So Mr 'Atheist' Dawkins, what's the full title of your hero Darwin's seminal work? '... erm, oh God!'

He is a militant atheist and the country’s foremost champion of Darwinist evolution – and he was on the radio to accuse Christians of being ignorant of the Bible.

When the tables were turned, however, an embarrassed Richard Dawkins was momentarily unable to name the full title of his scientific hero’s most famous work.

In his frustration, he even invoked the name of the deity in which he does not believe, resorting to a helpless: ‘Oh God.’



Embarrassing: Despite championing Charles Darwin, left, Dawkins, right, was unable to remember the name of his most popular work



Dawkins, the former Oxford Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, is a dedicated admirer of Charles Darwin, regarding the Victorian pioneer of evolution as the man who explained ‘everything we know about life’.

So his memory lapse on BBC Radio Four’s Today programme was deeply embarrassing.

Notwithstanding that the full title runs to 21 words, Dawkins confidently promised listeners he could reel it off – before flailing through a series of ‘ums’ and ‘ers’.

The dithering undermined his latest attack on Christianity – a poll produced by his think-tank which claimed that the great majority of people who call themselves Christian do not read the Bible and rarely pray.



In the broadcast, the 70-year-old geneticist said the survey showed that two out of three Christians could not name the first book of the New Testament as the Gospel According to St Matthew.

The controversial radio appearance comes at a time of fierce arguments over the proper role of religion.



Forgetful: Dawkins struggled with the full title of Darwin's book 'The Origin of Species' published in 1859



Last week a High Court judge forbade local councils to say prayers as part of the agenda for town hall meetings.

Another judge ruled that a Christian couple who run a hotel must not refuse rooms to unmarried couples.

The survey of those who describe themselves as Christian was carried out by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. It was designed to demonstrate that few people are truly Christian and so their beliefs should have no part in schools or the state machine.

It claimed that one in six Christians have never read the Bible, and only 28 per cent believe in Christian teachings.



On the Today programme, Dawkins said: ‘Many of them don’t go to church, don’t read the Bible, and an astonishing number couldn’t identify the first book in the New Testament.’

He said the survey had ‘pulled the rug out’ from under the claim, based on official census figures, that 70 per cent of the population is Christian.

The scientist’s downfall came with the assistance of the Reverend Giles Fraser, the cleric who quit as Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral during the ‘Occupy’ demonstration row.

Mr Fraser, a BBC regular, slyly asked Dawkins to give the full title of Origin of Species, afterwards saying: ‘You are the high pope of Darwinism.



'If you ask people who believe in evolution that question, and you came back and said 2 per cent got it right, it would be terribly easy for me to say they don’t believe it after all.’

Last night Dawkins’s failure was being widely mocked on Twitter as ‘an embarrassment to atheists’. One writer even suggested that the humiliation was proof of the existence of God.



But Dawkins said after the interview: ‘It was a dirty trick. Our survey wasn’t a trick at all. We gave people who said they were Christians a choice from Matthew, Genesis, the Acts of the Apostles and Psalms. They didn’t even have to remember Matthew, and it was just one word.

‘Giles Fraser’s trick would have been justifiable if the two cases were parallel. But the full title of Origin of Species has 21 words. I knew it perfectly well, and I got it in the end, but memory can fail, especially in a broadcast studio.’