Ditto with atheists.
Mostly, I try to follow Jesus' teaching--"Do not judge".
I don't know that Hawking has described himself as an atheist. If he has, then I respect his self-definition. That he doesn't fit neatly in the majority Atheist fold, and thus causes other atheists to question his qualifications is also a fact. But, for me, if it says it's a duck, at the very least, I'd let it use my pond.
I read an article the other day wherein Diana Butler Bass said Hitchens wasn't an atheist, really. He just didn't believe in a violent god (frankly, given his writings, I think a violent god would've been the way he'd go, if he had wanted a god, but I digress). I disliked Hitchens, and am beyond sick of the hagiographies that have appeared on DU and elsewhere. But whatever else he may have been, he called himself an atheist. It's not DBB's business to "fix" his self-definition.
I'm also no fan of this Pope (or, as we used to call him at the Boston College School of Theology, "Joe the Rat"
, but I know he believes that Jesus is the Messiah, and holds to the Trinity. In my book, he's a very self-righteous, relatively intolerant Christian.
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