In November of 2005, British magazine Prospect, which is according to their website "the most intelligent magazine of current affairs and cultural debate in Britain" (link) posted their selections for The world's top intellectuals as selected by their readers; Richard Dawkins made the list. He is called "a formidable critic of organised religion" and "perhaps the world’s most vocal atheist", and the article says that he "makes the case for science to the general public in a way few can match". Clearly, this magazine is not biased against Dr. Dawkins.

Nor could any bias be claimed against the author (Andrew Brown) of Prospect magazine's recent review of The God Delusion, who begins his review (titled "Dawkins the dogmatist") by strongly affirming that he too believes that "In his broad thesis, Dawkins is right. Religions are potentially dangerous". (Of course, all/most religious people would agree that all religions are potentially dangerous, but it seems as though Dawkins' theory goes a little further than that!)

However, this reviewer was not impressed with Dawkins' latest book, calling it "Incurious, dogmatic, rambling and self-contradictory", and concluding that it represents "one long argument from professorial incredulity"; sounds a lot like argument from outrage (aka "argumentum ad cerebrosus") to me. Now, when a Christian claims that Dawkins often resorts to argument from outrage, we may initially suspect their complaint is due to bias. But I can find no reason to suspect bias in Brown's assessment. (That's Andrew Brown's, not Dan Brown's! Yeesh, every time I think I'm done with The Da Vinci Code …)

To be clear, I have not yet read Dawkins' book, though I plan to this summer. Unlike certain other recent writers I do have a certain amount of respect for Dawkins as a historical scholar, even if my understanding of certain topics is profoundly different from his own. However, the above review seems to confirm my initial impressions of the book: that it wouldn't present much new information that I haven't already considered.

Further reading on The God Delusion:

• Dr Alister McGrath's Lectures on The God Delusion – Freely downloadable in PDF or MP3 format.
• The Skeptical Christian's Review
• Peter Kreeft's 20 Arguments for God's Existence – Not exhaustive, and some are naturally stronger than others, but a good list nonetheless.