Carrying on the conversation (sort of)

You'll have to start here to get the gist of this.  I really just wanted to add that by the time Russell became a prominent public atheist (and, as Kung points out, not a very able one.  As TC says elsewhere,  I've found in general that atheists are not nearly so well informed as they claim to be, nor nearly so rigorous in their examination of their own positions as most theologians are.  Jacques Derrida was not religious, by his own declaration, but his examination of questions of philosophy of religion are far more insightful than anything Russell had to say on the topic of religion itself, as is the work of his contemporaries in the field.

But I didn't come here to add that to the conversation.  I only wanted to point out that by the time Russell was telling the world why he was not a Christian (as if the world had wondered), his magnum opus had already collapsed under the twin (but unrelated) assaults of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Kurt Godel, whose theorem of incompleteness was aimed directly at Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica.  The resulting destruction of logical positivism, once described as the only school of philosophy which had come to a decisive end before it's progenitor could outlive it, led Russell to other pursuits (like writing a history of philosophy and declaring himself an atheist on the weakest of arguments) and Whitehead to writing Process and Reality, which must have sounded like late Wittgenstein to Russell, and not coincidentally became the basis of a short-lived school of theology, process theology.

If Russell lived to see that, it must have pained him even more.

There is a lot of humbug in theology, but there is, among the best in the field, as much rigor of thought and reason and analysis as there is in philosophy or among the better scientists (i.e., those who know more than just science).  Russell's humbug blew up in his face so spectacularly he moved on to other fields of endeavor and left philosophy alone entirely.  Whitehead tried to pick up the pieces, but so far as I can tell his ideas on process and reality are not even an interesting footnote these days (perhaps time will tell?), and process theology is relegated to the dusty corner where the "God-is-dead" theology ended up (a brave effort, that, but a doomed one from the start). 

To put this further in context, I should quote Feyerabend on the Malleus Maleficarum, from the second link above:

Now what surprises the reader [of the Humanist anti-astrology statement] whose image of science has been formed by the customary eulogies which emphasize rationality, objectivity, impartiality and so on is the religious tone of the document, the illiteracy of the "arguments" and the authoritarian manner in which the arguments are being presented.  The learned gentlemen have strong convictions, they use their authority to spread these convictions (why 186 signatures if one has arguments?), they know a few phrases which sound like arguments, but they certainly do not know what they are talking about.

Take the first sentence of the "Statement."  It reads:  "Scientists in a variety of fields have become concerned with the increased acceptance of astrology in many parts of the world."

In 1484 the Roman Catholic Church published the Malleus Maleficarum, the oustanding textbook on witchcraft.  The Malleus is a very interesting book.  It has four parts:  phenomena, aetiology, legal aspects, theological aspects of witchcraft.   The description of phenomena is sufficiently detailed to enable us to identify the mental disturbances that accompanied some cases.  The aetiology is pluralistic, there is not just the official explanation, there are other explanations as well, purely materialistic explanations included.  Of course, in the end only one of the offered explanations is accepted, but the alternatives are discussed and so one can judge the arguments that lead to their elimination.   This feature makes the Malleus superior to almost every physics, biology, chemistry textbook of today.   Even the theology is pluralistic, heretical views are not passed over in silence, nor are they ridiculed;  they are described, examined, and removed by argument.   The authors know the subject, they know their opponents, they give a correct account of the positions of their opponents, they argue against these positions and they use the best knowledge available at the time of their arguments.

The book has an introduction, a bull by Pope Innocent VIII, issued in 1484.   The bull reads:  "It has indeed come to our ears, not without afflicting us with bitter sorrow, that in ...."  - and now comes a long list of countries and counties - "many persons of both sexes unmindful of their own salvation have strayed from the Catholic Faith and have abandoned themselves to devils ..." and so on.  The words are almost the same as the words in the beginning of the "Statement,"  and so are the sentiments expressed.  Both the Pope and the "186 leading scientists"  deplore the increasing popularity of what they think are disreputable views.  But what a difference in literacy and scholarship!

Comparing the Malleus with accounts of contemporary knowledge the reader can easily verify that the Pope and his learned authors knew what they were talking about.  This cannot be said of our scientists.  They neither know the subject they attack, astrology, nor those parts of their own science that undermine the attack.

The scientists referenced there were signatories to a petition against astrology.  What Feyerabend is critiquing is their complete lack of argument against astrology, other than it's wrong based on their authority as scientists.  I teach my students in freshman English to reason better than that.  I include this quote because it summarizes neatly and eloquently my own experience reading (especially) Catholic theologians.  They "know the subject, ...know their opponents, ... give a correct account of the positions of their opponents, ...argue against these positions and ...use the best knowledge available at the time of their arguments."  And the highlighted sentence in that first paragraph makes me realize again why my college students can't engage in the simplest critical analysis of a sentence, much less a complex idea.  They are never taught to.

I learned how to do that from my own private studies in philosophy and theology long before I got to college,  Not because I am so clever and wise, but because it was the only way to understand what I was reading.  Failure to understand, failure to even try to understand, is not proof of superior understanding.