Ruth Gledhill - Times Online - WBLG: Richard Dawkins offended by.... atheists!!

What do you have to do to earn vitriol like that? Eat a baby? Gas a trainload of harmless and defenceless people? Rape an altar boy? Tip an old lady out of her wheel chair and kick her in the teeth before running off with her handbag?....Surely there has to be something wrong with people who can resort to such over-the-top language, over-reacting so spectacularly to something so trivial. Even some of those with more temperate language are responding to the proposed changes in a way that is little short of hysterical. Was there ever such conservatism, such reactionary aversion to change, such vicious language in defence of a comfortable status quo? What is the underlying agenda of these people? How can anybody feel that strongly about something so small? Have we stumbled on some dark, territorial atavism? Have private fiefdoms been unwittingly trampled?' Who has written the above? None other than the author of The God Delusion, the great Richard Dawkins himself. What has led to this Shakespearean 'something rotten in the state of the internet' crisis? Read on to find out, and also for my own interview with Professor Dawkins today where I managed to ascertain a little of why he is just so upset.

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