Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science website

Richard Dawkins

RichardDawkins.net is a website run the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science which sells books, videos, and various merchandise; as well as the home to Richard Dawkins' forums.

On August 16, 2014, Andrew Brown wrote an article for The Spectator entitled The bizarre – and costly – cult of Richard Dawkins which declared:

“

...the Richard Dawkins website offers followers the chance to join the ‘Reason Circle’, which, like Dante’s Hell, is arranged in concentric circles. For $85 a month, you get discounts on his merchandise, and the chance to meet ‘Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science personalities’. Obviously that’s not enough to meet the man himself. For that you pay $210 a month — or $5,000 a year — for the chance to attend an event where he will speak... But the $85 a month just touches the hem of rationality. After the neophyte passes through the successively more expensive ‘Darwin Circle’ and then the ‘Evolution Circle’, he attains the innermost circle, where for $100,000 a year or more he gets to have a private breakfast or lunch with Richard Dawkins, and a reserved table at an invitation-only circle event with ‘Richard’ as well as ‘all the benefits listed above’, so he still gets a discount on his Richard Dawkins T-shirt saying ‘Religion — together we can find a cure.’ The website suggests that donations of up to $500,000 a year will be accepted for the privilege of eating with him once a year: at this level of contribution you become a member of something called ‘The Magic of Reality Circle’. I don’t think any irony is intended. At this point it is obvious to everyone except the participants that what we have here is a religion without the good bits.

”

According to The Richest, "Richard Dawkins..has an estimated net worth of $135 million ($100 euro) according to the Sunday Times in 2012."

Richard Dawkins' website traffic

See also: Elevatorgate news stories and Blog posts on Elevatorgate

Although his following of Dawkian atheist has significantly waned post Elevatorgate and due to his generally abrasive manner, as noted above, he does retain a small cult following (See: Richard Dawkins' cult of personality and Atheist cults).

Dawkins is a leading figure in the New Atheism movement which was called a cult by the agnostic, journalist Bryan Appleyard in a 2012 article in the New Statesman in which he describes the abusive behavior of New Atheists. The Dawkian atheists have been able to retain Richard Dawkins being labeled as an atheist in his Wikipedia article despite Dawkins repeatedly and adamantly declaring that he is an agnostic and/or flip-flopping his public persona between atheism and agnosticism (See: Richard Dawkins and agnosticism).

According to the web traffic tracking company Quantcast, the web traffic of Richard Dawkins's website fell in 2012. By October 2014, the web traffic for his website fell to a lower level according to Quantcast.

Web traffic of Richard Dawkins' website: Quantcast which directly measures its web traffic

The above graph shows the monthly website traffic to Richard Dawkins' website as of June 22, 2015 in terms of unique monthly web visitors. As you can see above, in 2012, Richard Dawkins saw a very large decrease in web traffic. The website traffic is measured via Quantcast which directly measures Dawkins' website traffic via embedded code on his website.

Alexa ranking of Richard Dawkins' website

In 2016, Richard Dawkins' website lost a considerable amount of global market share according to the web traffic tracking company Alexa.

In 2015, Richard Dawkins' website fell in terms of its Alexa ranking.

See also

• Internet atheism