If they atheists, why should they care?
Dawkins is an aging zoologist who has long sought attention, not as a scientist, but as a "public intellectual", which is part of the title of the chair he holds. As far as I know, Harris reached 40 without ever holding a real job for any length of time, although he apparently traveled a lot on one or both of his parents' money. He is now one of the oldest graduate students in America. Both desperately want to be "relevant". Their schtick plays well to their devote believers, but is hardly noticed by anyone else. Neither one manages to get beyond the kind of facile arguments and sneers that I was a master of long before they happened on the scene ;-) Let them have their moment. They don't matter.
Most atheists seem to care about the issue of religion for a variety of reasons, here's my take on it:
1) Religious fundamentalism frequently appears to attack rational scientific inquiry, and public education in fields such as evolution, geology, astronomy, and bioethics.
2) Atheists perceive historical world ills as stemming from religion, such as crusades, sectarian violence, etc... often not recognizing that there are other resource issues or cultural disagreements that provoked wars, and religion was just the icing on the cake so to speak.
3) Atheists are frequently people who grew up in a religious background, and feel a lot of anger about being "lied to" as children. They resent the removal of certainty that comes with a loss of faith, and often foolishly blame the people who tried to instill the sense of faith in them in the first place.
For the record, I'm an atheist. I don't have any hostility towards religion. Far from it. I'd rather have the undoubting belief in God I had as a child. However, the sense of the numinous, or spiritual oneness with God that people feel is rather lacking in me no matter how many times I go to church. I do not resent people praying for me; I take it as a kindly interest which I do my best to reciprocate. Sometimes I tell people I will pray for them, and I do, but I don't really believe it's going anywhere.
In all seriousness, these guys figure that a belief in God is about equivalent to believing in Harvey the Rabbit. Well, a society of people who believe in ol' Harvey at a rate of 90% and higher is the freest, most powerful and most prosperous in the history of the world. Sound sto me like they should shut up and enjoy the ride.