Well and good. Now, there are people out there, minority though they may be, who are getting their way on the basis of taking your book of poetry seriously and literally.

Yes, okay, they are a "minority," but Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris are ALSO a "minority" of atheists. They are three guys. Three. The Christian Right is millions. Millions.

I realize that when I see the "The God Delusion" I read it as "The Imaginary Friend Delusion" and moderate believers read it as "The Hope and Universal Love Delusion."

That's just a gap in the way we humans see things. No particular reason it should be filled. Can't we all just get along?

I'd love to recede back into my "old" atheist ways of just quietly reading Carl Sagan and amusing myself with the antics of Penn and Teller and the Amazing Randi.

But there are real public policies to discuss and the reasoning in the public arena, minority or not, IS IN FACT dominated by literalist beliefs. To wit:

1) Whatever the potential hope or danger of stem cell research, we should most certainly not forbid it on the basis that a 100 cell blastocyst is a "person." It's not, any more than your fingernail is.

2) Condoms are essential to stemming the tide of HIV. Not perfect, not as perfect as abstention certainly, but sufficient levels of abstention, the data indicate, are not achievable. We must permit condoms to be distributed in Africa and promote their use. Religious formulations of the appropriate role of sex can be taught, but those formulations must not advise against taking appropriate medical precautions to slow down an epidemic. That's genocidal.

3) "Intelligent Design" is not a scientific theory and should not be taught as such. Full stop.

4) The ten commandments are not the basis of all law. They are an example of some law, along with many other coequal traditions both ancient and recent.

5) HPV inoculations will save many lives, especially lives of women. The fear that protection from sexually transmitted disease will "promote sin" is ridiculous and should be dismissed as any argument against immunization.

If you can square these circles with your faith, well and good. I have no objection.

But realize that there are people out there making these very public policies happen using your religion as their sword.

I don't care if they're a minority. I have no interest in developing a consensus among all humans. I care that they wield power.

If it was but one person with a loud enough voice getting this agenda met over the objections of ALL of his coreligionists, I'd still make the case for atheism as an attack on him. You all may say, "but he's just one man!" but that doesn't matter.

The Vatican is only a "small minority" of catholics. Doesn't mean that criticizing the abuses they've committed in the name of doctrine is nitpicking.

There are almost no explicitly atheist social work organizations because there's no particular reason to promote a lack of belief in God as part of humanitarian effort.

"Atheism," as has been said, is NOT a unified, positivist philosophy. Religionists want to tag atheism as being a religion (it's not, it's a philosophy) and then they criticize it for not being a very GOOD religion!

There are no charitable organizations devoted to the explicit denial of witchcraft. But there are wiccan charities. Should we non-Wiccans all band together to neutralize their charitable advantage? How about us "non-Dodgers fans" and the "non-Vegetarians?"

I belong to Doctors Without Borders and Engineers Without Borders. I've traveled to Africa to work on water and health issues. I did so with believers and non-believers alike. I welcomed all the help I could get and I had no interest in prosthletizing to to the largely catholic and muslim communities in which I worked.

Those organizations are not explicitly atheist and they should not become so. It's religion's game to tie humanitarianism to indoctrination. I'd prefer to just argue my beliefs and leave them out of my charitable efforts.

And I certainly don't deny that people do good work often because of (and often despite) their religious beliefs. No question.

But when catholic charities feed and clothe you with one hand and take away birth control with the other, we have to have SOME basis to object and that basis should be fact and evidence, not a conflict of matters of unprovable faith.