Suppose you are Richard Dawkins, former Charles Simonyi Professor in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford. You've spent years criticizing creationists and Intelligent Design people for not doing their homework before attacking Darwinism. You've staked your reputation as a scientist on a crusade against religion, dismissing it as the province of ignorant, bigoted yahoos and without a single serious argument in its favor. You've written The God Delusion, presenting it as a once-and-for-all demonstration of the truth of this proposition. Theologians and philosophers of religion have criticized you for not knowing what you are talking about. Fellow atheist academics have done the same. And you have dismissed them all as allies of the fundamentalist bigots. The people who actually know the stuff are wrong (you claim) and you are right -- despite the fact that this is the very attitude you rightly condemn in fundamentalist bigots themselves.