He was outraged that scientific theories and progress can be pushed aside by religious prejudice. He was also annoyed that people feel religion deserves an inordinate amount of respect: “A widespread assumption, which nearly everybody in our society accepts—the non-religious included—is that religious faith is especially vulnerable to offense and should be protected by an abnormally thick wall of respect, in a different class from the respect that any human being should pay to any other.”

This respect, which some even think is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, keeps us from examining or debating any topic which is understood to be religious.

Atheists, by contrast, receive nothing but scorn from many religious persons around the country. I agree with Dawkins. I cannot see how stating the obvious fact—obvious for several centuries now--that science has made a religious hypothesis about the natural world superfluous--should be greeted with such scorn.

We would be in a far better position worldwide if we, as Americans, had stopped to debate a foreign policy and a domestic policy that was foisted upon us in the last six years with a veneer of undeserved religiosity.

On the other hand, Dawkins' own polemics in the book may blind many of us to his basic point. He does not seem to see where religious sensibilities do matter in human experience. I do not feel that the differences between theism and atheism are that significant for explaining the world.

For me, the real value of religion lies in the world of symbols and ideas—a world which contains not only religious values but also justice and beauty. And I agree with Dom Crossan that we should be careful not to mistake the symbol for the reality. If someone points out the beauty of the moon, one shouldn’t argue about the hand that indicates it.

A great deal of vituperation against non-believers is really a kind of fear that the doubts they sow might imperil our surety of eternal life. But I think that faith should contain doubt, not remove it. Faith that does not recognize doubt is merely fanaticism. And that is what I wrote in my book, Life After Death.

I do not agree with everything that Dawkins says. He gets lost in his moral outrage. But he indicts our inability to face the importance of science or recognize the many hypocrisies of conventional morality. These are real criticisms of religion as abused by the powerful or merely the frightened.

In a global world we should live humbly with our neighbors and valorize only those values which lead to greater understanding and tolerance. It was Martin Buber who pointed out that the world no longer needs religion to explain the material universe. Those who affirm religion in this world therefore need to recognize that the God hypothesis and the dogmas of religion are not provable in our ordinary world of causation. The proper response to this fact, Buber thought, is for all to live in a world of “holy insecurity” and try to treat everyone in it with appropriate respect.