The God Delusion is well-written, but it isn't groundbreaking. It seems to cover ground that has been well-trod for a long time. I wonder if it wasn't written to be some kind of primer for 'new' atheists, which means that it could be the first exposure to those arguments that many athiests see, and so they consider it a transcendental work. That might also be why it gets so much attention. My guess is that most people who read it eventually move on to more substantive works and leave TGD behind.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
