From Andrew Browne's blog at guardian.co.uk Comment is Free

Dawkins raises the tone

Richard Dawkins, "speaking among friends", shows just why he has so many enemies

There has been a long-running battle among the American scientific community about the degree to which atheism should be identified with science teaching. On the one side are those bodies, like the National Centre for Science Education, whose chief concern is to get evolution taught in schools, and who will happily enlist mainstream Christians in their cause. On the other side are the hard-line new atheists, who think that science must sweep away religion and the sooner the better: if believers object, so much the worse for them. No prizes for guessing which side Richard Dawkins is on.

In a recent post on his own blog's comment section, he mused on this problem:

I think we should probably abandon the irremediably religious precisely because that is what they are – irremediable. I am more interested in the fence-sitters who haven't really considered the question very long or very carefully. And I think that they are likely to be swayed by a display of naked contempt. Nobody likes to be laughed at. Nobody wants to be the butt of contempt.

You might say that two can play at that game. Suppose the religious start treating us with naked contempt, how would we like it? I think the answer is that there is a real asymmetry here. We have so much more to be contemptuous about! And we are so much better at it. We have scathingly witty spokesmen of the calibre of Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. Who have the faith-heads got, by comparison? Ann Coulter is about as good as it gets. We can't lose!

If you can bear to listen to him, take, as an example of a typical faith-head trying to be contemptuous, David Bentley Hart, whose radio interview happened to be posted here at the same time as Jerry's article.

Listen to the stumbling, droning inarticulacy, the abysmal lack of anything approaching wit or intelligence. Imagine this yammering fumblewit coming up against Christopher Hitchens, or Dan Dennett, or PZ Myers – doesn't it make your mouth water?

...

Maybe I'm wrong. I'm only thinking aloud, among friends. Is it gloves off time? Or should we continue to go along with the appeasers and be all nice and cuddly, like Eugenie and the National Academy?

Of course we already know this is Dawkins' attitude to the religious. That is exactly what people who complain about the New Atheists being aggressive are complaining about. The really extraordinary thing is that it is is marketed under the banner of "science and reason" and that he supposes that displays of naked contempt are the way to win over agnostics.

Mind you, this gives me an idea for a wonderful debate. Let's see Terry Eagleton vs Richard Dawkins, live on stage. I'm sure there would be no shortage of sponsors.