Many people insist that Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is a very intelligent and well-educated man, but I have trouble believing it. I certainly haven't witnessed any evidence of it lately. Following up his stellar performance attacking the principle of equal protection under the law, Williams has now moved to declare that one of the foundations of modern biology is actually just a "pseudo-science." How is that any more intelligent and educated than saying that the Germ Theory of Disease is pseudoscience.?

I get it that many religious people don't like evolution because they don't like some of the implications they see it as having for the nature and origin of our species. I also get it that many religious people don't like how readily evolution can be used in arguments against their religious beliefs. What I don't get, however, is why they consistently fail to offer arguments against evolution that are based on truth and science.

Dr Rowan Williams, said "Neo Darwinism and Creationist science deserve each other. Creationism is a version of slightly questionable science pretending to be theology, and Neo Darwinism is a questionable theology pretending to be science." ... He said "Science has more to do than is simply covered by these theories." ...Neo Darwinists argue that culture is subject to evolutionary forces which will eventually weed out religion.

Dr Williams admitted that Neo Darwinism, a theory supported by Atheist Professor Richard Dawkins, is "most problematic" to theology, but he called it "a pseudo science" and "deeply vulnerable to intellectual challenge because it is trying to be a theology."

Source: The Times (via Pharyngula)

Does Rowan Williams even know what Neo-Darwinism is? Neo-Darwinism is most properly used to describe ideas about evolutionary theory which were developed from, but were not identical with, Darwin's original writings. Sometimes it is less correctly used as a label for what is more accurately called the "modern synthesis," which is a unified theory of evolution that draws not only on Darwin's writings but also data from several fields in modern biology.

If Rowan Williams has either in mind, he's wrong to call them a pseudo-science; if he has something else in mind, he's wrong to use that label. Either way, he's not only wrong but wrong in a way that is not easily understandable. If he really is "intelligent" and "well-educated," then he should have know all of this already, or at least after a few minutes research.

On what looks like a brighter note, however, Rowan Williams has also declared that Christianity is just "telling stories":

Both Neo Darwinism and Christianity are telling stories, the Archbishop continued, Christianity acknowledges that fact, Neo Darwinism doesn't.

I've read the suggestion that if evolution is "just a theory," then Christianity should be treated as "just a story." It's not a bad idea and it sounds like perhaps Rowan Williams is trying to use it himself.