On Nov. 1 the Bristol University Atheist, Agnostic, and Secular Society met to hear three talks:  Julian Baggini on philosophy, Sheikh Ramzy on religion, and David Colquhoun, a pharmacologist at University College London who spends  lot of time refuting pseudoscience and alternative medicine, on science.

Colquhoun’s talk wasn’t recorded, but he’s transcribed it over at his website, DC’s Improbable Science.  After the mish-mash of theobabble we’re used to, this piece is short, straight, and to the point. And he takes issue with Baggini’s criticism of New Atheism. An excerpt:

Dr Baggini, among others, has claimed that the “new atheists” are too strident, and that they only antagonise moderate atheists (see The New Atheist Movement is destructive, though there is something of a recantation two years later in Religion’s truce with science can’t hold).

I disagree, for two reasons.

Firstly, people like Richard Dawkins are really not…