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The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, newly published, offers comfort and scholarly reassurance, if not consolation, to atheists who might otherwise feel lonely--as, believing what they do, they surely must.

The point of these isn't to provide comfort to supposedly lonely atheists. It's to make it easier for atheists to come out of the closet, because Christian society, beginning with Constantine, tagged atheists as incompatible with society and worthy of government-imposed punishment. These books are designed to communicate with Christians, not atheists, just like abolitionist literature was designed to communicate with slaveholders.

In our time, religion, having lost its power to censor and dominate, still retains its ability, in America especially, to compete for adherents in our democracy of ideas

Hardly. Christianity is still powerful in America and it does exercise its powers to censor and dominate. Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court, for example, was only necessary because of that power.

We know from behavioral studies that, to the embarrassment of atheists, believers, or at least churchgoers, are better citizens--more active and law-abiding--than those who spend Sunday morning reading the New York Times.

Believers are more likely to be in prison than atheists (only 0.2% of prisoners are atheists vs. 83.8% for Jews and Christians, as of 1997-- 74,731 in the sample). Atheist nations like Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands have higher rates of life expectancy, adult literacy, female representation in the ranks of government, per-capita income, and educational attainment, and lower rates of infant mortality, homelessness, homicide, STD infection, sex discrimination, and poverty.

A person of faith might respond to the atheists that God's providence rules, but His mind is unknown to us. We might hope or guess or infer that God gives us freedom to make mistakes, to sin, to offend God, even to expound atheism--but we could not be sure of this. Our uncertainty as to God's intentions preserves the distance between man and God and prevents us from claiming imperiously that we know what God wants to happen.

Atheists think it says a lot that believers believe in a God who has promised eternal torture for not doing what God wants without making it clearly known what God wants (what's on his mind).

From this negative conclusion one might move to the positive inference that in leaving us free, God leaves us to choose and, to make choice effective, leaves us to choose not merely this or that detail of our lives, but a way of life comprehensively in politics.

If the punishment for exercising your free will is eternal torture, it's hardly free.

More pointedly, has not the atheist totalitarianism of the twentieth century, with its universal pretensions, proved to be the worst tyranny mankind has ever seen?

Religion and totalitarian regimes are quite similar-- an unquestionable authority. Authoritarianism involves an authority giving orders on how to think and behave (10 Commandments, etc.) and severe punishment for failure to do so (Hell) and doesn't allow the governed to have input in how they are governed (God is an absolute monarch). We have present day atheist societies in Japan and the Netherlands and in Sweden and Norway and those places are quite nice places to live.

Today's atheism rejects this serene attitude and goes on the attack. In its criticisms of God it claims to be more moral than religion. But it cannot do this without becoming just as heated, thus just as susceptible to fanaticism, as religion.

Not all fanaticism is created equal. You can be fanatical about not believing all you are told by authority figures and demand evidence for claims; about seeking knowledge and truth; about educating yourself about science and how the universe works; about leaving valuable contributions for future generations; about courage, honor, faithfulness, hospitality, industriousness; about treating others the way you would like to be treated, etc.

Believers are more likely to be in prison than atheists (only 0.2% of prisoners are atheists vs. 83.8% for Jews and Christians, as of 1997-- 74,731 in the sample).

Oh yeah! I would bet that Christians that happen to have 11 fingers and 13 toes are far more rare in the prisons then aethists.

You can be fanatical about not believing all you are told by authority figures and demand evidence for claims; about seeking knowledge and truth; about educating yourself about science and how the universe works; about leaving valuable contributions for future generations; about courage, honor, faithfulness, hospitality, industriousness; about treating others the way you would like to be treated, etc.

All all that you say is 'good'. And millions would agree. But who are you? Why should I listen to you, and to the millions, who watch America's Idol and idolize Hairy Potty. There is a primitive tribe on an island in South Indian Sea, that kills everyone who comes ashore their island. They wouldn't agree, I'd bet. And why isn't their value system any worse from your atheist value system?

"leaving valuable contributions for future generations", oh please, are you a presidential candidate's platitude finder?

Believers are more likely to be in prison than atheists (only 0.2% of prisoners are atheists vs. 83.8% for Jews and Christians, as of 1997-- 74,731 in the sample).

These are poor ways to measure this. It'd be more useful to know what percentage of the Chrisian and Jewish population is in prison as opposed to what percentage of Athiests are in prison. Since athiests are a much smaller percentage of the population, it's obvious that the prison population wouldn't contain as many of them. Your statistics are flawed, as they measure only absolute numbers and not per capita numbers.