I think it was Billy Connolly who pointed out that you never read a line in a book with "fuck off, he hinted " in it.

Indeed it was. I saw him live at the Palladium in 1977, making that very point! (I was lucky to get out of that gig alive, having laughed myself uncontrollably almost to death for three hours).

Steve, you have said that you cannot excuse Newton for his work on alchemy despite the fact that that was mainstream thinking at the time.

I care not a jot what was mainstream thinking at the time. In parts of the US in the 60s black people were not allowed to sit on white people's bus seats. That was mainstream thinking at the time too.

You have argued on another thread that Popper was wrong.

No I haven't. You attempted to apply his thinking to an area of this conversation in which it was not relevant. 'Twas you who was wrong to bring him in in the first place. "Evolution is true" is not a statement of science (which is not the same as saying that it's unscientific). The science comes in the explanation, the theory.   

The comment about Einstein was a joke and might better be directed at Musket (see below).

Can't be arsed to make the effort to find out what you're burbling on about here.

As far as I can recall, I have never commented on Dawkins' abilities as an evolutionary biologist.

Possibly not, but I can make my own mind up about him.

I am sure he is brilliant.

But you've commented now. "I'm sure" in this context means that you take me at my word and haven't really looked it up. Yet you appear to be some kind of expert on evolution. I'd contend that it would be difficult to be such a thing in any rounded sense unless you had at least some passing knowledge of Dawkins' advocacy. We've moved on since the 1859 First Edition, you know.

Do you take my disagreements with you faith based [sic] attitude to evolution as criticism of Dawkins?

If that's supposed to be some kind of insult, which of course it is, it simply makes you look like an even bigger twat. Evolution is true and that is not a faith-based statement. It's self-evident. Sane people who apply just a smidgeon of reason to their ruminations think that evolution-deniers such as pete and his sorry ilk are barking. Nay, they know it! The theory is not the truth of it: it's the explanation, damn good but still incomplete, of a phenomenon that cannot be gainsaid. Not falsifiable any more. Gosh, why do you find this so hard?