The god delusion is more an opinion piece than actual science though - I don't think anyone is using that as evidence to back a claim.
You can't be serious. There are legions of folks who think it's a slam dunk and the last word on the matter.
(I haven't read it, don't particularly care to, I will read what he has to say on evolution though.)
You can read it, just don't think it's anywhere near cutting edge. He stopped being a scientist decades ago and things have galloped past him. He's up in the booth doing commentary while the game on the field has evolved past him. He chose rock star and he got it, cultural icon and all that goes with it.
Things aren't nearly as unified within the NeoD camp as it projected to the outside world. The infamous civil war between the jerks and the creeps is legendary.
Here's a few infamous shots from Richard Lewonton:
Carl Sagan's list of the "best contemporary science-popularizers" includes E.O. Wilson, Lewis Thomas, and Richard Dawkins, each of whom has put unsubstantiated assertions or counterfactual claims at the very center of the stories they have retailed in the market.
Dawkins's vulgarizations of Darwinism speak of nothing in evolution but an inexorable ascendancy of genes that are selectively superior, while the entire body of technical advance in experimental and theoretical evolutionary genetics of the last fifty years has moved in the direction of emphasizing non-selective forces in evolution.
Who am I to believe about quantum physics if not Steven Weinberg, or about the solar system if not Carl Sagan? What worries me is that they may believe what Dawkins and Wilson tell them about evolution."
Why anyone still regards this guy as a voice of substance is a mystery. Ok, no it's not. He lays out what folks want to hear and they scoop it up without question. But outside the tent is a different story and his stock has dropped dramatically.
Now, all that said, while it's clear I have no great for Dawkins and would be happy to expand elsewhere, please do understand that I have no problem at all if someone uses him as a source, depending on context. Just because he isn't right about everything doesn't mean he's wrong about everything. He's right about lots of stuff, things to so with this or that tree and such. He's not right about the forest, and that's where he's not a reliable source. I'd still hear what he had to say, though. I never do just dismiss stuff before checking it. You miss to much valuable data that way.
If I was stuck in the same box you guys have locked yourselves in, I wouldn't have learned half of what I have because so much of it has been from sources I don't agree with when it comes to their opinions, sometimes vigorously so. It makes no difference because I don't care what their opinion is. I care what their evidence is. The rest is optional.
If Alex Jones says somebody did x because he is yadda yadda yadda, all I care about is whether somebody did x. I take that fact and go check it. I leave the bullhorn behind because I don't care for that kind of approach.
My official take on AJ is that everything everybody says about him is pretty much true. I can point out his flaws as well as anyone. But he's right about a lot of stuff, too. Just like Bush and
Obama and Tesla and Icke and Dawkins, and I hope some of this is getting though.
If you don't know the game from more than one perspective, you are not getting a clear picture.