Rowan Williams desperate false equivalency

[Outrider]

Rowan Williams in the Guardian today, desperately trying to give religion some relevance by seeking to paperclip it to science's coat-tails. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/07/world-fragile-recover-science-art-religion-rowan-williams

"Belittling the imaginative inspiration of authentic science is as fatuous as the view that sees the arts as just a pleasant extra in human life, or religion as an outdated kind of scientific explanation."

Except that religion is an attempt to explain why things are as they are, it's an outdated attempt to do what science does immeasurably better.

"What religion adds to this is a further level of motivation. The very diverse vocabularies of different religious traditions claim not only that the Other is someone we can recognise but that they are someone we must look at with something like reverence."

Given religion's vast and well-documented history at 'othering' - from the inherent misogyny of most formal religions, through the overt anti-semitism of significant elements of Christianity and Islam, the anti-Islamic rhetoric of Hindu nationalism, and the despicable homophobia of Christianity, religion's history is anything but an attempt to reconcile disparate groups.

O.

[SusanDoris]

I've listened to the article. I've always thought Rowan Williams rather wishy-washy especially since I heard him trying but not succeeding to wriggle out of a direct question from Richard Dawkins.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Rowan Williams in the Guardian today, desperately trying to give religion some relevance by seeking to paperclip it to science's coat-tails. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/07/world-fragile-recover-science-art-religion-rowan-williams

"Belittling the imaginative inspiration of authentic science is as fatuous as the view that sees the arts as just a pleasant extra in human life, or religion as an outdated kind of scientific explanation."

Except that religion is an attempt to explain why things are as they are, it's an outdated attempt to do what science does immeasurably better.

"What religion adds to this is a further level of motivation. The very diverse vocabularies of different religious traditions claim not only that the Other is someone we can recognise but that they are someone we must look at with something like reverence."

Given religion's vast and well-documented history at 'othering' - from the inherent misogyny of most formal religions, through the overt anti-semitism of significant elements of Christianity and Islam, the anti-Islamic rhetoric of Hindu nationalism, and the despicable homophobia of Christianity, religion's history is anything but an attempt to reconcile disparate groups.

O.

These are world religions and have therefore by definition unified people rather than anything else and they represent the earliest successes of lifting people out of warring tribehood.

Attempts at ATHEIST "Internationals" have been short lived and of course Nationalism has just constituted a return to tribalism.

[Sebastian Toe]

These are world religions and have therefore by definition unified people rather than anything else and they represent the earliest successes of lifting people out of warring tribehood.

Of course, there never have been, there are no current and there never will be warring "religionhood"?
 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Of course, there never have been, there are no current and there never will be warring "religionhood"?
 

of course we are all sinners and we always inherit ancestral problems it seems.

But on balance I see no more successful vehicle, historically than world religions.

[Sebastian Toe]

of course we are all sinners and we always inherit ancestral problems it seems.

But on balance I see no more successful vehicle, historically than world religions.

They are all tribes IMO.
 Some bigger and more organised than others but tribes nevertheless.

[Aruntraveller]

But on balance I see no more successful vehicle, historically than world religions.

Successful at what?