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Anglican Apology "Pointless" says Darwin Descendant

By Hilary White

LONDON, September 15, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The great grandson of 19th century naturalist Charles Darwin, told media that he was "bemused" at an apology offered by a prominent Anglican cleric to his long-dead ancestor. Andrew Darwin, called "pointless" an article written by a prominent Anglican cleric that apologised for the 19th century Church's response to the publication of the Origin of Species, the book that began the debate over evolution.

"Why bother?" Darwin said, "When an apology is made after 200 years, it's not so much to right a wrong, but to make the person or organisation making the apology feel better."

The Rev. Dr. Malcolm Brown, the Church of England's director of mission and public affairs of the Archbishops' Council, wrote in an article to be posted on the Church's website, "Charles Darwin - 200 years from your birth (1809) the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still."

Dr. Brown is reported to be the "inspiration" for a new page of the Church of England's website to promote Darwinian ideas that will be launched Monday.

In his article, Dr. Brown denigrated American Christians who hold a literal interpretation of the bible as historically ignorant and "noisy."

"A culture that doesn't have a great deal of historic understanding of the Christian faith can easily characterise all Christians as being like the most noisy ones," he wrote. Brown said the Church anticipated that there would be a "public interest" in a website on Darwinism, "particularly because of the rise of creationism in the US."

Dr. Brown continued, "People, and institutions, make mistakes and Christian people and Churches are no exception. When a big new idea emerges that changes the way people look at the world, it's easy to feel that every old idea, every certainty, is under attack and then to do battle against the new insights."

"We try to practise the old virtues of 'faith seeking understanding' and hope that makes some amends," Brown wrote to Darwin, who died 126 years ago.

A spokesman for the Church of England later distanced the Church from Dr. Brown's remarks, calling it a "personal view" and not an official apology by the Church.
 
Some critics have said that the article is merely an effort by the heavily left-leaning Church of England to distance itself from believing American Christians. In heavily secularised British society, anti-American sentiment is commonplace and much of it is focused on what is seen as Americans' overemphasis on religious belief.

An outraged Ann Widdecombe, MP and convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism, said of the Anglican apology, "It's absolutely ludicrous. Why don't we have the Italians apologising for Pontius Pilate? We've already apologised for slavery and for the Crusades. When is it all going to stop? It's insane and makes the Church of England look ridiculous."

Even the head of the fervently anti-Christian National Secular Society, Terry Sanderson, said, "It does seem rather crazy for an institution to address an apology to an individual so long after his death."

Christian Voice, a UK evangelical Christian lobbying organisation, responded with a tongue-in-cheek apology of their own addressed to Richard Dawkins, the Oxford professor best known as the world's most outspoken enemy of religious belief, who, they said, has been "spiritually dead for over sixty years."

Stephen Green, National Director of Christian Voice, wrote to Dr. Dawkins, the world's leading proponent of secular Darwinism and author of "The God Delusion",  "We described you as an 'evangelical atheist' who looked 'malicious, loony, ill-informed and stupid in equal measure'. We pondered your 'peculiar combination of wickedness and madness' and asked, 'Has the evolutionary biologist lost the plot?'"

"We recognise now that your dependence on evolution is not science, or even bad science, but an irrational excuse to deny Almighty God. We see that your attempts to pour scorn on Christianity and Jesus Christ are the result of a sort of 'virus of the mind', put there by the father of lies," Mr. Green continued.

Charles Darwin, whose portrait appears on the Bank of England's ten-pound note, is a folk hero to secularists who have used his theories to "prove" the non-existence of God and the pointlessness of all religious belief.

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