The God Delusion has been racing up the bestseller lists. Whether that fact worries, delights or bores you, out of the heat generated by Richard Dawkins come some points which need answering, and others which need to be brought under the cool light of scholarly thinking. Alister McGrath's book aims to deal with Dawkins' points and point out the flaws in his arguments. McGrath is a serious theologian, but don't let that put you off. The Dawkins Delusion is a short, easy to read book. If Dawkins' book is like being trapped in a lift with an angry man shouting at you, McGrath's is like sitting down for a coffee and a friendly chat. That doesn't mean it's all cosy niceness. McGrath has some strong criticisms of Dawkins's arguments and takes him to task over errors of fact and his hectoring style.

It's not just Christians who disagree with Dawkins' point of view. McGrath quotes critics of Dawkins' approach from both Christian and atheist camps. The cover quotes Michael Ruse as saying "The God Delusion made me embarrassed to be an atheist", and other prominent atheists have been equally critical.

McGrath's wife, Joanna Collicutt McGrath, brings her knowledge of psychology to the chapter on the origins of religion. Here Dawkins' lack of knowledge shows, as his arguments are put side by side with the theories of psychologists and found to be partial at best, and downright wrong at worst. The discussion of memes, though not new, reveals both the appeal of the meme theory as an idea and its weaknesses as an untestable hypothesis. Is the meme theory itself a meme? How does the meme meme infect minds?

The Dawkins Delusion is short and sometimes there's only room to skim arguments. The book is a timely response and rightly accessible, but some points would benefit from a longer discussion. The last chapter, 'Is Religion Evil?' is full of examples from history and psychology which demonstrate the benefits of religious belief, which do answer Dawkins' assertion that religion is evil, but doesn't quite do justice to whether religions cause conflict and how to resolve them. It does though reveal the lack of subtlety in Dawkins' blunderbuss approach of equating belief in God with religion and point out his many errors in Biblical interpretation. For those who want a deeper discussion, there are suggestions for further reading at the back, including some of McGrath's own works which do deal with Dawkins' arguments in more depth.

The ideas set out in The Dawkins Delusion don't break a lot of new ground, but this book is extremely useful since it brings together many valuable points against The God Delusion. It's about as likely to turn an atheist into a believer as Dawkins' book is to turn 'dyed in the wool faith heads' into atheists, but it should help many Christians who find arguments such as Dawkins' threatening, and need to think through their response.

Bekki Pearce, Faraday Institute, Cambridge