If you’ve been irritated by Richard Dawkins, here’s a skeptical look at his most provocative work. If you found his forthright denunciation of religion stimulating, here’s an atheist who invites you to notice that The God Delusion isn’t science, and that Dawkins’ reasoning is weak. Dawkins is convinced that, as a scientist, he’s pre-eminently qualified to understand the world, and that if you disagree with him it’s probably because you’re not smart enough. The author of this book is content to suppose you can think for yourself, and encourages you to do so.

The Insulted Trilobite suggests non-believers can, ought to, and need to take a rational view of religion. This book sketches in the personal, psychological, historical and ideological frameworks Dawkins neglects. The tone is occasionally sharp, but it’s not polemical. More than just another reply to The God Delusion, this is an entertaining sidelong glance at intellectual dishonesty, self-deception, belief, so-called rationalism, so-called religion, and how we think, talk and argue about the world in which we live.