Here's an ok rebuttal of these a$$hats.
http://richarddawkins.net/articleComments,622,Interview-with-Alister-McGrath-author-of-The-Dawkins-Delusion,Belfast-Telegraph,page2
Alister McGrath (54,), Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford University, and his wife Joanna Collicutt McGrath (52), lecturer in the psychology of religion at University of London, hit back in their book The Dawkins Delusion
What about his main argument, that religion leads to violence and oppression?
Dawkins treats this as a defining characteristic of religion, airbrushing out of his somewhat skimpy account of the roots of violence any suggestion that it might be the result of political fanaticism - or even atheism. He is adamant that he himself, as a good atheist, would never fly aeroplanes into skyscrapers, or commit any other outrageous act of violence or oppression. Good for him. Neither would I. Yet the harsh reality is that religious and anti-religious violence has happened, and is likely to continue to do so.
As someone who grew up in Northern Ireland, I know about religious violence only too well. There is no doubt that religion can generate violence. But it's not alone in this. The history of the 20th century has given us a frightening awareness of how political extremism can equally cause violence. In Latin America, millions of people seem to have 'disappeared' as a result of ruthless campaigns of violence by right wing politicians and their militias. In Cambodia, Pol Pot eliminated his millions in the name of socialism. The rise of the Soviet Union was of particular significance. Lenin regarded the elimination of religion as central to the socialist revolution, and put in place measures designed to eradicate religious beliefs through the 'protracted use of violence.' One of the greatest tragedies of this dark era in human history was that those who sought to eliminate religious belief through violence and oppression believed they were justified in doing so.
They were accountable to no higher authority than the state.
Dawkins is clearly an ivory tower atheist, disconnected from the real and brutal world of the 20th century.
Actually, you could say that religion motivated Oliver Cromwell and the English, when they murdered thousands of Irish women and children at such places as Drogheda. But these massacres were also the result of theories of warfare of that time, and they were also a matter of English vs. Irish, conquerors and conquered, resistence and oppression.
OTOH, the modern Irish revolutionary movement, beginning in the late nineteenth century and continuing through most of the twentieth, was NOT motivated by Catholicism to any great degree. The two factions are conveniently known as Protestants and Catholics, but they are primarily native Irish versus English/Scottish conquerors, with religion to help keep the two groups separate over time. But also there were rules of the conqueror to keep the two groups separate, with the English and Scots firmly in the controlling positions and the Irish not permitted to own a horse, learn to read, or attend a university for a couple of centuries.
The modern IRA is primarily Marxist in orientation, not Catholic. It has never had much if any support from the Irish bishops or the official Church. It would be foolish to say that religion had nothing to do with the hatreds in Ireland, but religion was rarely a primary motivating force for the violence there, except to some degree on the Orange side.
If not for religion, would the bloodshed in Ireland not have occurred? Very doubtful. The primary motivators were conquest, colonialism, repression, and resentment for being oppressed by outsiders.
Did religion cause the split in South Africa? In that case, we turn to race for an explanation, because it marks the most prominent difference. But there is seldom a single cause for such problems. In South Africa there were three or four groups: Zulus, Xhosa, Dutch, English. The Dutch and the English hated each other as much as the Zulus and English. It was not simply a matter of black vs. white, although that came to be the accepted wisdom.