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Andrew Brown at The Spectator: Bizarre, costly cult of Richard Dawkins

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It’s difficult to remember the hosannas that greeted The God Delusion and the vote by Prospect’s readers that named Dawkins as Britain’s greatest public intellectual. Much of the atheist/humanist/secularist movement is now embarrassed by him, and repelled by the zeal of his cult of personality.

Okay, that is bad news. People no longer remember the champ’s best fights, just his decline?

Remember, this was the guy who put Darwinism on the map. TV talk show hosts enthused about it/him.

What now?, we wonder. Well, how about bills, for one thing?:

For $85 a month, you get discounts on his merchandise, and the chance to meet ‘Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science personalities’. Obviously that’s not enough to meet the man himself. For that you pay $210 a month — or $5,000 a year — for the chance to attend an event where he will speak.

It gets better. If you can afford it:

But the $85 a month just touches the hem of rationality. After the neophyte passes through the successively more expensive ‘Darwin Circle’ and then the ‘Evolution Circle’, he attains the innermost circle, where for $100,000 a year or more he gets to have a private breakfast or lunch with Richard Dawkins, and a reserved table at an invitation-only circle event with ‘Richard’ as well as ‘all the benefits listed above’, so he still gets a discount on his Richard Dawkins T-shirt saying ‘Religion — together we can find a cure.’

And just think, we can dismiss it all for absolutely free and save our money for something useful – and evolve, or not, at home.

See also: Richard Dawkins at the heart of a civil war on the left?

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Comments
"the innermost circle, where for $100,000 a year or more he gets to have a private breakfast or lunch with Richard Dawkins". I bet the lunch itself ain't free either, and you'll have to buy his lunch too.StuartHarris
August 19, 2014
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Dawkins seems to be channeling PT Barnum- "There's a sucker born every minute"Joe
August 18, 2014
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Dawkins, and his followers, are the despicable ‘stumbling, droning inarticulate yammering fumblewits’humbled
August 18, 2014
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For a long time, I have thought that Dawkins provides us with a window into atheism/naturalism. Commendably, he has seen clearly the absurdity of trying to defend both Darwinism and the principle that God is the Designer who created all things in wisdom. Yet he has never understood that naturalism is the "dangerous idea" that relativizes all values and undermines rational thought. He lives in a world delineated by his existential choices. Andrew Brown perceptively writes: "At this point it is obvious to everyone except the participants that what we have here is a religion without the good bits." This is the spiritual plight of humanity - and Dawkins cannot escape it because he also is a human being. Those who receive the biblical message as a revelation from God will understand what is happening here.David Tyler
August 18, 2014
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Obviously that’s not enough to meet the man himself. For that you pay $210 a month — or $5,000 a year — for the chance to attend an event where he will speak.
I have heard Dawkins speak twice - the first time was free (a friend just asked him to come and speak at a local event and he accepted), I can't remember the exact price the second time but it was of the order of £10. I see that tickets for his current tour range from £13.50 to £25.00.Mark Frank
August 17, 2014
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