Hi Benjamin.

I care whether Dawkins is a hypocrite, and so should you. He was once the Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, and “the aim of the Professorship is ‘to communicate science to the public without, in doing so, losing those elements of scholarship which constitute the essence of true understanding’ ”. And in 2013 he was voted most influential thinker of the year in a poll of readers by Prospect magazine. This means the general public take what he says seriously. So, if he is spreading misinformation and lies, then we should all care about it. My article is therefore not ad hominem, i.e. a personal attack; I’m on the whole stating facts, although there were obviously some opinions in the Craig section.

I agree with you that the more interesting question is whether new atheism is somehow deficient which, like all atheism, it is. We could both write a book about that, but that wasn’t the point of the article, which was intended to show that no one should take seriously anything Dawkins says. If you think that’s ad hominem, well that’s up to you.

If Craig is a charlatan, and was merely using rhetoric, how come he was praised so highly by Harris and Hitchens? Why did they not manage to expose his flaws in the debates? Why did two atheist websites praise his efforts?

Dawkins is indeed old and probably not so sharp now. Most of what I’m referring to came from some time ago, however. We’re obviously going to disagree but, if even in your prime you’re advocating a false theory, it’s always going to be possible to have your arguments exposed.

I may agree with you that challenging the new atheist’s commitment to science and to empirical truth is asinine, or at least that there are more important problems. However, there remains the problem that lots of the public are persuaded by this stuff. Did you catch the slogan on the T-shirt of the young man in the photo? You are more knowledgeable and sophisticated in your understanding. I’m trying to work at the level of the average person’s mentality. So, if I can persuade anyone at all that Dawkins is not someone who should be listened to, then I will have succeeded in my intention.

I agree in general with your paragraph about a revolution in science. There may well be some cranks and charlatans out there; how many is a matter for debate. There are also plenty of reactionary bigots, like Dawkins, and it may well be them that throw the words ‘crank’ and ‘charlatan’ around indiscriminately. In any case, being a ‘crank’ may merely be another way of saying ‘thinking outside the box’. Which is precisely what the early quantum physicists had to do. Do you know this quote from Heisenberg: “I remember discussions with Bohr which went through many hours till very late at night and ended almost in despair; and when at the end of the discussion I went alone for a walk in the neighbouring park, I repeated to myself again and again the question: Can nature possibly be so absurd as it seemed to us in these atomic experiments?”

They could have dismissed their results as being cranky, but they had the courage to continue, and several decades later quantum mechanics was described as the most successful physical theory of all time.

I agree with what you say about vindication, but we should not be in a hurry to dismiss apparently ‘cranky’ ideas, especially at a time when scientific materialism has reached a total dead-end. Some of these ideas may well be more true than you think.

I agree with what you say about QM about the need for a revision. I had made that point in the article, but then edited it out for length considerations.

We’re probably not going to make much progress on the Sheldrake issue. Even ‘the vast majority of biologists’, the number of which I would argue is diminishing as years go by, can still be deluded.

What the quantum physicists say in these matters is not their ‘personal opinions’, nor are they spiritual ‘speculations’. You are attempting to demean them by using this language. Their statements are the inferences and logical deductions from their scientific findings. They should carry weight because they are derived from the [currently] most successful physical theory, which is itself inferred from scientific experiments. [I of course agree with you that the theory still needs some work on its philosophical/metaphysical implications.] Biologists, or at least the ones you refer to, may not be able to see the forest for the trees.