The thought that most frequently pops into my head when I read diatribes by militant atheists is “Why won’t you read a book?”

Of course, put thus, the thought is implausible. The militant atheists who get interviewed in newspapers presumably have read books. Christopher Hitchens had certainly read a lot of books. But there are good books and there are bad books, and then there are necessary books. And, clearly, they haven’t read any of the books that should, in a cultured society, be presumed necessary for participation in public debate.

Take the theoretical physicist and public speaker Lawrence Krauss. Krauss is, in a way, a perfect example, because he doesn’t even pretend to be a philosopher — unlike, say, Daniel Dennett or Richard Dawkins. Krauss recently received the 2015 Humanist of the Year award and delivered himself of a speech attacking religion; before that, he wrote a piece for The New Yorker that went viral, calling on scientists to attack religion.

Krauss’s belief — and it is a belief — is that religion and science are competing ways of explaining the world. Religion is based on dogma, and science is based on doubt, and those two are, at the end of the day, incompatible. One must win. I’ll let you guess which side Krauss is on.

The problem, as always, with Krauss’s case isn’t that he’s on the wrong “side,” it’s that he doesn’t understand what he is talking about, and as a result ends up spouting nonsense.