"[...] if you teach a thousand children that faith, belief without evidence, is a virtue. Then it may be that only 10 of them put that into practice, but that's all it takes. When you tell a million people, 10 percent of that is a very large number."
Math is hard... ;-)
Perfect response by Dawkins to the charge that atheists are arrogant. People need to distinguish between vociferously attacking poor ideas (e.g. faith) and attacking people. It's not Dawkins fault that some have their identities defined by religions. Believing that your faith trumps science is actually far more arrogant than anything Dawkins and co. believe.
I really appreciated the overlap between this article and the "shout your abortion" story. The common theme being that if enough of us lodly state obvious truths without regard for hurting the "feelings" of ignorant people or mean-spirited fools, everyone will be better off.
A complaint against Dawkins and atheists in general is that he and they are arrogant and insulting. First, because of Dawkins and his cohorts, atheists has finally emerged erumpent from the closet within the last ten or fifteen years, and it and they are held to the standard of getting it perfect right off the bat. How long has religion and belief and faith been arrogant and insulting and downright brutal? Thousands and thousands of years. Yet, it is for the atheists to be nicer.
Faith is of course a virtue (ask anyone who's been cheated on). Why Dawkins continues to bumble by imagining faith has something to do with credulity only reinforces the bemusement anyone informed feels when seeing the scientist listened to by anyone when holding forth on religion, a subject he is utterly clueless about.
Math is hard... ;-)