Canadian radio host: Richard Dawkins would be the first atheist pope

Canadian radio host Michael Enright accused atheists of showing intolerance while imagining evolutionary biologist as their first pope, should atheists organize into their own secular church group.

"Atheists are not being prosecuted or silenced. They are lovingly tended by media interviewers, me included, and their nuanced arguments are politely acknowledged," Enright wrote in a commentary for CBC Radio on Sunday. "The problem to me is that they won't shut up about it. The public, endless public profession of atheism to me reflects a whiny, whinging self-pitying narcissism."

Enright mentioned that he has interviewed both Dawkins and the late atheist columnist Christopher Hitchens, comparing the two by observing that while their arguments were nearly identical, "Christopher had a sense of humour; Dawkins, not so much." He also accused atheists of adapting some of the trappings of Christian fundamentalism, singling Dawkins' writing out.

"His arguments are as immutable as Church doctrine;" Enright said of Dawkins' work. "Religion is bad, there is no God and if there was He would be a monster, religion retards the steady, unquestioned march of scientific achievement."

In 1997, Enright was criticized by Canadian religious leaders after calling the Catholic Church "the greatest criminal organization outside the mafia" in a column for the Toronto Globe & Mail.

Listen to Enright's commentary, posted by the CBC, below.