Arch-atheist Dawkins now thinks serious case can be made for deistic God?

According to British journalist Melanie Phillips, when Richard Dawkins and John Lennox had their second debate, at the same location (in Oxford) where Samuel Wilberforce and T.H. Huxley famously debated, Dawkins offered a surprising (for him) admission:

This week’s debate, however, was different because from the off Dawkins moved it onto safer territory– and at the very beginning made a most startling admission. He said:

A serious case could be made for a deistic God.

This was surely remarkable. Here was the arch-apostle of atheism, whose whole case is based on the assertion that believing in a creator of the universe is no different from believing in fairies at the bottom of the garden, saying that a serious case can be made for the idea that the universe was brought into being by some kind of purposeful force. A creator. True, he was not saying he was now a deist; on the contrary, he still didn't believe in such a purposeful founding intelligence, and he was certainly still saying that belief in the personal God of the Bible was just like believing in fairies. Nevertheless, to acknowledge that ‘a serious case could be made for a deistic god’ is to undermine his previous categorical assertion that

...all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all ‘design’ anywhere in the universe is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection...Design cannot precede evolution and therefore cannot underlie the universe.

In Oxford on Tuesday night, however, virtually the first thing he said was that a serious case could be made for believing that it could.

- "Is Richard Dawkins still evolving?", Spectator, October 23, 2008

Personally, I think Dawkins is becoming increasingly incoherent. His latest effort is a bus ad for atheism, which is slam dunk ugly. If the atheists can't hire a better graphic designer, they have more problems than I thought. (What's with the block, upper case letters? Why the fade to yellow on the key message?)

Anyway, why doesn't Richard Dawkins just start speaking in tongues and be done with it. You know, "Is Dawkins also among the prophets?"