I'd like to (re?)raise the point that Atheism can be "hard" (Dawkinsesque) or "soft" (more my kind).
My own atheism (perhaps better in lower case) is better defined as "no (god believing)", rather than "(no god) believing".
And yes, this
is distinct from agnosticism, though I consider myself an agnostic too (in that I consider that there is no proof either way, and there
can be no proof because divine powers apparently exhibited can so easily be coincidence, superior technology or whatever in reality, on top of the whole "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" argument and whichever particular flavour of Occam's Razor you might present).
I also consider myself apatheistic, which (for me) is more or less along the lines of thinking that there's no point in worshipping an all-knowing God, because if you're a suitably good person that hold to their particularly demanded values then they know that without actively considering Them, and if you aren't then going through the motions at the local church/temple/synagogue/mosque/frozen-food counter isn't going to help you any. (Essentially, Pascal's Wager is toothless and possibly counter-productive.)
That all said, I have attended churches, recited prayers, sung hymns and otherwise participated for social reasons (weddings, funerals, having been part of the Scout movement[1]... that sort of thing). But any deity worth his mana that
does exist and has problems with that isn't going to be persuaded that you're devout just by regular church attendance, right?
And so I live a good life (give or take people's opinions) haven't murdered anyone[2] (yet!). My load on the society is probably well between the quartiles of the statistical bell-curve (Ok, so I'm hardly at philanthropist level, either). Neither God (should he/she/it exist) nor my fellow humans (who almost certainly do) should be able to complain much about my behaviour so far[4] and when(/if?) I die then (not that I imagine it would matter personally to me) I'm on currently course to being remembered here on Earth (or maybe even across the Galactic Empire) in some sort of positive manner by whoever cares to care about it.
But I don't think I proselytise my case, with the above, I'm merely explaining my personal position. So that's possibly another thing that differs me from Dawkins (or at least how he is often perceived).
[1] Which may not be as regimented as the cadets or as religious as the Church Lads'/Girls' Brigades, but (at least in our unit) had sufficient elements of each that make me at least admire a good smart uniform and know the Lord's Prayer...
[2] Besides which, as I don't particularly believe in an afterlife, I'm pretty sure that a death means a loss of an intelligent consciousness to the universe, and thus the flickering out of existence of a complex system that seems to exhibit self-awareness[3]. Which is not a happy thought to have. I don't get the comfort of them "being up in heaven, with the angels, learning how to fly", or even the psychotic "I can send them to a better place!".
[3] Not that I can even prove that
I exist, even to myself, and I also have a disbelief in Free Will (i.e. this is a fully deterministic universe, so whatever I do is a direct product of everything that's happened to me) and that consciousness is just biological and physical complexity interacting with itself, so some of my psychological convictions probably don't mesh together as perfectly as one might wish.
[4] Save for spending too much time on forums, perhaps!