And it explains nothing as the OP suggested. The "pixies" stuff (and what have you) is not really relevant to his argument but it doesn't make it a strawman.
It's nothing more than a variation of God as the man in the sky cliché. It implies a misrepresentation of what God is said to be. At least as far as Judaism, Christianity and Islam are concerned.
he argument is that God is a non-explanation and I agree with that. As a creator and sustainer of the universe, God has become progressively more and more redundant. He is no longer required to make the mountains smoke, drive out evil spirits from demoniacs, cause the rain to fall or withhold it, create each species of living thing according to a divine plan, shake the earth, push the sun across the sky or cause stars to fall from heaven - volcanoes, epilepsy, el nino/la nina and other meteorological cycles, evolution, plate tectonics, gravity and meteor showers have pushed him out of all those areas...
It was not the Christian who sacrificed children to ensure the rain. Paganism at its most basic is nothing more than the attempt to bargain with natural forces. And I reject this primitive worldview as much as you do. I believe in a rational (but created) world that can be understood not in the capricious elemental spirits of the Greeks, Aztecs and Egyptians. My point, is that I don't see any conflict between Christian theism and our growing understanding of the natural world since Christianity simply doesn't posit a world controlled by spirits. It is true that in previous ages, people were prone to ascribe to the preternatural things we now know to have natural causes but that is in no way a threat to the core idea of monotheism. One, all powerful, uncreated and transcendent God who creates and sustains all things.
Of course, I do also accept the existence of the demonic but that in and of itself isn't relevant to God and what God is.
...and now, even the last preserve of the divine creatorship - "something" from "nothing" - is under fairly serious threat as it turns out that "nothing" was never really "nothing" after all - and "something" might really still be "nothing" when it comes down to it - so nothing has changed at all - in reality and despite the fact that the only thing that reality ever does is change - from the time that we assumed that there never really was a "nothing" to change into "something" anyway.
I don't think the idea of an uncreated reality stretching infinitely back is coherent.
Anyway, the point here is that there is really nothing left for God to be an explanation for - unless you want him to be the explanation for the "nothing" that is supposed to have existed before "something".
You haven't actually detracted away from God at all though. I agree, there's no Tlaloc demanding you kill your children in exchange for rain. No chariot riding deity pulling the sun across the sky, nor a Zeus to gallivant around, throw lighting bolts and impregnate attractive women. But that has never been the claim of any of the major monotheistic faiths.
And even if there was, God (in the sense of classical theism) is not really an explanation anyway - more of a lack of an explanation.
Obviously, if one wants to know why it rains then "God" is not an answer. It's true in a sense but not in a useful sense. But God is an explanation for why the world exists, why there is a good and how it relates to the final end of human beings. Whether or not you reject that explanation is up to you, but it is in my view far more coherent that an infinite regress of stuff that expanded at some point and just is by sheer brute fact of it being so.
Not necesserily true, i'd need to see some proof of this. It begs the question of Gods existence.
I'm saying your characterization of what theists believe is wrong. Whether or not theism is correct is beside the point. You clearly don't understand or rather don't want to understand.
