A while back I blogged about a tv programme called “The Root of All Evil?” in which Richard Dawkins, a person at the fore front of secular and atheist thinking, presented a case for religion being the root of all evil.

I enjoyed this programme, and as an atheist I generally agree with a lot Richard Dawkins has to say, and so when I saw a link on Tom Coates blog to a website of his, I clicked through to have a look.

The website is the The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (RDFRS) and unfortunately is disappointing. Even though I understand what Richard Dawkins is about, if you're new to Richard Dawkins and the foundation, this website does very little to help explain within 10 seconds what they are about.

Their main way of communicating this is a video that lasts for 10 minutes, along with a transcript of the audio. After 8 minutes of the video (dinner was ready) and skimming the transcript, I felt like I was being indoctrinated into some kind of cult. The video lacked the usual absolutely undeniable reasoning I've come to expect from Dawkin, and instead talked too much about money, publications, his books, etc.

Changing tack I thought maybe his more established website RichardDawkins.net would be a better bet. Sadly not, it is a jumbled mess of nothing. Its a shame, these websites could be a fantastic tool for helping to communicate the foundation's aims, but it seems his “expert web site designer” (who has a shameless plug in the video transcript by the way - point 3) is pretty shit, that or he's actually a code monkey, and someone who has no website design skill is calling the shots.

Disappointing.