Anglican Head: 'God Delusion' Author Dawkins a Good Scientist, Poor Philosopher
The atheist author behind the book "The God Delusion" may be a leading scientist, but he's a poor philosopher, according to the spiritual head of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
Addressing more than 1,000 people at Swansea University in the United Kingdom, Archbishop Rowan Williams rebutted the assessment of Christianity in Richard Dawkins' best-selling book, saying that atheists had missed the point and failed to understand what Christians actually believe in.
"There are specific areas of mismatch between what Richard Dawkins may write about and what religious people think they are doing," said Williams.
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"Our culture is one that deeply praises science, so we assume because someone is a good scientist, they must be a good philosopher," he added.
But Williams suggested that assumption that religion is "an eccentric survival strategy or irrational form of explanation" was distracting people from "real arguments" over God's existence.
When asked "Whose fault is Dawkins?" the archbishop said religious believers themselves were partly to blame.
In the past, God had often been reduced "to the kind of target Dawkins and others too easily fire at," Williams explained.
"When believers pick up [the books of] 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,'" he added.
The first argument against religion Williams looked at was that of it being explained as an evolutionary survival strategy – something passed on through generations.
The Anglican leader said Dawkins had wrongly used Darwinian Theory as a way to interpret culture, rather than just biology.
In addition, Williams rejected Dawkins' belief that assumes culture is transmitted in a similar way to biology.
"I find this philosophically crass and undeveloped at best, simply contradictory and empty at worst," he stated.
The church leader said that interpreting religion as a survival strategy was to misunderstand it.
