I seem to be the only person here who doesn't mind what he's heard of Dawkins. I've not actually read any of his books, but I've seen plenty of interviews and I watched him reading excerpts from the God Delusion, and what I heard made sense to be.
Dawkins himself is ignorant of Christian theology, but he say something along the lines of: "If you say 'I believe in fairies', and I say that I do not, I do not need to study fairy-ology to talk about my disbelief in fairies." He also seems much more moderate in his interviews than he is in his writing -- I can only assume he wants to make his point forcefully when he writes.
I think Dawkins is very right when he says we should not label children as "Muslim" or "Jewish". I think he makes a good argument when he says it is logically inconsistent to believe that a god created the universe and set it in motion in order for evolution to happen. I also think he's right to hold up at least the Old Testament of the Bible as a bad, bad example of morality.
I also think it's *good* to have a voice at the far side of the debate in favour of science. Any debate has to be balanced, and seeing as fundamentalist thought is becoming normal, if there wasn't a voice that rallied against it from the other side, there'd be something missing. It's all part of a grand debate. Both sides need representing equally. Classical philosophers did this by writing Dialogues, where characters would argue about a theory or a statement, with some for and some against. The point was to represent both sides in a constant objection-reply-objection-reply pattern, and thus provide balance. The two sides bounce off each other, and so having one without the other, I'd say, is positively bad.
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