Richard Dawkins

Is simply brilliant. I have watched many interviews and read several of his writings though not his latest book. Most of them have always been on the same caliber as the interview with Prof. Weinberg I blogged about sometime ago. However, this Q&A which follows this talk seems a tad more notable than most of the other remarkable things I've heard this man say. His responses are very rational, well thought-out and adequately delivered. But I was amazed at how unintelligent the crowd seemed to be. Just because Prof. Dawkins said something doesn't mean he said something great or something that needs to be applauded. Many of the questions also showed that the people asking them had not spent more than a minute pondering them.

The most interesting part of the talk was the bit about how difficult it is to come out of the atheist closet due to the social attitudes there exist against atheism. This seems like a bit of a problem, though to disagree a bit with Prof. Dawkins, not more so than the problem of being openly gay.

Another passage that I found remarkable was him being surprised by anger on the part of the person coming out of the atheist-closet. That one seems obvious to me and apparently to the audience as well. His surprise is not surprising, though, as he was raised in a home of scientists and I imagine that leads more naturally towards atheism than being raised in a devout catholic home ;-).

I am glad to see that there are people talking about the elephant in the room. I think the world can benefit from discrediting religion quite a bit more than it has been so far.