I think he's said himself that he'd leave religion alone if it would leave science alone. It hasn't done that. Increasingly it is muscling its way into the science classroom.
In America they are changing science textbooks to suit religious desires. 'Teach the controversy' about evolution? Please...
Faith School Menace? showed that its happening in Britain too. You should reserve your mocking for the ignorant fools in that program that believed the Earth was 6000 years old and the Science teacher who said that of her 60 pupils, not one them believed in evolution. This is fundamental to how Biology works and not one thought it was true because of their idiot teacher!
Dawkins is doing what he thinks is right for science by making these programs. He hasn't 'abandoned a career science' to attack religion; he is doing what he can to stop religion from hindering science!
Indeed, science is one of the only areas that i know of that is truely peer reviewed.
When publishing any paper, you send it to the journal and then they send it to people in your field to be reviewed, sometimes you may know them, sometimes they may be your rivals, sometimes you may never had heard of them, but whats certain is that they understand your area. They then read the paper and make sure it stands up and the claims it makes are true and are proven by the evidence in the paper.
We are doing work now, which could have a decent impact, however we are doing all we can to try to disprove our results. If then they stand up to all the tests we can be confident what we are seeing is true and publish the results with our conclusion. The reviewers will have the data, they will have the knowledge and if at any point they disagree with what we are saying it will be sent back for things to be checked.
Thats how science evolves and its how it works.
Religion however is not tested in such a manner, you are told things and meant to believe them, even if they seem a little odd it is more a question of ones own faith, that the story told if you choose not to believe them
Evolution is where science and religion hit head on. The 6000 year debate has been proven to be incorrect by Physicists, chemists and Biologists all in differeing research streams for different studies. They have been peer reviewed and stand up as scientific papers.
Evolution is a fact, it is undeniable once all the knowledge is presented. It has little or no missing parts, it tells a continual story of life.
As time goes on this divide between science and religion is only going to get greater.
When i speak with people who are religious they always look for an unanswerable question and then use that as a reason that God muct exist.
If you dismiss the creationalism debate by backing evolution they then say well how did the world start, you say the big bang, because science proves it to be most probable, they then say what put all the stuff in that minute amount of nothingness, to create the big bang, if you cant answer they state it was God and get all high and mighty.
Religion would rather dismiss science rather than use it to question its beliefs. Science uses all it can to destroy its own theories with only the true and most probable surviving.