How long has RD been "the pope" of atheism.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

If you've been following the debate you will have noticed that called RD "the pope" is a favored calumny of the more rabid theists. Some of us do tend to go into attack dog mode when we see that, it's rather like wearing a steak skirt into a kennel.

[Svartalf]

We,,; saying "the pope", incorrect as it actually is, has the advantage of being shorter than a more correct formula, which is a good thing for a thread title, while still conveying my meaning.
Plus, it causes people to react which may induce interesting dialogue.

Also, I doubt the mods will give me too hard a time about it, and since I won't call him that too often and wear a beehive suit, I guess I'll be alright.

[Hermit]

I was interested in a y/n kind of answer, or a simple black or white picture rather than a detailed grayscale one.

OK. Tabloid mind-set explains tabloid OP.

[Tero]

It was TGD which propelled him to international attention, but he was very well known for his earlier books, though not so much because of his atheism.

Ironically TGD on second reading and dipping into it more recently is pretty weak in lots of ways in my view. One can't over-estimate its impact and probably the large numbers of people who have become skeptics as a result of it, but really he should have kept to evolutionary biology for my money.

Jesus is strong. If it weren't for the OT, this dogma would have been harder to beat. Reduce the Bible to the four gospels and people would still have believed it for 2000 years. So Dawkins did not enter religion discussion as an expert the way Matt in Austin does.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

It was TGD which propelled him to international attention, but he was very well known for his earlier books, though not so much because of his atheism.

Ironically TGD on second reading and dipping into it more recently is pretty weak in lots of ways in my view. One can't over-estimate its impact and probably the large numbers of people who have become skeptics as a result of it, but really he should have kept to evolutionary biology for my money.

Jesus is strong. If it weren't for the OT, this dogma would have been harder to beat. Reduce the Bible to the four gospels and people would still have believed it for 2000 years. So Dawkins did not enter religion discussion as an expert the way Matt in Austin does.

DIllahunty had the advantage of being a strong believer who actually did the reading. That's disastrous for a religious person who thinks about what they've read. It certain pissed Matt off.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=9RExQFZzHXQ[/youtube]

[Gawdzilla Sama]

[Animavore]

I don't feel a need to hoist him on a petard.

Just as well.

Oops. I somehow got 'petard' and 'pedestal' mixed up along the way

[Svartalf]

It was TGD which propelled him to international attention, but he was very well known for his earlier books, though not so much because of his atheism.

Ironically TGD on second reading and dipping into it more recently is pretty weak in lots of ways in my view. One can't over-estimate its impact and probably the large numbers of people who have become skeptics as a result of it, but really he should have kept to evolutionary biology for my money.

Jesus is strong. If it weren't for the OT, this dogma would have been harder to beat. Reduce the Bible to the four gospels and people would still have believed it for 2000 years. So Dawkins did not enter religion discussion as an expert the way Matt in Austin does.

Forgetting about the fact that no two accounts of the crucifiction agree on details, like who was present or what Jesus' last words were, which is just the most glaring case of contradiction between the gospels...

Also, remember that Jesus started on the Messiah trip, among jews, without OT, there's no christianity to begin with, and you'd have to still have saul of tarsus, because without him, it would have remained a purely jewish aberration.

[Thumpalumpacus]

It was TGD which propelled him to international attention, but he was very well known for his earlier books, though not so much because of his atheism.

Ironically TGD on second reading and dipping into it more recently is pretty weak in lots of ways in my view. One can't over-estimate its impact and probably the large numbers of people who have become skeptics as a result of it, but really he should have kept to evolutionary biology for my money.

Hear, hear.

[Bella Fortuna]

He doesn't bother me in that respect. Don't know why, as I can see where it might be bothersome to others.

Well, you are bloodcurdlingly atheist. I was told the other day, on another forum, that I was "very Christian in outlook". I had to spend a couple of hours with a rasp file, sharpening my horns.

Hehehe

[Brian Peacock]

OK, so I registered with the Dawkins forums in 2009, and the friend who enticed me there had been inviting me for like a year or two. Since I entered the world of militant atheists and their detractors, any number of things were made clear, among them that RD was Big Cheese among rationalists, and that the God Delusion was a classic textbook on every reason why religions are wrong.

So I buy myself a copy this afternoon, and I look it over, even if I don't intend reading it seriously until I spend my netless week in Athens late in June. First thing I notice is the in memoriam dedication to Douglas Adams, who died as recently as 2001.... so I check the copyright and learn that the book was first published in 2006. This raises some questions.

"Was RD well known as a religion basher before this came out, or did he rise to meteoric fame on the back of that book ?" (regardless of what fame he may otherwise have enjoyed as an evolutionary biologist and inventor of the concept of selfish gene) is the main one. Basically, I wonder if that book was the ladder he used to get himself a place in the sun among god bashers, or was it the crowning Jewel that clonfirmed a primacy he had long enjoyed among rationalist thinkers. In the former case, I wonder how he could become the go to guy, and the almost inevitable guru on the subject in so little time.

Thoughts?

TGD came out while he held the chair of the Simonyi Professorship For The Public Understanding Of Science, at Oxford University. The position was funded by a grant from Charles Simonyi, and the objective of the position was as follows...

The goal is for the public to appreciate the order and beauty of the abstract and natural worlds which is there, hidden, layer-upon-layer. To share the excitement and awe that scientists feel when confronting the greatest of riddles. To have empathy for the scientists who are humbled by the grandeur of it all.

(LINK)

TGD was very much in this spirit and far from being the Manual For God-haters it was subsequently claimed to be (from both camps) it simply and elegantly contrasted methodological naturalism with magical and super-natural thinking - the conclusion being that super-nature fails to account for, or inform us about, the natural, material world of our everyday existence in any meaningful way. Most of the book was a qualification of that view, and as such a large part of the text set out to meet the often peddled arguments, challenges, and charges of various brands of religious apologists.

I don't think anyone expected it to be a lightening rod for what are now called 'new atheists' but it certainly touched a nerve with many people and when it hit the top of the best-seller lists in Europe, and then the US, and stayed there, and then was reprinted in hardcover, and hit the 1 million sales mark, and then, extra-ordinarily, the 1 million sales mark in the US the religious lobby could not get up on their hind legs quickly enough to condemn both the book and the man who wrote it.

It was not the first book of its kind, but the ideas it collated were ripe for the time I think. He, and the other so-called 'Four Horsemen' coalesced and expressed what many people had been thinking, and even struggling with, privately. They had their positions as the Popes and Bishops of atheism thrust upon them to a great extent, and to their great credit they did not shirk that responsibility and, in true academic fashion, argued their points and met all challenges squarely and up front.

I got interested TGD in early 2007 after hearing Dawkins talking about it on the radio. What struck me about what he was saying was not only that he sounded so calm and reasonable, and communicated his view so succinctly - not strident, or aggressive at all - but just how blummin' rational his views and approach sounded. I joined the Dawkins forum in Spring 2007 and, as a few have mentioned, cannot imagine who I would be now without that formative experience - indeed, I wouldn't be typing this here if not for that man, and for that I am very grateful (even allowing for calamity of THE OUTRAGES).

He's not 'The Pope Of Atheism' of course, becasue atheism isn't a religion, its just a rational disbelief of theists (and similar) claims, assertions, obligations and insistences, and to a great extent he (among others) gave people the impetus to just stand up and say that for themselves.

[Svartalf]

Well... I guess I'll tell you my take on it in July, when I'm back and have read it. I've heard so much, and often conflicting stuff that I guess I'll have to check for myself... guess that's why I sunk €15 into a book when I should have saved it for groceries or clothing.

and yes, my thread title was deliberately oversimple and provocative.

[fretmeister]

Anyone who thinks he's strident has never heard of Hitchins.

Or Pat Condell for that matter.

[Svartalf]

Hitchens? strident? come on, you can't be that clear and witty when you are strident.
Or was it the Scotch speaking?