Archbishop of Canterbury attacks Atheism and Dawkins' 'God Delusion'

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams has attacked atheism and the author of the best-selling book The God Delusion.

Addressing more than 1,000 people at Swansea University, Dr Williams gave a lecture rebutting Richard Dawkins' assessment of Christianity in his book, saying that atheists had missed the point and failed to understand what Christians actually believe in.

He said, "There are specific areas of mismatch between what Richard Dawkins may write about and what religious people think they are doing."

He added that he believed Dawkins to be a leading scientist, but a poor philosopher.

"Our culture is one that deeply praises science, so we assume because someone is a good scientist, they must be a good philosopher," Dr Williams said.

He added: "Don't distract us from the real arguments by assuming that religion is an eccentric survival strategy or irrational form of explanation."

When asked "whose fault is Dawkins?", the archbishop replied that religious believers themselves were partly to blame.

He said that in the past God had often been reduced "to the kind of target Dawkins and others too easily fire at".

"When believers pick up 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'," explained Dr Williams.

The first argument against religion he looked at was that of it being explained as an evolutionary survival strategy - something passed on through generations.

Dr Williams said that Darwinian Theory had wrongly been used as a way to interpret culture, not just biology, by Dawkins.

In addition, he rejected Dawkins's theory which assumes culture is transmitted in a similar way to biology. He sad, "I find this philosophically crass and undeveloped at best, simply contradictory and empty at worst."

The Church of England leader said that interpreting religion as a survival strategy was to misunderstand it.