SCIENTISTS WERE ONCE a little shy about applying their rigorous evidence-based way of thinking to religion. Astrology, alternative medicine and alien abductions have all been furiously debunked by the finest minds of literary science, but God has seemed to escape similar scrutiny.

But 2006 was the year in which the gloves came off. And scientific atheism’s heavyweight champion, Richard Dawkins, even stands an outside chance of topping the Christmas bestseller lists.

Rationalists have always thought it strange that it is held to be virtuous, wise even, to believe in things for which there is no evidence whatsoever. In The God Delusion (Bantam, £20/offer £18), Dawkins hammers this home with a refreshing lack of equivocation. The intellectual weaknesses of religious belief are exposed ruthlessly, as are the crimes committed in its name.

While the logic is tough to fault, the tone is not always so winning. It is so militant that even readers of a hardened atheistic mindset can find it alienating. The concern is that Dawkins is too condescending to be helpful. He preaches to the converted, and will not win many undecided minds (I am not sure he is much bothered about hearts). It is the Marmite of the argument between science and religion: a book to be loved or hated.

Dawkins’s strident, take-no-prisoners stand has one great virtue: it changes the parameters of debate. Just as Thatcherism moved the political centre to the right, so Dawkinsism is pulling the intellectual centre on to a more rational footing. Set against his zeal, more compassionate advocacy of atheism looks less extreme, and gets a more sympathetic hearing.

Another lucid exploration of the science of belief, Lewis Wolpert’s Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast (Faber, £14.99/£13.49), is a case in point. Wolpert describes with great nuance how the human mind might have evolved to become irrational. His big idea — that faith is a by-product of intelligence that evolved for tool-making — might not be entirely persuasive, but the argument benefits from his measured touch. Perhaps his own experiences have helped: Wolpert’s son is a practising Christian. He certainly knows how to reach out to a wider audience.

If Dawkins is something of a mixed blessing for atheism, his contribution to evolutionary biology is not in doubt. His signature work, The Selfish Gene, celebrated its 30th anniversary this year, and Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think (OUP, £12.99/£11.99) is a marvellous reminder of why it still matters.

This collection of essays, edited by two of his former doctoral students, Mark Ridley and Alan Grafen, highlights how he saw clearly what no other scientist managed: that the “gene’s eye” view of evolution has an explanatory power far greater than any other approach.

Evolutionary biology is one of the two fields that most tend to influence scientists such as Dawkins to espouse atheism. The other is astrophysics, which seeks to explain how the Universe came to be. Writing on this is notoriously difficult but can be perfectly accessible, without any equations.

In The Goldilocks Enigma (Allen Lane, £22/£19.80), Paul Davies writes beautifully about why the Universe appears to be constructed with precisely the right conditions for life. His answers are very different from the cosmological certainties of Dawkins or his religious targets, with arresting speculations about the possibility of a “multiverse”. Our Universe may be just one among many. Some universes may even be fakes.

A more orthodox treatment of the history of time is found in Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution (Norton, £11.99/£10.99), by Neil deGrasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith. It is as comprehensive an introduction as one could wish to current knowledge about the Big Bang and what went afterwards: informative, witty and compelling.

Bang! The Complete History of the Universe (Carlton, £20/£18) is a little lighter, as might be expected from Brian May, who gave up a PhD in astrophysics to play guitar in Queen. Writing with Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott of The Sky at Night, he conducts an entertaining tour of the Universe past and present.

After the surprise success of New Scientist’s Does Anything Eat Wasps?, this Christmas has brought a plethora of scientific miscellanies. One of the best is by the magazine’s news editor, Matt Walker. If you are interested in transvestite garter snakes, the speed-eating habits of the star-nosed mole, or how geckos behave in zero gravity, you will enjoy Moths That Drink Elephants’ Tears and Other Zoological Curiosities (Piatkus, £9.99/

£9.49). Why Don’t Penguins’ Feet Freeze? (Profile, £7.99/

£7.59), the follow-up to Wasps, is also just as intriguing.

Mark Henderson is science editor of The Times

Bestsellers

DOES ANYTHING EAT WASPS?
Quirky questions and answers from New Scientist (Profile, £7.99)
110,889

WHY DON'T PENGUINS FEET FREEZE?
More facts for the curious in the follow-up to Wasps
Malcolm Gladwell
(Penguin, £8.99)
104,422

BLINK
Hip New Yorker writer on the power of instinct

A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING
Bill Bryson
(Black Swan, £9.99)
80,664
Layman’s take on science

THE GOD DELUSION
Richard Dawkins
(Bantam, £20)
65,131
Atheist polemic from the eminent British scientist

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• The 100 Best Books of the Decade
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• The conversation: James Ellroy