He’s done good things and he accepted an award for that from a foundation that promotes faith. Apparently, everyone knows he’s an atheist, so I don’t understand why the other atheists are so upset with him.

Snipping a couple of his quotes from the article:

“It is perfectly possible to have religious beliefs and be a scientist,” he said. “I’m just not someone who does.”

“If you were teaching Muslim sixth formers in a London school and you told them they can’t have their God and have Darwin, they’d stick to their God and be lost to science,” he said.

Also:

Lord Rees said that the confrontational stance towards religion adopted by scientists such as Professor Dawkins was counterproductive.

[…]

Lord Rees, who regularly attends chapel at Trinity College, Cambridge, said that while he has “no religious beliefs at all” he believes that the Church of England is a “force for good”, adding that he would do everything he could to help to preserve its choral traditions and architectural legacy.

That all sounds perfectly reasonable to me.