Dawkins Spat

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2045102,00.html

The shortlist stage provoked a spat between two eventual winners. They were the atheist scientist Richard Dawkins, Readers Digest author of the year for The God Delusion, and the comedian Peter Kay, whose The Sound of Laughter won Amazon biography of the year. Dawkins was quoted as deriding Kay, whom he thought had written of believing in God because he found the notion comforting. But in a letter to the Guardian, Dawkins said he had been set up by a "hired publicity machine" and apologised.

Above comment in Grauniad on British Book Awards. If Dawkins allowed himself to be set up, knowing his public image (as Mr Pithy Quote Anti-Religious Nutter), and without finding out what Kay had in fact said, what does that say for his judgement of facts elsewhere? In this "sound-bite" age, he should buck the trend and refuse to give out instant quotations until he has examined the evidence. Belief that what people say is true without evidence! Is this what we can expect from the atheists of Oxford? Surely he can do better than that!