WRT atheists, from my experience most people who give atheism a bad name usually don't even understand it or aren't what I would consider real athetists. They're usually teenage kids or very young adults just acting out, not having read much about it. Atheism is actually a very interesting school of thought and it is actually the counter-point that I love to read in response to philosophical theory, along with Agnostic thought (which I am more along the lines of).
WRT Dawkins -- he is a very intelligent but militant atheist that cannot get past his own acidic and hostile world view. I've not read this recent book mentioned, but I've read "The Selfish Gene". Dawkins does have a distaste for religion and an impartiality for straw-mans. He will generally pass his detractors off as "insane" or some other ad hominem.
Dawkins believes (from what I gather of that book) that we are machines created by our genes, which is strange because elementary biology is incompatible with Dawkins' reductionist, gene-centric interpretation of life. Genes are not the drivers, but rather they're components of the complex cell cycle known as Meiosis and Mitosis.
To be more succint, he uses his gene-centric theory to supplant belief in a higher power. For it, does none of that. It merely sheds light on what may or may not be going on at atomic levels. I remember reading an interview of his once where he called that book "The thinking man's bible".
How condescending.