Mr. Naylor, I don't like absolutism, dogma, stridency from either side. I am sure that Mr. Dawkins condescending, insulting opposition to creationism, by stooping to the level of the creationists and school board grabbers he decreases the credibility of science. He should have stuck to the "knocking down the creationists' often deliberately disingenuous arguments with logic."

Our public radio has "this I believe" not "Thought For The Day" they often have Atheists expressing their beliefs. So maybe America is not as fundamentalist as many UK atheists think.

I am opposed to creationists and school board grabbers as much as you are. That is one reason I do not like Mr. Dawkins methods.

As far as this goes it is hard to know where to start.

"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."

I started two of them. One with an article by an atheist saying that three or four neo-atheists were becoming dogmatic. The other was a serious article about the demonstrated Islamophobia of that same small group. How you generalize that to all atheists how you call it poking fun of or disrespecting atheists and atheism is beyond my ability to reason.

The Heaven and Hell thread was about Heaven and Hell, the Atheists were not invited to come an mock those ideas.   So if it became about them, that is on them. The are Atheists really Atheists was a question about the definition of "atheist."

Are you sure that the atheists on those threads did not contribute their own share of the rancor?