Richard Dawkins is Britain’s leading intellectual celeb. He is to be seen constantly on the telly and at fashionable dinner parties. He is the author of the famous determinist tract The Selfish Gene, which, I learn, was the favourite book of the head of Enron. He holds a specially created Oxford chair to expound science to the masses. His verbal output is prodigious. He has a frantically busy website and runs the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. He is handsome, personable, wows the ladies and is highly articulate. With all these providential gifts he can certainly be forgiven for being vain, even arrogant.

Yet there is something wrong with Dawkins. He has an obsessive hatred of God or, as he would put it, the idea of God and those who propagate the idea. His life is dominated by his militant atheism. He pours forth a torrent of words, broadcasts and books on the