Dawkins-If Religion worked like science....

[Existentialist]

Sure, that doesn't change the point of his example though, even though he named it clumsily.

The whole point of Dawkins's example is that he thinks it is ridiculous that belief about morality, the cosmos and humanity can be mapped geographically in great detail. Only if we accept this starting point is his joke about scientists' beliefs about the cause of on extinction funny. The reason it isn't funny, and why the joke is instead annoying, is that these beliefs aren't mapped geographically. There are some maps about predominant religion, but that's a different thing from what people believe. If he'd said it's ridiculous that predominant religion is mapped geographically, he'd be more accurate, but he wouldn't then have a starting to make his joke about scientific belief. Hence it does change the point of his example, he named it deliberately rather than clumsily, and the delivery was slow, affected and laboured. Gross.

Dawkins irritates me to death. Too much of what he says about religion and atheism is full of these blatent logical inconsistencies. I wish he'd just stick to talking about science.

By the way, I haven't read 'The God Delusion'. I picked it up in a bookshop once and looked in the index for anything about "Existentialism" or "Sartre", but there wasn't anything so I concluded he was a useless philosopher and put the book down. For hardcore atheist reading I would recommend "Existentialism is a Humanism", which can be read on line.