(wilkins) on dawkins:

“I noted with interest that he seems to have abandoned his claim that an agnostic is somebody who has an evenly balanced probability assessment of the existence of God, which is total crap. But he failed to say if that meant he now accepts that while atheists and theists alike are making knowledge claims, agnostics simply aren’t. I doubt it.

What I most came away with was that he sets it up that one simply cannot understand the existence of religion, and so must treat it as an evil, immoral, or simply irrational thing. Apart from begging the question (since he is so fond of talking about logical errors), it makes the origins of religion a miracle. Now Dawkins is fond of miracles. He has said that evolution begins with the first replicator, ignoring the fact that replication systems are complicated things that cannot appear, as it were, by fiat. It’s a scientific miracle as he presents it ”

myers responds to wilkins:
“As for the charge that these New Atheists are unable to tolerate a harmless religion, and that their goal is the elimination of the enemy, that’s complete nonsense. We want to eliminate them in the same sense that we want to eliminate illiteracy; we will educate, we will talk, we will stand up for our ideas. Further, my standard reply to questions about what I want to happen to religion in the future is this: I want it to be like bowling. It’s a hobby, something some people will enjoy, that has some virtues to it, that will have its own institutions and its traditions and its own television programming, and that families will enjoy together.”

http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2008/03/dawkins_lecture_in_phoenix.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/wilkins_gets_shrill.php