It was an interesting move for Richard Dawkins to go up against Bill O'Reilly. First of all, Dawkins message does not lend itself to this sort of format. To (badly) paraphrase Chomsky, concision is the enemy of rational thinking. But more than that, the right wing talking head shows are inherently biased toward the viewpoint of the host and O'Reilly is notorious for talking over and shouting down guests.

That being said, I thought Dawkins did remarkably well. O'Reilly primarily employed argument from ignorance, appeal to authority and what I think was a form of the association fallacy (Stalin was an atheist, Stalin had no morals, therefore atheists have no morals). No surprise there as these are common arguments from theists when confronting atheists about their lack of belief. Dawkins held his own though and didn't let O'Reilly faze him. All in all O'Reilly treated Dawkins with kid gloves, was fairly respectful and it was a pretty solid showing for a 4 minute segment.

The only question though is did Dawkins accomplish anything? After all, I find it hard to imagine he even sold more than a few copies of The God Delusion as a result of his appearance much less changed any minds. I don't know though. I think his appearance on O'Reilly's show was a good thing. At the very least a large segment of the American population was confronted with a strong, articulate atheist. That's something Americans don't encounter every day. For many people in the U.S. the only exposure they have to a publicly outspoken atheist are 30 year old memories of Madalyn Murray O'Hair on the Phil Donahue show and as much as Dawkins et. al. are branded extremists, the so-called "new atheists" don't hold a candle to O'Hair in combativeness. So in the sense that Dawkins came off as rational and likable I think it was a net positive.

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