What are the True Threats to Reason?

Dan Hind writes in New Scientist:

The Enlightenment is in mortal danger from irrational forces. We know this because its self-styled defenders continually tell us so. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins declares, in tones which make the flesh creep, that "primitive darkness is coming back".  Politician Dick Taverne warns that "the new Rome that science built is under siege by the barbarians". [...]

No one would want to deny the challenges to the Enlightenment that are posed by fundamentalist religion and the other forces of unreason. But if we consider the facts dispassionately, it becomes clear they do not deserve top billing among the enemies of free inquiry. In fact, the institutions that noisily lay claim to the enlightened inheritance - the corporation and the state - pose a much more serious, pervasive threat to reason.

Link: What are the true threats to reason? (subscription required)

The article is based on a talk that Hind gave last November, and he has posted a transcript and audio of the talk at his blog: The Threat to Reason.  That's also the name of his book, from which all of this is drawn: The Threat to Reason.  He describes it as "still the best book-length attempt to prise the Enlightenment from the grasp of Richard Dawkins, Dick Taverne and Christopher Hitchens."  Sounds like a fine endeavor.