(atheist here, FWIW) I intend on reading Dawkins' new book about the subject but this just reaffirms what I've heard about the man - he's as close to a scientific fundamentalist as you can get. Researching the reasons for why god exists to many people is a noble cause - blatantly baiting and attacking them in front of a video camera is just childish and stupid.
One of the core take-aways I got from his lecture was that "there are more atheists out there than you might think." While none of his message is really new, the blatant and very public approach he's taking (especially in this current political climate) is sparking interest. Or at least, it's meant to drum up some book sales. I haven't read his book, nor do I intend to, but I think that very public confrontations about this subject are not a bad thing, as I see a lot of people remaining religious on sheer inertia and need a good swift kick in their complacency.
Fair enough. Someone has to ask the hard (and sometimes obviously inflammatory) questions to spark a hint of revolution. He might do a thing or two to add to the ranks of atheism (which is really the wrong way to put it since I like to think of atheists as un-bounded independent thinkers rather than a big ugly group-think that just happens to disbelieve in god - idealistic as that may be) but he definitely does very little to promote understanding between any two groups, atheists included.
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