In April 2010, Richard Dawkins announced an initiative to have Pope Benedict XVI arrested when the Pontiff made an official visit to Britain in the autumn, the ostensible reason being his involvement in the Catholic clergy abuse crisis. Benedict was 83 and in ill-health at the time, caused in part by the campaign against him by some Vatican insiders precisely because he was proactive in exposing and punishing abusers. It was one of the factors that led to his resignation three years later.

It's an intensely revealing insight into the mind and manners of Richard Dawkins, and one far more accurate than the first volume of his autobiography. An Appetite For Wonder (Bantam Press) reads as though it were written by an extremely angry Charles Pooter, unaware that misplaced hubris is hilarious. But Dawkins is not a nobody and nor, of course, was Pope Benedict. Both surely knew that the abuse horror involved at most 3 per cent of the clergy, that the vast majority of cases were in the past, that abuse rates were far higher in public education or organised sport, and that an arrest was impossible and had been suggested merely for publicity.

There we have it: publicity built on a deeply flawed premise. Dawkins does have this selfish, perhaps genetic, need to be noticed. When the cuttings file diminishes, he makes another outlandish statement or growling comment, often suburban and ill-informed. The Benedict incident also showed Dawkins as a man happy to silence those with whom he disagrees, as his atheist followers — and they often act in a cult-like manner — demonstrate on a regular basis.

Benedict seldom responds to attacks, but just recently, in a letter to a more respectful Italian atheist, he explained that "an important function of theology is that of maintaining religion connected to reason and reason to religion. Both functions are of vital importance for humanity. Besides, science fiction exists in the sphere of many sciences . . . Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene is a classic example of science fiction." I bet Emeritus Fellow of New College, Oxford reacted generously and calmly to that dig from the pope.

The overrated tag is a vital one to understand in this case. As an evolutionary biologist Dawkins is considered by his peers as a sound and, at one time at least, a cutting-edge academic. To question that would be foolish. In recent years, however, his academic reputation has declined, which is not something he discusses in his memoirs or elsewhere. Frankly, he would be largely anonymous, and neither underrated nor overrated, if it were not for his ostentatious atheism, and in that field he has never been considered sound and certainly not cutting-edge.