Dawkins to take on the US bible belt

Richard Dawkins, crusader for evolutionary theory, is to deliver a series of high-profile lectures in America's bible belt next year. Dawkins is visiting the US, where 50 per cent of people believe the earth is less than 10,000 years old, to coincide with the paperback publication of his atheist manifesto The God Delusion and as a prelude to the bicentenary of Charles Darwin in 2009.

Dawkins has said that the Enlightenment is under threat in the US, and has founded charities to promote reason and science there, and in the UK. But he thinks he will be welcomed in America's Christian heartlands, saying: "The Bible Belt is a lot less monolithic than it portrays itself. I have a feeling that there is rather a large groundswell of people who agree with me."

Dawkins, who is Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford Unversity, has visited the deep south before - in October this year, he publicly debated the existence of God in Birmingham, Alabama, making the controversial claim that the men who "flew planes into various targets across America" on 9/11 were not "psychopaths" but "educated people who thought they were doing good" for their faith. ·