Anglican leader opposes creationism in schools

Of all the crevo threads I've seen, this one has definitely turned out to the most enlightening.

It has always been fairly clear to me that the two sides of this debate have a really hard time understanding the other side.

I'm not going to pretend to understand evolutionists, but I think I finally know at least one of the things they misunderstand about creationists.

It's a matter of the philosophy each has that he uses to look at the world. What seems obvious to one isn't necessarily obvious to another, and this issue with Canterbury coming down against creationism illustrates one of these cases really well.

I think it seems obvious to an evolutionist that if Christian leaders start endorsing evolution that it will convince some of the creationists to see thing their way. This view presupposes that the group defined as 'Christian leaders' is this monolithic group with one set of beliefs. This really couldn't be further from the truth.

Instead of generating more credibility for ToE among creationists, it does the opposite and damages that credibility. In the US, Christians tend to gravitate towards the more conservative, Biblically based churches and most of these churches (with the notable exception of the Catholic church) tend to take what Bible says pretty much at face value. Rowan Williams is seen by many to be a heretic, primarily for being heavily involved paganism in his spare time.

The average evolutionist probably doesn't bother to keep up with these kinds of things. So when someone is browsing the news and sees Rowan Williams, head of the CoE opposed to the teaching of creationism, all they think is 'Christian leader who sees it my way.' All that the more biblically founded Christian sees is a man who endorses gay marriage, abortion, and has screwed up theology. For this reason, associating such a leader with evolution only gave many of us even more reason to consider evolution a flawed idea.

We tend to not get our theology from druids for all the obvious reasons.

Again, Romans I deals with it; you scream about it being unfair all day, but there it is. I find it interesting, though, that you've decided to judge whether it's fair or not. You seem to be saying that you know better than God who ought to be in heaven or not.

You may be happy worshipping an evil being that offers infinite rewards / punishements according to a standard that is manifestly arbitrary, determined largely by an accident of birth-culture. I'm not. I don't even believe in God, but if I did believe in one I'd prefer to be worshipping Him for some reason other than fear of the consequences of failing to worship Him. I'd prefer any God I believed in to have higher moral standards than that.

Clearly you've read it, though, so I'm probably not going to say anymore about it. At this point you've taken the time to read the text and you are going to make your own decision about it. My only goal was to get you to consider it, which you have. Everyone has to pick their side at some point.

I've read it, and it appears to be largely incomprehensible rather poorly written nonsense. Such sense as I can extract from it appears to amount to a blanket assertion that if anyone doesn't acknowledge God it is their own fault, regardless of their cultural background. And there appears to be a bizarre conflation of rejection of Christianity with unsavoury sexual practices for which no evidence is offered up.

Instead of generating more credibility for ToE among creationists, it does the opposite and damages that credibility.

The reason I posted this thread is not because the opinion of the Archbishop of Canterbury lends any weight to the theory of evolution. The reason it doesn't is because he's not a scientist. (Similarly, the opinions of other clergymen who oppose evolution have no bearing on the theory's scientific value.) However, regardless of other denominations' opinion of the Church of England, his opinion does indicate that for his denomination there is no problem with being a Christian and accepting evolution too.

The issue of creationism isn't a scientific issue at all, it's purely a denominational dispute.

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