Archbishop hits back at critics

He said: "There are specific areas of mismatch between what Richard Dawkins may write about and what religious people think they are doing. There are few things more annoying than people saying 'I know what you mean'."

Dr Williams described Dawkins as a "wonderfully lively and attractive writer" but said his arguments were not fully engaging with religion.

In a message to the critics, he said: "Don't distract us from the real arguments by assuming that religion is an eccentric survival strategy or irrational form of explanation."

When asked by an audience member "whose fault is Dawkins?", Dr Williams replied that religious believers themselves were partly to blame, adding that in the past God had often been reduced "to the kind of target Dawkins and others too easily fire at".

Saying he was "being mischievous", Dr Williams added: "Our culture is one that deeply praises science, so we assume because someone is a good scientist, they must be a good philosopher. "My inner jury is out on that."

"As religious people, it's not that God is the explanation for this bit or that bit of the universe, even the very beginning of the universe. We're saying that the nature of our relationship with the universe, the process of thinking and explaining, that very structure requires some comprehensive energy at another level, which sustains it as it is."

The archbishop described belief as being naturally self-critical, and said this was a point that contemporary critics like Dawkins often miss. Dr Williams added that to see religion as a survival strategy was to misunderstand it.

More than 1,000 people heard the lecture, both inside the auditorium and in overflow rooms nearby.

In best-selling book The God Delusion, evolutionary scientist and confirmed atheist Dawkins attacks God "in all his forms", stating that belief in such an entity is highly irrational. He has described the book as his "culmination" of his campaign against religion.