I've always thought Dawkins rude (or to use his pet word, "truculent") when he debates religious figureheads. In particular, his confrontation of Ted Haggard in The Root Of All Evil (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiDXiJmUnVE) struck me as downright arrogant when I first watched it. In the first chapter of The God Delusion, Dawkins explains why he appears this way.
I didn't get the significance of this until he spelled it out.A widespread assumption, which nearly everybody in our society accepts — the non-religious included — is that religious faith is especially vulnerable to offence and should be protected by an abnormally thick wall of respect, in a different class from the respect that any human being should pay to any other.
If I tell a Baptist from Montreal that his passion for the Habs is absurd (let's face it, they're a sorry excuse for a hockey team. No really, they are,) I'll get an earful, for sure. But he won't be offended the way he would be if I said "your belief in literal biblical creationism is absurd," which would most assuredly be taken as insult. Why can I question his inane allegience to a hockey team but not to a creation myth?
It's this disconnect that makes Dawkins appear standoffish. He treats religious debate no differently than sports or political debate (why should he?) and this piques our ingrained, unquestioned assumption that religious beliefs are somehow special or privileged. He appears to be insulting, when in fact he's affording religious belief the same respect that he affords any belief, by openly and honestly questioning it.
But enlightening as that realization was, it's got nothing on the last chapter of the book, which is simply stunning. I read it this morning, and my head's still spinning.