Richard Dawkins Has Had A Change of Mind!

One of the traits of New Atheists was that in light of the 9/11 murders they expressed a measured anger at religion, especially Dawkins. In February 2002, four years before The God Delusion was released in 2006, Dawkins called atheists to "arms" in a TED talk. Seen here, which as of this date has had 2,131,473 views! (Talk about star power, wow!). His talk was first posted on TED in April of 2007. He made it clear that he wanted a campaign much like the gays used to gain acceptability in American society. His final sentence was, "let's all stop being so damned respectful." This strategy has worked. He's been pretty consistent about it too, even refusing to debate William Lane Craig, for doing so would gain his creationist views more respectability than they deserve. And even though I have produced works that treat Christianity respectfully in order to effectively critique it, so far he has not recommended them. I wished he had done so but it would be recommending works that do what he advised against. Well, there is a small change in the air.

Dawkins has recommend two recently published atheist books that treat religious faith respectfully.

The first one is Russell Blackford and Udo Schüklenk's excellent book, 50 Great Myths About Atheism.
Of it Dawkins says:

It has been my lot to have encountered all but three of the 50 Great Myths about Atheism listed by Blackford and Schüklenk, most of them many times. It is useful to have them all listed in one book – and so readably and authoritatively refuted. The long final chapter treats theological arguments with more respect than I would have bothered with, but the refutation is all the more convincing for that. The whole book builds inexorably to its conclusion: the Reasonableness of Atheism.

In that long final chapter Blackford and Schüklenk end it by recommending just two books, mine. See here. That's pretty cool. It's been a long time coming for me.

The second one is Peter Boghossian's brilliant book, A Manual for Creating Atheists, which is taking the world by storm.Boghossian is emphatic that in order to produce an "intervention" in the lives of believers who are infected with the faith virus, we should treat the "host" of the faith virus with respect.

Of it Dawkins says:

Peter Boghossian's techniques of friendly persuasion are not mine, and maybe I'd be more effective if they were. They are undoubtedly very persuasive--and very much needed.

In Boghossian's book he recommends my work quite a few times. My blurb for it is the first one you'll read inside the front cover, and he has repeatedly said my work was important for his, even calling my book, The Outsider Test for Faith, a "masterpiece."

All I ever wanted from Dawkins, or any other high profile atheist, was that kind of recommendation, something like, "This isn't how I would treat religion but it looks like it's a very helpful book." In a backhanded way he's now recommending my work. I'm very grateful.