03.30.06
Archbishop, Creationism
The Richmond Times Despatch asks the Archbishop of C. about Creationism.
I think it is understandable many Christians would wan’t to distance themselves from Creationism, but there is a strain of dubious thinking in the strategic attempt to make Christian and evolution compatible. The position is most double-talk, an attempt to not make waves.
Creationism
Richmond Times-Dispatch Mar 29, 2006
The religious affairs correspondent for Britain’s Guardian recently asked Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury:“Are you comfortable with teaching creationism?”
The Archbishop answered:
“Ah, not very. Not very. I think creationism is, in a sense, a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories. Whatever the biblical account of creation is, it’s not a theory alongside theories. It’s not as if the writer of Genesis or whatever sat down and said, well, how am I going to explain all this . . . .[F]or most of the history of Christianity, and I think this is fair enough . . . ,there’s been an awareness that a belief that everything depends on the creative act of God is quite compatible with a degree of uncertainty or latitude about how precisely that unfolds in creative time.
“You find someone like St. Augustine, absolutely clear God created everything, he takes Genesis fairly literally. But he then says well, what is it that provides the potentiality of change in the world? . . . And some Christians responding to Darwin in the 19th Century said, well, that sounds a bit like what St. Augustine said of the seeds of processes.”
Williams makes two essential points:
Creationism (or its derivative, intelligent design) does not belong in public classrooms.
Supporters of creationism distort the scientific meaning of “theory” when they sneer at the “theory of evolution” even as they diminish the Bible and religious faith when they describe creationism and ID as theories in competition with Darwinism.
The Archbishop of Canterbury may not be infallible, but in this instance he has it exactly right.