I often wonder why hard-line atheists ('fundamentalists', so-called) are often singled out in the relevant letters threads for special opprobrium, as if myopic self-righteousness were not a trait to be found in adherents of any ideology. Calling a group of people out for having within their fold a vocal subset with an adamant belief in its own moral superiority is an activity possessed of all the insight of observing that human suffering is generally bad, and ought to be avoided. It's not a substantive criticism; it's just a subtle means of complaining about the fact that there are a bunch of people out there rude enough not to agree with you. There's nothing wrong with pointing out the danger inherent in certain specific ideas (such as the belief that we have to bomb Iran in order to bring about the Apocalypse, or, on the other side of the ideological coin, that we should bomb a nuclear-capable, predominantly Muslim country simply because we're convinced of their religious irrationality) but observing that strident zealotry is bad is neither productive nor novel.

Even if the New Atheists have the temperment to be as persecutive as modern Christian fundamentalists, the fact remains that they are not a coherent social force. If Mr. Hitchens and Mr. Harris have any influence outside of the publishing world, it's because their ideas about U.S. foreign policy have broad neo-conservative streaks and, as such, are being at least partly implemented by their Muslim-fearing fellow travelers; you'll notice that public atheists like Richard Dawkins whose beliefs do not comport with American militarism wield rather less direct influence in the world (or at least have not been recruited as its cheerleaders), a point that Mr. Hedges seems to recognize. When an organized, hard-line atheist movement starts gaining popular support in this society based on its atheism rather than its Islamophobia (and I would argue that Hitchens and Harris hardly qualify as a 'movement'), then I'll start to worry about the advent of a godless Inquisition. Until then, I'm decidedly more concerned with some Americans' very ecumenical lust for the indiscriminate deployment of our country's military resources against Those Who Scare Us.

I won't deny that a lot of people have used religion as an excuse to oppress others, and a nearly unforgivable amount of damage has been done in the name of God, Jesus, Allah, Yahweh, and any other divine names you might think of. But most of the good that has come into the world has also come through the work and sacrifice of those who believed in a supreme being.

In fact, if you want to flip the tables around and compare atheism's accomplishments for humanity with those of religion's, I'm afraid you will find the former quite lacking.

Why thank you for pointing out what a great an noble tradition that you're heir to, and what a fallow and selfish one that I've inherited. That you have the gall to claim democracy as essentially inspired by religion is simply staggering. Yes, the people who gave us democracy, which is an idea with absolutely no basis in religion, generally believed in some form of deity (the Greeks had their gods, the American founding fathers their varied sects and philosophies, etc.), but by that logic we might as well also credit religion with inventing the indoor plumbing and peanut butter. Isaac Newton believed in God; shall we credit religion with the derivation of F=ma? I don't think I need to go on to pointing out the yawning chasm in your reasoning here.

As for religious tolerance, which you also cite as one of the flowers of faith, I should only have to point you to John Locke's A Letter Concerning Toleration, in which it is made abundantly clear that the primary argument for religious tolerance is that humans has an unhealthy habit of using the power of the state to abuse those who don't share their beliefs about God. Secular society is a necessary arrangement to keep you bloody fools from cutting each other's throats, not your enlightened gift to the world.

I've a few more complaints about your assertion that religion is the principle force for bettering the human condition: The women's suffrage movement had strong irreligious/freethinking currents which, incidentally, were eventually pared away in favor of making the movement more palatable to the religiously conservative (consider Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Women's Bible). The American civil rights movement, while certainly having a strong religious component, was not closed to the irreligious (who did, I should note, take part in the movement), to say nothing of the fact that equality under the law is, like democracy, not an inherently religious concept. And finally, you can't deny that in both cases religion did duty on the other side of the battle lines as well, being invoked by equality's reactionary opponents and doing as much to retard human progress as to to drive it forward.

To put it bluntly, your attempt to accrue all credit for the betterment of humanity to humanity's religious impulses is specious, and your implicit disparagement of the irreligious as venal, selfish and unconcerned or less concerned with the cause of equality is profoundly insulting. Your sanctimonious posturing is every bit as infuriating as any self-righteous atheist's.