Maybe you think that this is a good thing for children and leads them to have better lives. Dawkins thinks, on balance, it would be better if people stopped quoting speculative bronze age mythogy as history/cosmology/moral ideals and were honest to children about what we know and what we dont know about the universe.

Genemachine, does honesty encompass telling older children we do not know of pathways leading to an initial genome?

Maybe you think that this is a good thing for children and leads them to have better lives. Dawkins thinks, on balance, it would be better if people stopped quoting speculative bronze age mythogy as history/cosmology/moral ideals and were honest to children about what we know and what we dont know about the universe.

It's not that he thinks liberal christians (or fundies) are bad people, it's that he objects to their perpetuation of bad ideas on intellectual grounds.

Sure, that's why he wants to make such "dishonesty" illegal. Okay, what should be done to the parents who will not be "honest to children about what we know and what we dont know about the universe?" Take the children away from them?

Odd Digit:
Having said that, I too strongly dislike Dawkins' tendency to conflate extreme religion with moderate religion. Dawkins' painting of all religious people with one brush is a deliberate tactic, and not one I happen to agree with.

I think Dawkins holds all religion to be a sort of "sin against truth" which pollutes/infects the sponge-like minds of young people with a superstitous world view. He would prefer that the children be encouraged to think for themselves as opposed to most of them simply inheriting the religion they are exposed to most by their family. I expect most religous people who fit this pattern would not recognise that this is probably why they follow their particular religion and not another.

Maybe you think that this is a good thing for children and leads them to have better lives. Dawkins thinks, on balance, it would be better if people stopped quoting speculative bronze age mythogy as history/cosmology/moral ideals and were honest to children about what we know and what we dont know about the universe.

It's not that he thinks liberal christians (or fundies) are bad people, it's that he objects to their perpetuation of bad ideas on intellectual grounds.

On the debate I think he could have put forward a physicalist interpretation of what we call free will but to begin to touch on that would have taken more time than all the rest of the quoted text. It was obviously hard for him to refute the 20 points the other guy made every time he spoke.

Having said that, I too strongly dislike Dawkins' tendency to conflate extreme religion with moderate religion. Dawkins' painting of all religious people with one brush is a deliberate tactic, and not one I happen to agree with. The vast majority of religious people are also "not going to bomb anybody, behead them, stone them, burn them at the stake, crucify them, or fly planes into their skyscrapers, just because of a theological disagreement".

What RD doesn't have is a coherent argument that could pass muster in a first year logic class. He can rant and froth at the mouth to his hearts content. None of it adds up to an actual argument. And when he's confronted with his own bad arguments he cleverly tries to sweep the issues under the rug crying "I'm not interested in that!" or "That's not important", or "that doesn't have anything important to do with 'X' (where 'X' is the topic under discussion.

There's a phrase for folks like RD: intellectually dishonest. His arrogance knows no bounds. He's been hired to play the role of the village atheist at Oxford and in that regard, he's earning his keep. But none of that magically transforms his fallacious arguments to good ones, no matter how hard he tries. I'm thinking of introducing a new figure of speech…something like "faster than Richard Dawkins can make a fallacious argument" or "as easy as refuting Richard Dawkins".

"How much do we regard children as being the property of their parents?" Dawkins asks. "It's one thing to say people should be free to believe whatever they like, but should they be free to impose their beliefs on their children? Is there something to be said for society stepping in? What about bringing up children to believe manifest falsehoods?"