Comment 66 by Red Dog :

Comment 64 by Sean_W :

Perhaps we should consider some of what we may have to ignore to make the idea of a separation of church and state inside an individual theistic politician a reality.

God has given us law. But I will not seek to have His laws implemented despite my being in a position to influence such decisions.

... (snip, and the rest) ...

A lot more could be added. Kind of makes the other side sound insane when they say religion doesn't matter.

The problem with your argument is that you are assuming most humans are logical and expect/try to make their various beliefs consistent with each other. Even for those of us dedicated to reason that's often not the case and even more so for the majority of people.

Human beings are amazingly adept at self deception and rationalization. I've just started reading what looks to be a fantastic book by Robert Trivers called The Folly of Fools that demonstrates the many ways that humans are capable of self deception and also gives some answers from evolutionary biology that explain why we are so good at it.

As a result for most people (unfortunately) there is nothing at all odd about having contradictory beliefs that are walled off in different compartments.

Yes, but let's consider this example (a real one from last year for us in this town):

In our school board elections, a candidate (unfortunatey) from another ward said of Evolution that he believed that the literal interpretation of Genesis was the truth, reality and fact. But don't worry, he said, he would not have evolution even questioned its solitary place in biology class.

What would voters in that ward reasonably expect to see happen the first chance he gets? (He wasn't elected, btw.)

Now to play rough and use the seemingly benign cliche that all pols who want to win an election want us to believe: Consider a politician from a church that sees blacks as having the mark of Cain, sees women as third class citizens, sees Jews as the big problem of the world who must be dealt with, or sits without comment during endless sunday sermons filled race baiting and class warfare (told you I was about to play rough). For all of these cases, we are expected to really see the candidate as swell uniting inclusive kind of guy or gal. A reasonable voter will likely and should reject that jaded and oft-used claim as well.

Dawkins is right, and as "strident" as he is, is free to call a spade a shovel. But Wright being maybe a little more "mainstream", in his defense, is likely obligated to feign such credible compartmentalization, lest he alienate patrons.