A Great Show

I saw Dawkins the other night. A great showman for the greatest show on earth, with sharp attacks and well-honed one-liners. He was as divisive as I expected, and you don't have to be a cultural relativist to hold it against him. Best put by Ira: "His rhetorical technique is totally ineffective for anything but rallying the troops". I wish there was a more responsible figurehead for atheism.

Here is my main difference: I still have to be convinced that getting crowds sharply divided over false dichotomies is better than promoting evolution in a manner that doesn't unseat the many, many people who have managed to find room for it with their God.

Of course, maybe I am also posing false dichotomies. Maybe Dawkins is working towards a third outcome, one in which all religion has been made completely irrelevant, presumably by non-fascist means. Unfortunately this outcome is not only unrealistic, but desirable only to the atheists bent on making things worse, and on making even less room for "non-religious" to evoke a tolerance that has outgrown the greatest zealots on earth.