The Hard Sell
I've heard - often, from lots of different people - that atheists like Dawkins or Hitchens or the other atheist horsemen are rude, shrill, belittling, dickish, abrasive, and generally offensive. Fine, they're awful. Who's good? If they're negative examples, who in present or past history can serve as a positive example of what to do
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I honestly do think Dawkins does a lot of good, and I think your Carrot Top analogy is right on -- a lot of people criticize him as a symbol of something they don't like, rather than paying attention to what he's actually doing. Though by the same token, every time I see what Carrot Top's up to, I say, "Oh yeah -- he's still doing the same old Carrot Top shit", thus giving me a reason to tune him out again.
As for which comedian he is -- I think he's Andrew Dice Clay, but doing good material. He's shocking and provocative, gets a lot of attention and has a lot of fans. But there are a lot of us who are turned off by the same style that turns on those seeking red meat.
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Dawkins actually agrees with you about "The Root Of All Evil". It was produced by Channel Four, which has a reputation for being sensational, and its producers insisted on giving the show that name, against Dawkins' protests. (See the sourced note on Wikipedia.) Dawkins himself has said publicly, numerous times, including in his own books, that he thought at the time and continues to think now that the title was a mistake. Not a big enough mistake to walk away from the project, which was still a very good project if you've had a chance to see it, but if he'd had his druthers it wouldn't have had that name. In the forward of "God Delusion" he says:
"In January 2006 I presented a two-part television documentary on British television (Channel Four) called Root of All Evil? From the start, I didn't like the title. Religion is not the root of all evil, for no one thing is the root of all anything."
As for the title of "The God Delusion" itself, he explains that choice of words in page 5 of the forward:
The Penguin English Dictionary defines a delusion as 'a false belief or impression'. The dictionary supplied with Microsoft Word defines a delusion as 'a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence'.
For better or for worse he's picked exactly the proper word to encapsulate his thesis. Religious people are deluded. Mistaken. They credulously believe a falsity. They aren't stupid, they're not gullible, they're not weak. They're mistaken, usually by the coincidence of the culture they happen to have been born into. How do you communicate this without being offensive? It's the clearest, simplest way to unambiguously present this idea - in contrast to religious speech which can be indirect, vague, metaphorical, and equivocal. Religious people twist Dawkins' words to take him out of context. Dawkins "comports himself" as plainly, directly, and unambiguously as possible - by necessity - to avoid giving them this chance.
Dawkins' "Clear Thinking Oasis" is in contrast to this. The stuff he believes has been skeptically reviewed and has all appearances of being actually true. His beliefs are supported by confirmatory evidence, and they're tentative and subject to change based on new evidence. He's thinking clearly and expressing himself clearly. I understand that some people find this offensive, but I don't understand why. If he's a bad performer doing good material I'd love to have an example of someone who takes his material and does it well. "Fine, they're awful. Who's good?" What's a better way to communicate this?
(This is important to me partly because there's a lot of Dawkins' approach in me, and a lot of people react to what I say the same way. If I can figure out what Dawkins should be doing I can start doing things that way even if he doesn't.)
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