Reaction to Dawkins

There's a piece by Keith Ward in The Tablet, giving his view of the recent Richard Dawkins programmes. Ward is a professor of divinity and I don't share his outlook on things. But this closing observation of his is very much to the point:

[W]hy can Professor Dawkins only see the bad in religion? Why is he incapable of making an objective, "scientific", study of it, in all its diversity? Why is he unable to make distinctions between the many different forms of religious belief? I do not know the answer to these questions, but I do know this apostle of reason, when confronted with the word "faith", suddenly becomes irrational, careless of truth, incapable of scholarly analysis. I really think it must be some sort of virus, and I wish my colleague a speedy recovery.

(Thanks: SM.)