A lovely spacious interview with great insight into Rowan Williams life and ideas. Some of his writing is complex and tricky to understand but his more recent books more accessible. He comes across with wisdom and humility
It is rather touching hearing Dr. Rowan Williams speaking about his younger days and his own family. I am 16 years older than Rowan and I tend to have had an upbringing somewhat like his father's side. When young, not a single one of my secular, religious teachers and even my own parents, ever informed me that I could go to a University, so all I heard was, skills and trades and having to work with hardcore tools, shaping raw material for a living. I had an indentured apprenticeship where, from Malta, I went to Chatham, HM Dockyard, so young and so alone. It was just before Chatham Dockyard closed, that one old gentleman informed me that I could go to University. I was going to Durham but was directed to Newcastle upon Tyne. I used to visit Oxford and Cambridge very often and students used to take me punting. Same at Durham. Taking up engineering, I preferred my God to be more practical than the Poetic Divine God Dr. Rowan Williams talked about when he was faced by Richard Dawkins, with whom I do not agree in his style of behavior. I believe in an Engineering Energy God,-like Albert Einstein, a God that can transform himself into engineering useful products to be with us, in our homes, on earth all the time, in the form of energy and mass, based on this equation E= mc^2, an equation which I do understand in its physical and nonphysical makeup. Dr. Rowan Williams says that God and Religion are not meant to be about explanations and they have to be treated more like an extraordinary gift that came to us with a richness beyond our imagination. My God does not push me beyond the limits where I do not feel comfortable and thrown into the unknown depth when I am asked to explain my beliefs. I was touched when Rowan spoke of this mother and father at 1:10, as when I was at Newcastle I used to go down mines and at about 1960 I saw pit ponies which were blind with the coaldust that entered their eyes. I used to speak with the coalminers and I was allowed to work the coal face. There was a coalminer at Southmoor by the name of James Hughes who worked the mines for over 60 years and he was very religious. He would speak to me for many hours telling me about the black spots he had all over his body due to working in the coal mines and he had volunteered to be researched upon, at the Newcastle General Hospital. I believe they were black arsenic spots that the hospital could not understand. Now knowing his background, I can fully appreciate why Dr. Rowan Williams chose to live and make a career close to a Poetic Divine God, while I chose to accept a practical Energy God that through E= mc^2 can transform from Energy to mass, then evolve, as nature meant it, and then even resurrect back to Energy. I associate myself with practical miners and practical farmers, with the real engineering difficulties they meet, more than I do with a Poetic, Divine, Perfect Spiritual God. My destiny was to be born in a practical field, in which I had to roam silently with manipulating hardware tools in my hands, rather than reading books and preaching with my words. To me, as an engineer, it seems that modern families want to host my engineering God in and outside their homes. He comes in the shape of comforts and mobile phones and internet and videos, and cars and airplanes and food and shelter and protection and medicine and surgical equipment and hospitals. Modern families do not frequent Cathedrals to hear about a Poetic Divine Perfect God, who seems to want to stay outside the universal space-time domain. The two most marvelous, God's intruding to earth, were the Virgin Conception of Jesus and later the Ressurection of Jesus. The birth and death of Jesus were insignificant to these two transformations of Energy to mass ( earthy evolution) to Energy. Many people celebrate Christmas, the birth of Jesus but in engineering terms, the use of the transformation equation E= mc^2, this engineering activity on which the Christian Religion structures itself is structured. * The Virgin conception of Jesus when Energy changed into Matter, and after 33 years. * The Resurrection of Jesus where Matter was transformed into Energy. and also when all the teaching of Jesus was launched and projected to roam the world in vociferous and written/ scribed form. If E is regarded and depicted as being Electromagnetic Energy as light, where it was said, " Let there be light!" then when this light Energy from the sun falls on leaves and plants and grass and branches, it turns into a mass to feed the animals and humans, and they all evolve, and when they die, their mass, even when wood and coal burning to produce electricity, all matter will eventually resurrect and resorts back to Energy form. That is the main reason I respect the miner and farmer families of Dr. Rowan Williams as, like my own family, they dealt and worked directly with an Engineering God to earn a living and to sustain their family, whereas my own parents, after they died, returned and resurrected to be part of the Energy God, to roam the universe in Electromagnetic field form on which Energy I made all my career and which is now sending all I wrote to be seen all over the world. This E=mc^2 transformation is all there is to know to explain the contents, " I am a son of God " and " We are all made in the image of God!" In spite of all the wonders and comforts the Engineering God can provide in every home and modern family, many people still prefer to deal with a Poetic, Divine, Spiritual God who is not part of our universe and seemed to have intruded on earth only twice and in such a spectacular manner, but probably using the relations E= mc^2 as Einstein suggested and Curl(Elect)=d(Mag)/dt as James Clerk Maxwell suggested. In the nave of Westminster Abbey is a memorial stone for James Clerk Maxwell, the eminent physicist, and mathematician. Deservingly so, as both Maxwell and Einstein knew the Energy God more than any other King buried in any Cathedral, and any religion that came about to obey a King rather than. a God as the Energy God. .
A remarkably profound theologian, philosopher, mystic, and spiritual light in a world where religion - of whatever Christian denomination - are full of ego, idols, and delusion. It's a shame he's so far beyond the appreciation and comprehension of so many - myself included at times.
"a world where religion - of whatever Christian denomination - are full of ego, idols, and delusion": There are other religions beyond Christianity, you know! And it should be "- *is* full of ego, ..." Try literacy!
Hearing him speak of his educational background makes me rather envious and even somewhat angry. As a millennial American, our education is absolutely garbage, and most of our teachers barely deserve the title. What kind of a society could we have had if we were actively producing more men like this one?
My first memory is of the National Eisteddfod too. 1984 in Lampeter - the whole town became a city of culture for a whole week, and the excitement was palpable, even to a very young child. All four of my grandparents were in the choir, my dad did about six competitions and stewarded, and I can vividly remember my mother in full Welsh national costume - a scarlet coat, bedgown, shawl and white apron - in a folk dancing competition.
What they talk about toward the end - why an omnipotent and loving God would create a world filled pain and suffering - is a question every Christian asks. The answer, I believe, is that God didn't create a world like that, we humans did. God originally created a paradise and gave us all we needed to live happily, with very little suffering. But God also gave us free will, and therein is the serpent of evil. Some humans chose to indulge in greed, and anger, and hate, and jealousy, and murder. And as the effects of that behavior spread, so too did the people that expressed those emotions. It wasn't long before paradise was turned into hell. We have only ourselves to blame for the way the world is now, and we all share in it. If you want a better Earth, it starts with you and your choices.
@@alanmurray5963 Sounds like you suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect. I am a great admirer of science and wanted to be a scientist while growing up. But I realize too that science has limitations, and can only explain things that scientific method can be applied to. There are a lot of things in the universe and behaviors that science has not explained, and may never explain, partly because science can only be conducted and reported in terms we can relate to. For example, what really happens at the quantum level of reality and in quantum field theory? If you know, there are a lot of particle physicists who would like to talk to you. What is the one true definition of life, and of consciousness? Those have been unanswered for centuries. And along with that, what caused biogenesis on Earth? If science can figured it out, how come scientists cannot make life from scratch? What is dark matter, and dark energy, and what is really at the center of a black hole, other than the nonsense answer relativity gives? You have feelings right? Can you measure them, and can others replicate them precisely as you feel? There is no way to prove scientifically that we all emote, but there is also no denying we all do. My point is, don't be so quick to eliminate anything because of man kind's ingenuity thus far. For example, despite all the tech the modern world has, we are still very at the mercy of a whole slew of disasters that can, and do, happen. I choose to believe there is a God because as far as I can tell, there is no other way to explain life and the universe, which clearly do exist.
@@dewfall56 Your last statement caught my attention, " I choose to believe there is a God because as far as I can tell, there is no other way to explain life and the universe, which clearly do exist." Just believing in God, does not mean that you can understand and so explain life and the universe. What it means is, that you felt a void within yourself and you did not understand life and the universe, and so you decided to suggest a postulate and a proposal and a belief, that there is a God, to whom you may associate a Powerful Divine Spiritual Power, but you still did not understand that, and so you passed over the responsibility to God, for in his grandeur, he could shoulder the responsibility, and you can go totally free, and you could at anytime say, " He knows more than I can and God made it!" That does not mean you understand God nor life or the universe. As far as I am concerned, I am not ashamed to say that I have my limits and I do not understand life, the universe, and or God. Somehow I do understand why humans need to postulate and propose the existence of a God who is powerful, poetic, divine, spiritual, perfect, sonata God, so perfect that he was not meant to be discussed nor explained, and he is a special gift, certainly extraordinary, and we must always look upon God as mystery, and richness beyond our imagination. We must never explain what is God, as that would be the end of Him. God with those magnificent qualities just fills the voids in the human mind! and in that he could be a very useful lifeline in avoiding our desperation and depression when we reach rock bottom.
Nonsense. So humans created cancer? Humans created parasites that lay their eggs in animals and eat them from the inside out? Humans invented the cruel process of aging and the gradual breakdown of the body and mind? Etc etc. Your comment takes into account only human behavioral evil and not the many other kinds of suffering and cruelty in the natural and animal worlds. And even if we stick to human behavior, God supposedly created us in his image and gave us our natures, so why did he create us with such horrible flaws? You completely fail to seriously consider or address the problem of evil, like almost every theist I’ve encountered.
@@alanmurray5963 While I agree with your statements, they’re beside the point for this topic, which is “IF a benign and all powerful God exists, why does he allow suffering and evil?” Your retort simply moves the goalposts to a different debate, the existence of God. A worthy debate, but a different topic.
Whenever I hear Rowan Williams talking on TV I can't help being amazed that someone so thoughtful and wise can be so stupid to believe in a supernatural fairy story, just because that's the religion he happened to have been indoctrinated into. I know lots of "intelligent" people do have faith but for me there's a massive contradiction. When I was 13 years old in 1975 I hung back after class and asked my RE teacher Mr Troughton how any of the great world religions we were being taught about could be right since they were all saying different things? He couldn't answer. I knew then it was all nonsense.
Dr. Williams, apparently an intelligent, thoughtful, and kind person, gives one of the better responses I’ve heard to the problem of evil, but it still falls short. One needn’t demand a completely “cost free” universe to ask why a benign and all powerful deity couldn’t make a much LESS cruel and pitiless universe, much better suited to the happiness and thriving of its inhabitants, human and otherwise. Even the process of evolution, the core driver of biology, is incredibly wasteful and vicious from any moral standpoint as we understand it. If you’re going to believe there’s a God, the world we have doesn’t suggest a loving God constrained by logic to creating an imperfect world and doing his best to get it as decent as he can, but a fantastically cruel one who goes out of his way to load the world up with suffering.
mr Williams is proof not everybody who thinks there's an invisible majic man who nobody can prove is stupid. the only religious person i can listen to without laughing.
+userwl2850 That's because he's a spiritual atheist. He's not a religious person in the sense that he believes in anything other than his own gigantic ego.
+Rebecca Nichol What absolute rot, for a start he's one of the most humble men I've met and I have no doubts about the sincerity of his faith having listened to him preach on a number of occasions, Allan if you'd listened to the start of the interview you would have realised he is neither English nor from the Home Counties but Welsh as for a bore I beg to differ. Final question "spiritual atheist"? what other kind is there, please don't make up phrases to make yourself sound holier than thou because that really is the sign of a gigantic ego.
+userwl2850 I would say that the belief in God does not mean stupidity, as with any sweeping generalization it is both dangerous and ultimately wrong especially in this case when you consider that many of the greatest thinkers in history have themselves been theologians. However I would say I do find Williams to be a particularly interesting theologian.
+Padre471atc Anyone can preach what they don't believe and he generally spouts globalist propaganda anyway. I've been researching him for years and I've also met him and heard him preach. He most certainly is not humble as his countless victims can testify. He does like sycophants though so you'll do alright by the sound of it.
So you acknowledge he is Welsh, by calling him a traitor, but also condemn him for being too English. I assume you have met all the English people of the home counties to be able to generalise about them. Your very strange term, "stereotypical English pleasantries" belies a massive insecurity in your own upbringing and identity. I didn't realise that being pleasant was exclusive to the home counties. Which particular counties are you referring to? Does it include Suffolk, or do Suffolk folk only display 'unpleasantries'? How about Berkshire, which stretches out to border Wiltshire? Do these pleasantries suddenly stop at the border? Perhaps you should seek counselling for what seems to be slightly sociopathic tendencies. Oh, if you had bothered to do a bit of research on the man you'll find that he spent a lot of time in Wales, both as a person and as a clergyman, and he still thinks himself Welsh. Or do all Welsh people have to stay in Wales, talk with Welsh accents and eat leeks and hate the English (there go Richard Burton, Shirley Bassey, Anthony Hopkins, etc). My bet is that he speaks better Welsh than you do and knows more about Welsh history too and is probably more Welsh than you.
Rowan is a modernist who contradicts Orthodox Church teaching. See the "About" section on my channel, which provides links to important article refutations of this man.
