For Dawkins, religious faith rests on the idea that "there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence, who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it." Having set up this definition of God as Supernatural Designer, Dawkins only has to point out that there is in fact no design in nature in order to demolish it. But he is mistaken to assume that this is "the way people have generally understood the term" God. He is also wrong to claim that God is a scientific hypothesis, that is, a conceptual framework for bringing intelligibility to a series of experiments and observations. It was only in the modern period that theologians started to treat God as a scientific explanation and in the process produced an idolatrous God concept.
Well, she has a point, no? Most people through the ages have not thought God was a human figured man. Perhaps some groups of early Jews and Christians did in the West, but that hardly accounts for the vast array of humans world wide and their beliefs.
I don't think she quite grasps why Dawkins says God is a scientific hypothesis however. The way Christianity claims God works miracles in the empirical world means God is in the scientific arena, and as such, is a testable hypothesis. It is the claim concerning God that Dawkins is saying can and ought to be tested, and I agree with that. True Gould wanted to separate the two "magisteria" and it is the claims of Christianity that refuses to do so.
I think Armstrong isn't quite correct again when she notes it is only in our modern age that God became a scientific explanation. True, back then he was described as a spiritual phenomena, but he was claimed to have been involved in the physical world, therefore that is testable.
Anyway, just using this message board as a personal blog for the time being.