He was, but he was also talking about government.* Towards the
   end he was very critical about the way that government and
   institutions (collegiate and corporate) lock away knowledge in
   "black boxes", inaccessible to the general public. He didn't
   appear to be an atheist per se but rather a skeptic who saw an
   open culture of science as being the best defense we have at the
   moment against the darkness against whose who control the
   information / education / etc of the people. There's been a
   long-standing fight within the scientific community between open
   access and paid journal (as well as deeper restrictions of
   sharing of scientific knowledge via being locked into their
   institutions. It was exemplified within computer science culture
   by the contrast of Grace Hopper's persistence of an environment
   of sharing code vs the corporate and internal military
   tendencies to "blackbox" discoveries - either for profit
   (corporate) or for a chance for promotion (military -
   essentially, a political decision to secrecy... as well as
   keeping the budget within their department. But yes, he was also
   taking a shot at religion as well I'm sure - and a culture of
   ignorance = control in general.