McGrath criticizes Dawkins for what he perceives to be "a dogmatic conviction" to "a religious fundamentalism which refuses to allow its ideas to be examined or challenged.

"[2] He objects to Dawkins' assertion that faith is a juvenile delusion, arguing that numerous reasonable persons chose to convert as adults.

He points to Stephen Jay Gould's supposition of non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) as evidence that Darwinism is as compatible with theism as it is with atheism.

With additional reference to the works of Sir Martin Rees, Denis Noble, and others, McGrath advocates a modified version of NOMA which he terms "partially-overlapping magisteria".

[5] McGrath cites the works of numerous authors, including Kenneth Pargament, Harold G. Koenig, and Terry Eagleton, to demonstrate how closely he feels religious faith to be tied to well-being.

Publishers Weekly remarked, ... Dawkins's The Blind Watchmaker remains the finest critique of William Paley's naturalistic arguments for deism available ... [but] he can no longer say that Tertullian praised Christian belief because of its absurdity or that religion necessarily makes one violent.

The McGraths are frustrated, then, that Dawkins continues to write on the a priori, nonscientific assumption that religious believers are either deluded or meretricious, never pausing to consider the evidence not in his favor or the complex beliefs and practices of actual Christians.

[6]Jeremy Craddock, a former forensic biologist who is now a vicar, writes in the Church Times that the McGraths "attend rationally to evidence, and present their findings unemotionally to answer The God Delusion ... and make many justified criticisms."

Now enter Alister McGrath ... [whose] extended essay covers some similar ground to the others, notably in analysing the extent of Dawkins's ignorance of theology.

He gives an assessment of the debate between Dawkins and McGrath while arguing that both men fail to make the crucial distinction between belief in God and faith.

[9] In a letter to The Times, Dawkins writes that McGrath "has now published two books with my name in the title" and wonders whether the professor intended to build a career by "riding on [his] back".

Christian doctrine is remarkably specific: not only with cut-and-dried answers to the deep problems of the universe and life, but about the divinity of Jesus, about sin and redemption, heaven and hell, prayer and absolute morality.