What Wright et al and the religious seem to forget is this: religions have had contempt for each other -- and for non-believer -- for centuries. How else would you explain much of the religious wars of the past, not to mention the assaults on individual liberties by religious institutions in the past and the present?

When the Arabs (who were often Muslim) invaded North Africa or the Crusaders invaded the Middle East or the Conquistadors invaded the Americas or the European missionaries marched across the "Dark Continent" and elsewhere, they were driven, in part, by contempt of the benighted fools, as they saw it, that people the world. You only have to read some of the personal accounts of these invaders to see that. More than that, it was an often deadly contempt that they had for their adversaries -- contempt leading to countless atrocities.

While some atheists might share with the religious a contempt for views that aren't in accord with their own, no-one, as far as I can see, is making a logically sound claim that atheists complement their contempt or ridicule of the religious with deadly assaults on their opponents. The religious seem to have a monopoly on contempt as a pretext to killing and other abuses -- including human rights infractions. Nothing but contempt for women would lead the Catholic church to pass its anti-contraception laws and nothing but contempt for gays would lead some Ugandan Christian legislators to consider killing homosexuals. Out-spoken atheists, on the other hand, don't want to kill anyone or tell them what to do with their bodies.