The spat came as De Botton revealed details of a temple to evoke more than 300m years of life on earth. Each centimetre of the tapering tower's interior has been designed to represent a million years and a narrow band of gold will illustrate the relatively tiny amount of time humans have walked the planet. The exterior would be inscribed with a binary code denoting the human genome sequence.

I don't think this sounds "incredibly misguided." It just sounds like a neat building where a woefully tiny minority of people with certain traits -- high intelligence, social conscientiousness, maybe a credulous streak or an awe addiction, probably religious parents and community -- might have a deconversion experience. If he thinks droves of people are going to spontaneously switch brand loyalties, then yes, he's misguided. But the building is still neat.

Also, I bet the woefully tiny minority mentioned above overlap quite a bit with doubt-fraught religious folks whose brand loyalty is bolstered by Dawkins' occasionally shitty attitude. Again, a niche market at best.

As for your second paragraph, yeah, you're probably right. My interest in de Botton derives from my stubborn belief that stuff like the Sequences can survive compression into one-sentence maxims. He occasionally nails this on his Twitter feed. He could be better at it, sure, but I think getting this type of compression algorithm right is what gets ideas into people's heads.

I deny that he plays for my team.

I don't know what it takes to get picked for your team, so I don't know if you have enough information to support that denial. But I do hope you're wrong.