Modern-day Jesus = Richard Dawkins? Seriously?

One main goal of this blog is to celebrate the ideas and thought of modern atheists, who I find far more interesting than my fellow Christians. One delightful infidel who I find almost irresistible is A.C. Grayling.

Grayling is a philosopher (at Birkbeck College, University of London) and commentator at The Guardian. His columns at The Guardian regularly celebrate secularism and denounce faith, and they're always entertaining.  Plus he has great hair.

Now Grayling is no genius – his attack on the science of belief was wrongheaded and surprisingly ignorant, for example. But his thoughts on belief, liberty, and British culture are worth a look. Check out the great little collection of quips in the "This much I know" series at The Guardian. It includes this gem:

I would imagine Jesus was a kind of Jewish reformer. If you were looking for an equivalent to the figure you dimly perceive through the gospels it would probably be a Richard Dawkins.

Who but an English atheist would compare Richard Dawkins to Jesus? (If you find the comparison to be horrifying or scandalizing in the extreme, then you really won't like where this blog is going.)

It's entertaining, to be sure, but seriously: Richard Dawkins as a "reformer"? That one's hard for me to see. Rabble-rouser, yes, and so was Jesus. They share a fondness for straightforward speech and a disinclination to worrying about what people think of such. But is Dawkins a reformer in the radical, rule-breaking sense that Jesus was? I'm a fan – I mean a big fan – of Richard Dawkins, but there's a difference between being brutally frank and being truly revolutionary. Call me biased, because I am, but sorry A.C., I don't see that one. Jesus should get a lot more credit than that.