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As an atheist, I am uncomfortable with Dawkins' brand of atheism. It can get too close to the Thought Police for my liking. See this article of his: http://boingboing.net/2011/01/24/should-employers-be.html

If a scientist is producing good research that is getting published in peer reviewed journals and is generally acknowledged to be contributing to the advancement of the field, I don't care how weird his personal beliefs are.

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I think the concern Dawkins tries to show in that article is that it is very difficult to trust people with religious beliefs in certain fields because those beliefs necessarily introduce a bias.

Everyone is bias. Even if you are an Atheist you are bias. You have a cultural bias, a sexual bias, etc etc. Your everyday experiences condition you to react to particular situations in particular ways.

Obviously sometimes people have a vested interest in the results of a study, but that's something different, and doesn't only apply to people of faith.

It has to said that Dawkins is one of the most heavily baised authors I've ever read.

It makes it very difficult to trust his arguments about other religions, because he is so heavily biased towards his own... (and yes, I do think that when atheists hold such closed views as Dawkins that they are effectively religious).

If educating people is though-policing, so be it.

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