re: #437 LudwigVanQuixote

NO Sir, Dawkins has made it very clear that he is on the attack against religion and he does so with quite a fervor. I have never questioned his science or his ability as a scientist. However, my point is that since you can not do an experiment on G-d, his attempts to promote atheism are just as dogmatic and unscientific as any fundie’s attempt to push religion.

If Dawkins would just stick to the science I would like him much more.

Anyone who has seen me write on an ID thread or an AGW thread knows about the level of patience I have for anti-science.

However, Dawkins is very much interested in tearing down religion. That is in of itself a faith based act.

Yes, he does attack religion with at times as you say, fervour. But he always does so from a strictly rational standpoint. At no stage does he invoke the words of some revealed scripture, at no point does he beseech us to appease anything remotely analagous to deities or appeal to anything outside the realm of empirical science. It’s hard therefore to see how the ‘religious’ smear can be justified. It seems to me all you really have in this argument is an invitation to compare his level of passion with that of some fundies. Well, I don’t think passion is in itself either a bad or necessarily a religious thing at all. When you argue passionately for the understanding of climate science, would you say that you were being religious? Wouldn’t it be a lot fairer to say you are just passionate about demonstrating what you can clearly see - based not on revelation but on observation and scientific understanding - to be the case?