Mr Dawkins, pushes his belief system (or his lack of one if you like). He does it world wide across many media. Is anyone on this forum insane enough to deny that? Yet there seems to be a strange logic poking through saying that since you believe that atheists in general don't push their views than none of them are. Ignorant stereotyping is an ugly think. But I am not sure it is bigotry. What is the word for that?

If you notice, over the years, Dawkins has become more strident or hard-nosed mainly in response to increased attempts by fundamentalists to hi-jack education systems in various jurisdictions in order to, eg, limit the teaching of evolution, or to give equal time to so-called "creation science" or "intelligent design".

We've had decades of "Dr Dino" , Woodmaroppe, Gish, and their ilk stridently "dissing" atheists at every opprotunity, usually with ill-thought out "jokes" and homilies such as the ones posted by OD at the beginning of this thread that go only to show how little understanding of atheism the maker of such has.

Atheists for years suffered these insults and put-downs without replying in kind, but trying to use logic, and knocking down the creationists' often deliberately disingenuous arguments with logic. This appears to have limited success....a loud voice and a snappy sound-bite seem to have more resonace with the public at large. So is it any wonder that after 3+ decades of "turning the other cheeck" a sub-set of atheists have become strident and vocal in turn?

For years we've put up with the religious viewpoint being the "default". Even in the (much less religious than the USA)UK, the BBC's "Thought For The Day" still ALWAYS features a religious presenter...Christian, Muslin, Jew, Hindu, Jain etc but NEVER an atheist and their programe "Beyond Belief" discusses religious issues with a panel made up of people from these religions, but again, as far as I know, never an atheist.

So in the last few years the fact that some atheists are at long last getting a "voice" in the media should be a welcome addition to the debate. The fact that several of those people have had to become strident and controversial merely to be heard at all shouldn't be a surprise.

Lookin gat the threads here on BS, I notice maybe 1 started by an atheist, and that started off trying to conduct a serious debate. I notice 4-5 started by religious people, all poking fun at or disrespecting atheists and atheism. In fact, the hatred and bile towards coming from some of the "religious" on here would, were I an uncommitted observer, I'm afraid drive me towards the atheist camp.

The religious have promulgated their views strongly for centuries, yet when atheists start to promulgate theirs strongly for not much over a decade, many "religionists" seem to feel so threatened by it that it seems they can't handle it at all in a sensible manner.