Just got The God Delusion

[The Magic Pudding]

Oh, and you have a concise summary of all the great works on naturalism tucked away somewhere do you?

All is asking a bit much, I think the gist of evolution and natural selection can be conveyed quite briefly, a paragraph should be enough.

What about the ability to make us re-examine our assumptions? To make us come up with new solutions to exposed problems? To think about concepts that would have otherwise gone unexplored? They have achieved a great deal of that. The philosophical work on Atheism and Naturalism wouldn't be a fraction as impressive, creative and thoughtful were it not for those in opposition.

I don’t really care about the philosophical work on “Atheism,” I don’t even recognise it as an ism. Theist philosophy may give Atheist philosophy a reason to be, but it hobbles scientific progress, I have no time for it. A thoughtful twelve year old should be able find sufficient reasons to reject the idea of god by just living in the world, the same reasons that are in The God Delusion.

Religious leaders have told us for millennia they are the keepers of truth

And religious leaders with their unwavering dogma are not the same people as those in the school of natural theology. You've got nothing but a red herring here, it's just like the Gnu Atheists who go from debating moral philosophy to preaching about the horrors of genital mutilation in the same paragraph, a needless distraction that has fuck all to do with the arguments from the other side - If you wan't a stunning and rather embarrassing example of this I suggest you go and watch the following debate by William Lane Craig and Sam Harris (Atheist commentary included);

So the leaders delegate the thinking that seeks to justify their delusions to the Jesuits or some university department. You seem to respect these guys as worthy competitors, I don’t it’s as relevant to me as an argument over the power of a Borg Cube as compared to a Star Wars death star.

Suffices how? As an introduction to atheism? As a response to creationists? As a guide to secular thinking? As an advocate of humanism? In all these aspects it's pretty good, it suffices for me too - What it fails at is the philosophy of it all.

Well that doesn’t sound so bad, it sounds like something I’d recommend to the 15 year old OP. Can’t philosophy find something more productive to do, a discussion of heavy petting perhaps?

Which one? There are multiple arguments in that book. Are you referring to the main argument, the typical "who designed the designer"? If that is what you think doesn't deserve more exploration then you're dead wrong, it's a BAD argument. I'll issue you a challenge, go read through his book and try to determine what exactly it is he is saying, then present it here in your own words.

I think the book’s argument is it is very unlikely that a god creator exists, and religion is doing us harm. I think the fear of hell is a good example of the harm of religion, it is covered pretty well I think. If the who designed the designer argument is bad, well the alternative of there’s an Earth and a Sun and a Moon so some father figure must of created it, is just absurd. There is no evidence of god, there are the reasons to create god, fear, the need for explanation, power for priests. The stories of god look like the creation of men. There are many differing explanations of god, unlikely they are all right, it seems likely they are all wrong.