Why did Richard Dawkins try to tell everyone how to think at the Global Atheist Convention?

You are apparently too wrapped up in your own delusions to understand the difference between making a speech and "telling people what to think". You see, when a pastor reads from the bible and says if you don't follow the "gospel truth" you go to hell, that's telling people what to think. When a person makes a statement that the question of the purpose of the universe is meaningless, they are simply expressing their opinion on a subject. Not once in your retardedly biased link was there a single example of Dawkins telling people how to think, or what to think.

The article takes the opinions of one man and uses logical fallacies, as you christians so often love to do, to give it an importance that just is NOT there...

Interesting comment on this article - I'll bet you didn't read this:

Tedd says:06:24am | 19/04/12

To take and use early-mid 19th century anthropological commentary, by a biologist later given eminence for biology, as a platform for pushing a vague aspect of one’s ancestry, and having a dig at a recent eminent biologist with a post career expansion into aspects of modern religious discourse is several conflations too far.

Dawkins has never, to my knowledge, comment on racism as an anthropological mechanism or tool.

This article is an offensive gish-gallop.

Why does Matt Andrews find it remarkable that, when invited to speak at an atheist convention, Richard Dawkins spoke about atheism instead of biology?

Since none of the paragraphs you quote were germane to Matt's subject, Charles Darwin, perhaps he could learn something from Richard about staying on topic.

It seems to me that more religious people care about what Richard Dawkins says than atheists do.

He has a very valid point. Just because a question can be formed that makes grammatical sense does not mean that it makes logical sense, or that it even deserves an answer.

Think about this question: What is the purpose of the color orange?

Does it even matter? It's a nonsense question. The color orange doesn't NEED a purpose, and neither does the universe.

Ya think maybe he was hired to do that? Imagine: Dawkins had the audacity to talk about atheism at an atheist convention.

And what does your preacher do when you go to church?

People level ill-considered questions at him all of the time, in an attempt to derail him.

If I asked you "Why is purple?" or "What is the meaning of love?" you'd think I was just winding you up. These are meaningless questions, and conjecture about their answers benefits no-one.

oh boy....

i look forward to using this question and its responses in a future sociology and critical thinking paper

i find this interesting as many questions similar to this are posted daily only they refer to some specific religion in which the asker takes a tidbit or a couple quotes from a speech or sermon given and attempt to use it to expose some sort of brainwashing control hypocrisy etc and the responses given mimic those given in this question

....i'm not implying anything just making an observation

You mean at a convention on atheism he wanted to talk about atheism? Why that's like going to a conference on folk tales and talking about folk tales.

Natural stuff dont inherently have a purpose, unlike artificial ones ie pencil -> to write, however with both of them its up to the creativity of the person to find one or infinetely many purposes. - this should be a basic response of anyone devoted to the engineering area of science

now its beyound me why Prof. R.D dont do analogise with its scientific Area when he speaks his ideas, maybe too lazy to think