Apple dictionary defines misunderstand as "fail to interpret or understand (something) correctly". That is the key thing that you weren't saying all along. His understanding is incorrect.

I go back to what I said earlier. If you don't know that you've misunderstood a term, why would you look it up?
Let me go back to what I just said... if I was going to make a public statement about something that wasn't in my area of expertise I'd look it up first. That just stands to reason.

Anyway, as I've repeatedly said to you, I don't think it's reasonable to assume that the poor arch bishop had no idea what he was saying, and that all of this is an unintentional error. You're massively underestimating him and his staff.

[hmmm-tea.livejournal.com]

This discussion of misunderstanding is wondering off the point somewhat now and probably isn't worth pursuing any further.

Having trained as a teacher, I would view every individual as having their own personal understanding of a given term/concept.

Sometimes these will differ from other people's as we don't always pick up things in the same way. Where these differ from the socially accepted norms is where misunderstandings/misconceptions lie.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Unbelievable.

I spend a Very Long Time trying to explain that the reason this thread has gone on for so long is that you are using language incorrectly, you explain what the word means to you, I quote the dictionary definition, and rather than saying "Yes, I see the misunderstanding was because I was missing out a key bit of the meaning of misunderstand", you ignore what I said and talk about how you used to be a teacher!

No wonder you have no problem with AoC sloppy / incorrect use of terms!

[hmmm-tea.livejournal.com]

I don't believe language is as rigid as you seem to think it is in day to day use. Admittedly in science, terms need to have rigid definitions, a lot of our discussions have been about non-scientific ideas.

I would say day-to-day language is generally more bendy. Yes, there are accepted dictionary definitions of what the standard meaning of words are. However, ideas don't always fit a fixed set of rules.

In communication I believe the point is to use the language we know to get across the point we are trying to make as best we can. OK, I failed to get my point across to you a few comments back, at which point the obvious thing to do is rephrase it so you will understand what I originally meant.

I did not ignore what you said regarding the dictionary definition. After all, surely your definition could equally be written as "understanding things in an incorrect way" which is just a specific way of "understanding things differently".

We obviously disagree on this point, I don't think either of our views look to be changing and this is now just going round in circles, so I don't think I've got anything more to add here.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I don't think this is going anywhere either.

I agree that language changes, and that there can be a range of meanings to a particular word. The problem here is that it's not that their understanding of neo-Darwinism is a slightly different take, it's completely misappropriating it to mean something unrelated to what it is actually about.

When language changes over a long period of time that's fine, but what has happened here is that a bunch of theologians like Williams have discovered that something with a science word is used as part of the reason people are doubting religion, so they've picked the science word as the name for the argument against religion. That's just plain wrong, it's an example of them misunderstanding the term.

After all, surely your definition could equally be written as "understanding things in an incorrect way" which is just a specific way of "understanding things differently".
Ack! No! Is this so hard to understand?

A difference in understanding can be minor, and if there are a range of acceptable understandings that's fine. However this isn't slightly different, it's using the term for a completely different thing. That Is Wrong.

Another time you could say "understands differently" would be where we don't know what the correct definition of something is. Here we know because we know who coined it, when, how it was used, and that it is continuing to be used extensively in academic literature, popular science works, and common usage.

Words are bendy and change over time yes, but when people say "well that's just another understanding of the term" without noting that it is wrong or at the very least incredibly misleading it smacks of postmodern claptrap.

As you say we should use language to get across the point we want to make as best we can. The enemy of this is to use a pre-existing term to mean something quite different.