An excerpt:
Listen, world. Dawkins and Dennett and Tyndall aren't arrogant: they're right. There is a difference. That's a real problem for scientists, that they keep saying unpleasant things like "the planet is getting hotter" and "smoking cigarettes can kill you" and "unprotected sex can spread some very serious diseases" and then they back it up with statistics and measurements and scary photos of tumor-riddled lungs, and ruin everyone's fun. Similarly, when Dawkins points out that religion is fueling terrorism and encouraging people to compromise our kids' educations, he's stating the obvious truthÂ…obvious to everyone who isn't blinkered by the false promotion of religion as a virtue. That's being right.I'm not so sure though that being right precludes arrogance. Dawkins definitely can come across as arrogant, which PZ basically concedes. Watch Dawkins on The Root of All Evil and make up your own mind. Regardless of how right he is, anyone arguing against a deeply-held belief is going to have to jump through ridiculous hoops of diplomacy to avoid appearing arrogant, and I can't say I blame Dawkins for not wanting to do that.
Anyway here's a great quote (very thoroughly cited) I noticed on that same site:
What makes a free thinker is not his beliefs, but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful though, he finds a balance of evidence in their favor, then his thought is free, however odd his conclusions may seem.
- Bertrand Russell, "The Value of Free Thought: How to Become a Truth-Seeker and Break the Chains of Mental Slavery" (1944) in Bertrand Russell on God and Religion (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1986), pp. 239-40.
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