like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used.’2 Many regarded these comments as ridiculously simplistic. Others, however, saw Dawkins as a bold thinker willing to tell the truth. Religion is dangerous. It’s not to be respected but to be feared—and wherever possible neutralized. It’s a time bomb waiting to explode; a loaded gun waiting to kill people. As Christopher Hitchens put the point a few years later, with a verbal economy matched only by its emotional intensity: