The field of atheism has been muddled by the new atheists who seem to go out of their way to discredit their own atheism. And figures like Richard Dawkins are a disaster as they connect atheism with the pseudso-science of Darwinian natural selection. Dawkins has placed the key science of evolution in a false position and handed a gift to the religious right.
The question of 'god' and design is not so simplistic as it made out to be. From theism to atheism, thence to some intelligent perspective that can really stand as science or else confess what Kant long ago made clear: the undecidable aspect of 'metaphysical' proposition. After the idiocy and mendacious propaganda of Dawkins, the public is left with alternative than to mistrust science.

Source: The real story of atheism in science - Alternet.org