If you’re familiar with Rosenberg’s work on non-violent communication, it’s not hard to view Dawkins as militant, even though “militant” doesn’t necessarily mean violent - it just means having an effect.

But Dawkins’ approach does violence to our cultural heritage which other prominent atheists aren’t as guilty of. Daniel Dennett, for example, cautions that, as good scientists, we should understand religion a lot better than we currently do, before carelessly destroying it. Sam Harris is at least respectful of “spiritual” practices such as meditation, and isn’t afraid of the word “spirit”.

Dawkins is a fine scientist, but when he speaks about religion, he is out of his area of expertise. He apparently knows surprisingly little about cultural anthropology, sociology, art history, evolutionary psychology, or indeed, the central mainstay of civilization that he’s slashing and burning to the ground.

If that’s not militant, I don’t know what is.

@PabloNeruda -- Because he is a militant atheist. A more accurate term would be antitheist activist. In a sense there is little difference between a militant atheist and a street preacher except perhaps class and venue, though they will often take their views out into the street as well. That is exactly what Aron Ra, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Seth Andrews, and many others are. They are class acts representing and presenting atheist ideas, god bless 'em, to the public in the public arena.

There is a line to be drawn, though, between rational antitheist activists and the atheist who states flatly that there is no god when speaking in public. It is a fine line and one that even I cross on occasion when I get frustrated while dealing with some god fearing nitwit. Where I am satisfied in my mind that there is no god/supernatural and have determined to live a life free of any sense that there might be fairies, leprechauns, and such, it is not all right for me to state that outwardly without including that it is my opinion based upon what evidence I have to this point.

When any atheist does that, makes the flat statement that there is no god, he/she potentially does harm to what we would like to see for humankind. A world without the nonsense such ideas represent. The reason for that is also simple: Until sufficient evidence is presented that there is no untouchable, unseen realm beyond the physical universe that we can measure and understand, we cannot know that it is not there. To make the statement puts us in the same position as those who say there IS a god.

Maybe just as right as calling mainstream news outlets that you don't agree with rubbish?