Following the news of Dawkins' minor stroke the Church of England tweeted "Prayers for Prof Dawkins and his family," causing a worldwide collective cringe.
The irony will be immediately clear to anyone familiar with Dawkins work. He is a staunch atheist and the bestselling author of The God Delusion. Faith in God, he once stated, is "one of the world's great evils".
"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is the belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence."
"Bush and bin Laden are really on the same side: the side of faith and violence against the side of reason and discussion."