Jim meets: Rowan Williams | University of Surrey

This is the first time I know and hear Rowan Williams and despite being Muslim. However, he has been able to gain my respect. We need more of this kind of intellectual in the world

One listens to Prof Jim Alka-Seltzer on BBC Radio 4 with such enormous pleasure, that it is an extra treat to at last, actually SEE him on this video.

This man I admire ! I'm not a religious man , but always admire his discussions and reason !

Is it just me, or do Rowan Williams’ eyebrows resemble a pair of angel wings quite remarkably? 👼

Very interesting perspective from Dr Williams.

Great video!

You can tell Jim's desire to be polite was causing him some trouble here. And just letting Rowan choose which questions to answer comes across as a bit weak. It makes for a far better exchange if you put people on the spot and challenge them, you don't have to be rude like Dawkins to do that.

In this video presentation, about ethics, it was said, " One has a moral compass but one does not know why". Rowan Williams said, " One needs to have an anchorage to decide about morals and ethics!" Like anything else, Ethics and Morals are involved due to the states one finds oneself in, and these states are either within the boundary of our own body and mind or external to us, which are states decided by the many variables in the envirtonment. The manner and social order come about depending on the level of sensitivity the human evolves. Sensitivity levels depend on the finer tuning of sensitivity and selectivity of our sensors. Imperfect Transducers have to detect the information outside our body which includes, eyes, ears, smells, taste, touch, and temperature. We also need the formation of some Kernels to compare with what is to be ethical and moral. Presumably, the best relationship we can have to decide on ethics is PAIN and PLEASURE. If a society has no ears and is totally deaf, making loud noises while others sleep would not be unethical. If a society has no eyes and is totally blind, the flashing lights and flickering advertisements would not be disturbing. So Ethics and social behavior will depend on the state of the society itself. A hawk kills sparrows and eats them, that is the manner it evolved, A hawk has not the slightest trace of guilt as it feels the hunger pain, and hot the power of a beak tearing at its flesh after the claws dug deep into the sparrow's fresh. The laws of the Hawk and those of the sparrow on built on hunger pain and other types of pain. A sparrow's way of life would evolve on the pain it felt and thus the advice of its elders to avoid meeting a hawk. On the other hand, the elders of the Hawk will tell a baby Hawk to feed on sparrows as they are timed and easy prey which do not fight back to hurt the hawk. Obviously, the Hawk will think twice before attacking an eagle or an elephant. This formation of ethics in any species depends on how much pain one suffers. Society is a cruel monster and there is a tendency for any person not to do as one preaches. In the Miltary, the Commanding officers think that it is ethical to send young soldiers to war as long as you send a religious chaplain with them to comfort them before they die in pain. In my country pensions for the general public are capped at a low level as the country cannot afford to pay high pensions to all the workers. But Ethics stops when the Politicians in Parliament and Judges and Magistrates at the Court of law, pass a law that their pensions are uncapped and they are adamant that that is not unethical about gaining and exploiting the people that voted them in. I do not know the level of Salaries, Popes and Patriarchs and Archbishop and Bishops receive, but like politicians, they do expect a salary from the people and some religions demand 10% of the income of the people they lead. If Ethics originate from Politicians, courts of law Popes, and Patriarchs there is a tendency for such ethics to be biased for the benefit of those who lead. Very often one needs to make way for an Ambulance and that is quite understandable, but very often I was shouted at by the police to make way for a Member of parliament which I do find unethical as if the Minister of Transport himself did not do his job well hence traffic jams, then he himself should suffer the consequences as I do. But it is not like that, he will forget the ethics and gets the police to shout at me to move out of the way so that the Minster will get the benefit of the road, but not me or other people. Most ethics are thrown out of the window. Social ethics and morals can form in a secular society if everyone is sensitive to pain and pleasure and one has not got a sick mind not to be able to operate on self pain and self-pleasure, If anything is painful then one does not do it to others and if something is pleasant then it would be fine to make other people happy. If people are like a Hawk, without sensitivity then killing sparrows is quite ethical. People suffer from this as we eat meat and those at Abbatours are paid to kill animals for human consumption using the excuse that killing animals is done as humanely as possible. Ethics and Morals are like a Chameleon lizard, they can change their colours according to the state of mind of those who follow standard conventional ethics. Religion itself was not so ethical in the middle ages and the cruel punishments it applied to keep people under control.

@lucidman100 It's not a debate, it's an interview. Jim does a decent job. He sits back and lets people have their say. He's not trying to tear anyone's point of view down here, it's just a nice opportunity to hear what well-known figures think about various issues.

2 nice and highly intelligent men.

@bonnie43uk "Every scientific discovery takes us one step further away from a biblical god". Not at all; you are quite mistaken. I would agree that scientific discoveries increasingly push the-god-of-the-gaps out of the picture; but then again the-god-of-the-gaps is not the Creator God of the Bible. The-god-of-the-gaps is a modern phenomena; and is anathema in the context of traditional Christian discourse. Thomas Aquinas points out that belief in the Creator is consistent with any physical...

@lucidman100 Actually, a forum where that happens rather than, say, the confrontational style of interview that you'd find on, say, Newsnight is quite rare. The only other example I can think of off the top of my head is the "Conversations with history" series from Berkeley.

I would also say look at Terry Waite.

a bit surprised, given Jims associasion with the british humanist society, that he didnt have any kind of come back on non believers grounding of morality. I would also be a tad surprised if Rowan williams wasnt aware himself of philosophical grounding of naturalist morality

Read the following book: 'Holbach and his friends; French Anti-Clerical Thought 1760-1789.'

@JoJeck As an 'Atheist' myself, though I do not like labeling myself with negative beliefs, I prefer to call myself a Materialist, I see it as obvious that Dawkins is a militant Atheist, an Atheist who makes it his cause to 'convert' as it were non-atheists, which is what Dawkins does sounds militant to me. He has even claimed it himself (if his practice hasn't made it clear enough) just type militant atheism into google. I thought he introduced Dawkins completely correctly..

I know this is an old video, but as soon as I started to watch it I cracked up at the Archbishop's eyebrows! Doesn't he have a barber that will trim those babies back?

It's an interview, not an interrogation. You miss the point.

@bonnie43uk... theory, including evolution by natural selection. Why did he think this? The-god-of-the-gaps assumes that the creative activity of God is anthropomorphic, i.e., that God must create in a manner analogous to human beings. However, since God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived, his activity is radically other than human creative activity. What we mean by "to create" when predicated of God is this: the radical causing of existence of whatever exists. So no conflict.

It takes the interviewer too long to ask a question, we know what your going to ask keep it moving