Surely Dawkins is another zealot. A more appealing one than many but a zealot none the less. He has reasoned his way into what he believes to be the route to the answer to existence and wants to impose it on the rest of us.
He writes well, I agree with many of his political conclusions but the idea that human science can unlock the core mysteries of being is to my mind a contradiction in terms. You'd do as well to ask a goldfish to explain to another goldfish the cornflake packet that is just the other side of its bowl.
To my mind anyone who calls an end to the mystery of consciousness in all its myriad forms and layers or wants to direct the quest in one direction only is probably guilty of merely bolstering themselves aginst their own fear of death. Which, after social control, is the prime use of religion. The more frightened people are the more likely they are to fight to the death to defend their death myth. Atheism is not immune to this dynamic either.
As for the bourgeois thing. Well he is an upper middle class academic and walks and talks like one. Who else has the time, resources and access to study, write and broadcast on matters of theology and science in this culture?
Of course by Maoist / Stalinist standards virtually every user of this site would be considered a bourgeois decadent. Judged at least on the nature of many of our declared shared interests. Which puts us in good company - Joyce, Lawrence, Conrad, Becket, Dick to name but five who have taken a kicking from the left. No journeys to inner space are to be tolerated!
Of course this is the same political culture that declares charity to be elitist. No wonder Bucky Fuller's ideas still struggle to get a hearing. Share essential natural resources and amenities (water, power, health care) freely on a collaborative, cross border basis? How bourgeois!
Arguably all theology (including atheism, scientific or otherwise) is a distraction from the stuff of living in the present to the fullest extent.
When someone just comes out and says "there is no answer, it is beyond our knowing, there is no playing chess with death, experiencing all it means to be human for as long as it lasts is the best we can do" that's what earns my respect.
