I think it's dangerous that when people like Dawkins present the basics of modern evolutionary biology in a format and manner that's comprehensible to laymen of a degree of intelligence, people throw themselves into fits of histrionics about how he's "just as bad as the people who believe in God."
When schools are actively neglecting to teach of evolution (or shoehorning "creationism" into school curricula), it's important for something to be said. unfortunately, people can only think from their own mindset, and emotional, histrionic people assume everyone else is being emotional and histrionic and hear not the calm presentation of facts, but just another voice in a shouting match.
Which is to say: I think most of the "haughty condescension" is imagined.
I might have agreed with that at a time but to be honest I've seen how Dawkins and others, even AC Grayling who I sort of admire in other respects besides his atheism, have become more and more a mirror of the sorts of tendencies they profess to be opposed to.
I also dont like the way in which atheism is the pet cause of a lot of people who like to or wish to pretend to superior knowledge, learning, culture or simply just superiority.
Its is a passage of time thing and I'm sure it wasnt even as long ago as the second world war that precisely the opposite would have been true and intellectuals would have found non-believers social pariahs and what not.
There was a time that I had a really visceral hatred, or at least concern about, creationism and allied sorts of evangelism, I dont care so much now, they are responses and reactions, ill conceived in extremis, to misread and misunderstood scientific discoveries, the higher criticism of the bible etc. It is an irony but those tendencies need atheism as much as I would suggest atheism needs them.
Evangelism, particularly the sorts associated with solo scripture or atavistic thinking which makes traditional catholics appear progressive, is only going to stoke up atheism and serve its purposes. In time maybe even they will realise that but I dont have much hope for it.
Anyone who is a believer or non-believer in a more self-contained or contented manner is not liable to be drawn to either of the polar opposites of evangelism or prolestysing non-belief. Would that there were more of those kinds of people and ethics could be given its proper place instead.