Well I can't comment on how much control he has over what proportion of what he says gets recorded by media, but would argue that anyone who bothers to write so many books is at least a little protected from the charge of soundbitism.
Re Dawkins and 'evangelism', I think he makes a very cogent argument for atheists 'speaking up' in campaigns like this. Which is that atheism is still truly taboo in many societies, the US being one of them. Maybe it comes across as over the top in the UK, where attitudes are a bit more relaxed (and, as Sir Humphrey says, theology was invented to keep agnostics in the Anglican Church ;), but atheists face serious prejudice in the US - where a black person has ten times the chance of being voted into public office than an atheist! I'm not sure how fighting against such discrimination is offensive.
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regna
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Date: 2008-10-21 10:26 pm (UTC)Re Dawkins and 'evangelism', I think he makes a very cogent argument for atheists 'speaking up' in campaigns like this. Which is that atheism is still truly taboo in many societies, the US being one of them. Maybe it comes across as over the top in the UK, where attitudes are a bit more relaxed (and, as Sir Humphrey says, theology was invented to keep agnostics in the Anglican Church ;), but atheists face serious prejudice in the US - where a black person has ten times the chance of being voted into public office than an atheist! I'm not sure how fighting against such discrimination is offensive.