I am a great fan of Richard Dawkins — the brilliant geneticist Richard Dawkins, that is, not the amateur theologian of the same name. The Selfish Gene and Climbing Mount Improbable are among the most mind-changing books I have read. I can’t say the same of the atheist stuff. Dawkins seems a much better evangelist than polemicist; more persuasive when exalting Darwin than attacking God.
If you want to be a polemicist, it helps to be funny, which Dawkins isn’t (for convincing and witty attacks on non-science nobody beats the late John Diamond). But I also find it annoying that Dawkins picks on such clunking, unoriginal targets. If you want to attack irrationality, in Britain at any rate, why pick on God? Followers of herbalism or astrology are far more numerous than creationists. Come to think of it, football is a greater cause of ugly tribalism than religion and yet brings no benefits to wider society.
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