Does reason have enemies?

After watching the videos on Richard Dawkins (including the one with Bill O'Reilly), can you say that reason has enemies? Can atheists be angry like religious fundamentalists? What is wrong with believing in a God, in the stars, in pseudo-science, in superstition, in magic, etc.? Whether all of these things are wrong or right is beside the point. Can they really be harmful to man-kind?

Of course reason has enemies, reality sometimes is really hard to believe; sometimes we simply don't want to.
For some reasons, human beings need to believe everything has a meaning. We are struggling every day to find meaning to our lives. Reason is of course a way to find meaning of things, of natural phenomena, for example. What human mind can't really easily accept is that certain things happen just for a coincidence. It is something scary, because we can't have control over chance. And we want to be in control of everything. We want to see order and meaning, we are so scared of the unknown that our minds is willing to believe literally everything, from tea leaves to stones, from planet positions to people charmingly claiming to have paranormal powers. Can all these believes be harmful?
History have taught that people that have strong believes that go against reason have the tendency to impose them on others, usually in very violent ways. Dawkins, at the beginning of the video, says something very important: that we live in dangerous times when superstitions is gaining ground and rational science is under attack. That makes me think of the Medieval times, when superstitions had many fellows and the scientists were persecuted. Is this happening again? I don't think that the situation is now as bad as it was, but yes, superstions and believes can be harmful: let's just think of all the people that spend lots of money and become addicted to this "magician"  that claim to solve their problems.

But, after all, is there something that men can use without being harmful? Science can be harmful as well if used for the wrong purposes. 

In what I disagree with Dawkins is the fact that he wants to "get rid" of the superstitions. This is impossible and useless because, as I've said, humans need to have a faith and worship something. There was a South Park episode in which there was a future that, thanks to Dawkins himself (and miss garrison - by the way) was now completely atheist. The thing was that people still managed to find ways to argue and kill each other because atheism was the new faith and Dawkins the new god. 

I perfectly agree on the fact that they impoverish our culture and undermine civilisation, but humans are imperfect and all of us have our own weaknesses... For some it's chocolate, for other it's the horoscope...

School of lateral thinking

From mr. Philpot's blog: "Edward de Bono (1933 -) came up with the notion of lateral thinking as an alternative route to the truth. It's the kind of thinking that happens 'outside the box', using less conventional means of argumentation. Some techniques to make this magic happen included:
challenging the current models of problem solving for the subject of concern,
randomly relate seemingly unrelated things to our problem solving session by looking to objects in the room or pulling labels from a hat, or
being provocative and discussing that which we take for granted, like circular wheels or mugs with handles. These take the form of 'what if' statements.
Applying all of this to education is fun. A school in Texas started offering students financial rewards for graduating and their success rates increased. Needless to say , the results were as contentious as their method, but it got an interesting debate rolling on the nature of motivation at school that went much further than the examples on iductive and deductive reasoning as put forth above. And speaking of financial rewards, what if we lived in a world where teachers received exorbitant salaries, like those of football stars or CEO's? Would the quality of lessons increase or decrease? This kind of thinking is not only provocative though. It sheds light on the nature of education. Here are some more examples of lateral thinking on education.
What if every student who failed an academic year had to do community service to make up for society's lost investment in him/her?
What if there were no attendance requirements and students were free to come and go as they pleased?
What if students assessed themselves?

Can you add to this list?"

What if teacher were paid based on the academic success for their students?

What if students with good grades could go on school trips for free?

By the way, I remember when I was in primary school and some of my classmates were given money based on the grades they had. However, my parents always said that the motivation should not come from material rewards, but from the sake of learning for yourself, because it is going to help you in life. And if you decide not to study, it's your problem and you'll deal with the consequences. So what if there were no grades and no rewards, but only the philosophy of studying for your own sake?