Something from Something means Something

This has been posted almost everywhere, but in case you haven't seen it, philosopher David Albert rips to shreds Lawrence M. Krauss's new book, A Universe from Nothing.

The other interesting comment that Albert makes is this:

"When I was growing up, where I was growing up, there was a critique of religion according to which religion was cruel, and a lie, and a mechanism of enslavement, and something full of loathing and contempt for every­thing essentially human. Maybe that was true and maybe it wasn’t, but it had to do with important things — it had to do, that is, with history, and with suffering, and with the hope of a better world — and it seems like a pity, and more than a pity, and worse than a pity, with all that in the back of one’s head, to think that all that gets offered to us now, by guys like these, in books like this, is the pale, small, silly, nerdy accusation that religion is, I don’t know, dumb."

If religions are cruel, a lie, a mechanism of enslavement, and something full of loathing and contempt for everything essentially human, then wouldn't it be dumb to believe them?