The New York Times said God is Dead

(apologies, couldn't resist the title)

A review of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is so slathered in the worship of intellectualism that it is quite amusing that the author cannot see his own gods even as he writes "isn’t 'object of worship' almost a definition of a god?"

The example "conundrums" are not much of a challenge to religion, so I hope for the book's sake there has been a sampling error:

On a more somber note, how can the “argument from design” (that only some kind of “intelligence” could have designed anything as perfect as a human being) be reconciled with the religious practice of female genital mutilation, which posits that women, at least, as nature creates them, are not so perfect after all? Whether sallies like these give pause to the believer is a question I can’t answer.

Disclaimer: I have not read the book itself yet. But this quote seems to make it obvious that the reviewer, if not the author, has fallen into the most common errors of atheists I have argued with: he has combined all religions together into one lump, and is then crowing over having found logical flaws in his Frankenstein's monster.

To specifically take apart the question in the quote: before you ask whether being unable to reconcile intelligent design theory with genital mutilation challenges the value of religion, you must find a group that actually holds both of these as part of their religious values. Additionally, to be caught in a contradiction, this group must believe that they are making the female more physically perfect than she was created; this is not a reason for the practice that was given on any of the websites I found in my brief research.

The vast majority of your religious readers will not be in this small group and will find you tedious instead of having their faith shaken.

With this considered, the following concession in an otherwise glowing review seems to render the book especially worthless:

And all the logical sallies don’t exactly add up to a sustained argument...

It is impossible to logically tear down all of religion in vignettes because religion is not a unified front. When you try to take all of religion as a whole, it should be no surprise that you find contradictions and fallacies; religions disagree. There is even immense variety within Christianity and within church congregations.

Anyone who challenges the vague beast of "religion," picking his battles, is sure to win a meaningless victory. It would be far more interesting to debate an individual apologist who is practiced at articulating his beliefs. (Googlefight!)

This is a digression, but it should also be noted that many religions think that humans are sinful and imperfect, so discovering human hypocrisy does not attack their foundation. Having flaws in our execution does not disprove the truths we are trying to follow; after all, by that logic I personally have exposed integral calculus as a sham... repeatedly.