[takkaria]

Michael: That was poetry ("I may give my regards to the courage of Abraham yet disdain the blindness of Isaac." and the surrounding text). Thanks.

Well, I feel some responsibility comment seeing as I helped spark this off. Just a meta-comment for now:

I think there is a certain idea running against Dawkins (and many other people) that what he (and others) write is wilfully deceptive, or that authors do not have the best of intentions when saying what they say.

An example of this is in what dor has been saying: things like "fundamentalists he claims to abhor" -- no, damnit, he does actually dislike them. He's not in some sort of alliance with them, which is what you imply. In your very language, you are saying "I dislike Dawkins, you should too". You also accuse him of "hiding bias behind scientific authority" -- but was he not an award-winning scientist, this claim wouldn't stand. The point there is that he is a respected scientist putting out his views, and this means that they are interpreted to have authority. I cannot see anything he could do about such interpretation.

On the subject of words: debates bring with them their own set of rules and words, and especially in philosophy this is the case. Again, unless there's actually a good reason to believe that someone's being complex just for the hell of it, I don't see why we can't assume that people act in the best of faith.