Thanks!

so they have to invent "extremes" to triangulate themselves right into the sensible middle.

Thus you have atheist boogeymen like Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris, who are just individuals speaking for themselves, having a few of the bad things they say offered up as some kind of counterweight to the radical religious fundamentalists who fly planes into buildings and slaughter people with bombs. You know, two sides of the same coin!

Or to try and offset the fucking leader of the RCC working to deny reproductive choice and equal rights to ALL human beings. Yeah, cut him some slack, because Dawkins made a sexist tweet.

Tiny minds fueled by impotent rage trying desperately to avoid the truth.

well spoken. Nicely done trotsky!

It is just not the leader of the RCC trying to deny reproductive choice and equal rights to all human beings. It is anyone who subscribes to the RCC ideology. Those who disagree but continue to go to church every week and think they can make a change within the RCC are just kidding themselves. This doesn't even consider the Protestant religious who can be just as bad. Not to just pick on christians I can say the same for some Jews, Muslims or any other religious sect with the possible exception of the Quakers and UUs. Conservative ideology mixed with religious bs is pox on humanity.

that wasn't sexist in the 1st place.

There is some good ammunition and inspiration in there for those who wish to become more vocal and active against religion, something that everyone would benefit from, except for those who enjoy their religious privilege.

I also read somewhere that American Atheists has only about 2,500 members nationwide. That's nuts. The number of actual atheists is probably 1,000 to 10,000 times that many.

He's speaking this month at the Mark Twain center in Ct. I'll be there.

He talks about how there are lots of atheists in the closet: Afraid to ome out to their friends and family. He sees them as the low hanging fruit that might bring fair treatment to atheists if we could get them organized, labeled, and counted.

As it stands, atheists appear to be such a small percentage of the citizenry (less than 20%) that we're not taken into consideration politically, thus allowing christians to impose themselves on society by demanding special status above all other religions and atheists.

His methods are pushier than some might like, but he proves in the book that there is no other way to change american's misperceptions about religion.

whether they are religious, or atheists.

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is a fundamentalist by any stretch of the imagination. I don't see him subscribing to any dogma but that is how I see it.

By calling out Dawkins or any of the other outspoken atheists as a "fundamentalist" all you do is empower those haters who like to denigrate us atheists. Being outspoken is not the same as being a fundamentalist.

I compared real religious fundamentalists, Dear and ISIS, with someone who is called an atheist fundamentalist.
They kill and wreck havoc, he wrote a book.
Yet there are those who say they are all the same.

Fundamentalist Atheists write books that say mean things about religion, whereas religious fundamentalists tend to do the physical harm thing.

I think Dawkins is a bit of a priviliged prig, to be honest. However he hasn't blown up any skyscrapers that I know of.

my bad! Long drive from SW Ohio to Montreal, QC yesterday and working in a hotel business center all day tends to dull the mind.

He's not.

People think that's the only book he wrote.

I think there are like 2? 3? books on what HE thinks of religion and more than a dozen on his profession....biology.... or himself....biography....

His TV shows (again, 2? 3?) on religion are anything but fundie. Well reasoned and talking calmly with the "other" is not very fundie.

Never read a single one.

I do, however, have a very worn copy of The Selfish Gene. Whatever else he may be, Dawkins is an excellent science writer.

It is mostly about the methods, successes and failures of the non-profit Silverman leads; American Atheists. I personally found it to be very interesting and encouraging but I was a bit disappointed that it was rather short. As for the claim in the excerpt featured in the article where he he says that atheism has won. He backs it up with data that he provides the sources of in the book.