From Gregory Paul, a freelance paleontologist, researcher, and artist:

Although there has been contention between the forces of supernaturalism and the (until recently small number of) rationalists going back to ancient times, the struggle ramped up 150 years ago when On the Origin of the Species scientifically removed the need for a great designer. Since then, it has widely been assumed that the spiritual portion of the culture war is primarily an ideological struggle in which the side with the better arguments, or public relations campaign, will win. This view is unsubstantiated, however, in that it is not based on a scientific analysis of data published in the technical literature. Instead, it is the sort of conversational opinion that too easily becomes the conventional wisdom.
I am increasingly fed up with conversational opinions of all stripes, and for the last few years have been working to solve some of the basic problems concerning popular religion—why is it popular, why is it failing in the Western democracies, and do societies need religion to be successful as theists contend (to the degree that nonbelievers are the targets of discrimination in much of the world)?
Sociological research by me and others is producing results that at long last are answering some of the basic questions about popular religion and secularism. The 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth happened to see the publication of an unprecedented number of technical papers on the subject, four, which were built upon a series of earlier studies. It is becoming increasingly clear that much of the conventional wisdom about religion is wrong. Most people do not believe or not believe in the gods because they have examined and weighed the arguments, or even because they have been persuaded by propaganda from one side or the other, or are following their heritage. Nor do highly religious societies perform better than those that have abandoned supernaturalistic faith in the context of democracy.
A remarkably clear pattern provides the critical information for understanding why religion is and is not popular.
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From Brint Montgomery, who teaches philosophy at Southern Nazarene University:

In my mind, it all started with those signs on the sides of city buses. You know, the ones that say things like, “You can be good without God” or “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” There are quite a few other pithy sayings as well, if you care to look. Soon enough, it hit me—the quaint social roles of the sly village atheist or disenfranchised ex-believer just ain’t what they used to be.
What’s put the “new” in the New Atheist movement is their assertiveness, or even outright aggressiveness, in the public space. For instance, at a recent speech at the University of Toronto, Christopher Hitchens exhorted that “religion should be treated with ridicule, hatred, and contempt,” and he is well known for practicing what he preaches when on the speaking and debate circuit.
This is in contrast with the more laid-back style of traditional atheists, such as that practiced by Paul Kurtz, the original founder of the Center for Inquiry (among other secular and skeptical organizations). Kurtz sought to offer a positive alternative to religion, known as eupraxsophy—roughly, a collection of philosophical commitments and practices that provide a cosmic outlook and ethical guide to living. He often joined in alliances with religious groups on matters of social justice, and hence had a much more cooperative disposition with religious institutions (though not with religion itself). Fortunately for everyone, some atheists, like Kurtz, dissent and modify their claws.
Then there’s Sam Harris, a subspecies of atheist with yet a different rhetorical manner than either of these two kinds. He takes a somewhat middle-of-the-road approach between the aggressive and cooperative style. “It’s really just a matter of conversation, and releasing these taboos that prevent us from applying pressure to people’s religious beliefs,” he says. As an example of where pressure is needed, he points to evolution-denying politicians: “there’s no penalty paid by these guys endorsing the starkest ignorance about the state of our knowledge about biology.” In Harris’ view, “there has to be a price paid.” Social pressure is being successfully applied to racism, which has fallen into disrepute in the last 50 years, and “real progress” has been made in talking about this social problem; likewise, he argues, “we can make the same kind of progress in talking about religion.”
Harris might want to recalibrate his manometer, though, since the pressure against racism and the pressure against religion are not of the same variety.
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From Brother Guy Consolmagno, an astronomer at the Vatican Observatory and author of the new book The Heavens Proclaim:

I know plenty of atheists (“some of my best friends…”) but, like most of my churchgoing friends, they don’t make a big public deal of it. The ones who are most likely to go in front of an audience to proselytize their atheism seem to fall into two camps. One group are Brits. What is it about being raised in Britain that turns so many people vehemently against religion? The other group are those who have rejected a faith that is very publicly not-mainstream: apostate Jews, Southern Baptists who have moved to the north; that sort of thing.
I get the feeling that they are desperately trying to distance themselves from roots that they feel somehow embarrassed by, to try to fit into what they see as the mainstream—if not the mainstream of popular society, then at least the mainstream of the “scientific” society they desperately want to fit into. (I am familiar with this desperation myself, of course; like every other graduate of MIT, I am convinced they let me in by accident, since everyone else there was clearly smarter than me.) I’m not saying this is why they are atheists; there are plenty of good reasons to be an atheist—or not to be one. But this may be why it is so important for these proselytizers to be aggressively public about their lack of belief.
We can all recognize that, of course, as the flip side of religious fundamentalism. It’s when you fundamentally lack faith in God’s salvation that you insist on saving yourself by following the minutiae of the law. (St. Paul warned against that.) It is exactly when you are insecure about your own holiness that you most feel the need to parade it, aggressively, in front of everyone else. That is what motivates a few of our more publicly outspoken co-religionists to heap abuse upon science, even as they show how little they understand it. Sadly, they are trying to earn brownie points with God by scorning the study of the handiwork God loves.
Likewise, what I find in many of the proselytizers of atheism is a very naive understanding of religion. If religion were anything like the rigid brainwashing it’s often caricatured as, I would have no part of it either. Clearly, anyone who thinks everyone in a religion rigidly believes the same thing hasn’t been to any parish council meetings lately!
Yet this thinking speaks to the deeper need for teaching, yes, sophisticated theology to an intelligent public that is starving for it. People don’t want debates full of fireworks; they want an understanding of the complexities of good and evil that we all struggle to live with every day.
Clearly, the atheists aren’t providing that. But just as clearly, most of our pastors aren’t either.