Stacy, I always look forward to your questions and comments.

I am going to sidestep the specifics of your question just a bit, but I hope my ideas will address its crux by the end.

Since you use the word "convincing," let me address certain variables.

The main consideration is, who will be reading the argument. If the person at the receiving end of the argument is either a) a practicing, strongly religious person or b) self-identifies as a religious person, then they probably aren't interested in the argument anyway. If they are only vaguely religious ("Wedding/Funeral Christians," mystics, New Agers), perhaps they are more open to direct argument.

It is anecdotal, but my experience has been that people become atheists primarily from a) education (which sometimes dismantles preconceived religious notions due to hard science, political science, or critical thinking courses), b) identity groups (if one's close friends happen to be atheists, one may gradually begin to adopt the atheist position) or c) traumatic experiences (the ones that don't bring people "closer to God" can result in "overnight atheism" {I think I will coin this term}).

If you are to approach an average person that may be interested in atheism (little "a," since we should try to keep atheism as a descriptive term and not a religion), I don't think the "most convincing" argument matters. Any number of strong arguments are worthless if someone doesn't have a way to easily digest them.

My belief is that the major arguments are present in all of these books; the arguments are self-evident, so this is understandable. Having said this, which is the most useful?

I do not think the increasingly combative approach of Dawkins and especially Hitchens are going to turn anyone around, and regardless of the arguments, people are going to feel intimidated by both the personalities of Dawkins and Hitchens, as well as the sheer length of their books.

I agree that Betrand Russell's book, "Why I Am Not a Christian" is an incredible essay and he is a brilliant man. But it is a bit cold, and I don't think the typical person is going to identify with him well.

If I were to address someone that were interested in the subject and had some time to kill, I would first let them read Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World," which focuses more on critical thinking 101 which EVERYONE should know and is an interesting subject. Sagan is a warm, approachable writer. He doesn't directly attack God, but instead attacks the types of evidence used for all manner of pseudoscience.

If someone then wanted a more edgy treatise, I would suggest the Sam Harris book. It is short and sweet and has effective arguments. Also, since it is "Letter to a Christian Nation," I think many Christians self-segregate themselves, so they may think, "Oh, he is talking about THOSE Christians (whichever group is not theirs)" and be more open to reading it. Of course, if they feel they are being attacked in the first part of the book, they may put it down... but they might not. Plus, if an average American looks up Sam Harris on the internet (pictures or video), they are much more likely to identify with him than the rockstars like Dawkins and Hitchens (and Russell) .

I think an average person will need to make it past these two steps before even picking up the tomes likes the ones you mentioned or Dennett's new book "Breaking the Spell," or Atheism: The Case Against God.

If they made it through this, I think they should next watch the documentary, "The Root of All Evil" by Dawkins (notice, he didn't want that title, but BBC chose it to make it more sensational, and I'm sure it was).

People want something approachable, and atheists are just horrible when it comes to this, because they set their own bars too high.

*EDIT - Maybe you, I, and some other Mahaloians/ites could tackle this and make like a 100 page ebook that is the ultimate approachable guide.

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