Writers need to have a thick skin when it comes to receiving criticism.
Personally, I value every review that any reader has posted on Amazon, whether positive or negative.
Of course, positive reviews help sell books. More importantly, negative reviews, if the author listens to his or her audience, can help make future books better.
For if we do not learn from our mistakes, we will be doomed to repeat them.
My philosophy is when anyone takes the time and goes to the trouble of writing a review of something I’ve written, I tend to pay attention, even more so to critique than praise.
As an example, even though my novel Secondhand Sight won a Readers’ Favorite gold medal for Fiction/Horror, I thought the comments on Amazon were very fair criticisms when some readers suggested the sections that described tennis activities intended to provide local color were too long.
Those lengthy sections really only served as plot devices that got the protagonist out of his house and could have been achieved with at least a thousand fewer words, to be perfectly honest.
It was Shakespeare who, as Polonius in Hamlet, famously said, “…brevity is the soul of wit.”
As a result of listening to those readers, in my novel titled Premonition that followed Secondhand Sight, my editors and I worked even harder to trim every scrap of unnecessary fat from the manuscript.
Our goal was to establish a steady pace that never lagged, increasing speed as we moved from start to finish, which I hope to have accomplished, thanks to the feedback from readers.
Once again, we will listen carefully as new reviews are posted for Premonition, wanting to learn from our mistakes. Our goal is to make every book better than the last. 
On the other hand, not all feedback is created equal.
Call me crazy, but in my opinion, people can’t really provide fair or useful criticisms of a book in particular when they haven’t bothered to read it first.
Unfortunately, ignorance does not necessarily stop some people from publicly sharing their thoughts.
Strangely enough, of the six books I’ve written thus far, my book Counterargument for God inspires more of that sort of criticism than any other published work.
Writers aren’t supposed to respond to their critics, but since these are “generic” complaints and these critics aren’t actually members of my reading audience, I think an exception can be safely made in this instance.
The list of complaints enumerated below is not exhaustive by any means. Nor are they ranked in particular order.
Most of these criticisms come from people who have refused a free PDF copy of the book when offered to them. My responses to their complaints are in blue.
13. You aren’t a scientist.
So what? I conceded that fact in the first few pages of the book, in fact, when I wrote the following paragraph in the section titled “About the Author”:
I’m not a scientist. Nor do I claim to play one on television. All of the credit for the scientific research belongs to those scientists and intellectual giants on whose shoulders I stand. The blame for any flaws in my logic, conclusions, and opinions belongs only to me.
12. You don’t understand evolution theory properly.
The problem with that assertion is twofold.
First of all, esteemed biologist and vocal atheist Richard Dawkins wrote the following in an essay titled Evolution is a Fact:
“You can write it [a description of evolution theory] out in a phrase: nonrandom survival of randomly varying hereditary instruction for building embryos. Yet, given the opportunities afforded by deep time, this simple little algorithm generates prodigies of complexity, elegance, and diversity of apparent design. True design, the type we see in a knapped flint, a jet plane, or personal computer, turns out to be the manifestation of an entity–the human brain–that itself was never designed, but is an evolved product of Darwin’s mill. Paradoxically, the extreme simplicity of what the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett called Darwin’s dangerous idea. People have a hard time believing that so simple a mechanism could produce such powerful results.” 1
Furthermore, Professor Benoit LeBlanc had the following to say about my understanding of the basic fundamentals of speciation, also known as macro-evolution theory: “And your basic understanding of the process is sound: groups reproductively isolated from similar groups will eventually grow apart, genetically speaking, due to genetic drift, the accumulation of different mutations, and very likely different selection pressures.”
To be perfectly clear, Professor LeBlanc was not endorsing the conclusions I reached, just conceding that I understood the fundamental concepts of the theory as well as anyone who’d read Coyne’s book could be expected. In other words, according to Professor LeBlanc, I’ve reached the wrong conclusions about this idea that according to Dawkins is so simple it is difficult to believe because I don’t know enough about how the intricate details of the theory work to believe it.
Those two ideas simply don’t go together.
It all boils down to one simple thought: complex living organisms exist either by descent or by design. There is no third choice that would not require some combination of those two basic options.
If descent is true, then even plants and animals share common ancestry via sexual reproduction. The magic ingredient that allows this to occur is called deep time.
If design is true, the magic is called God.
One way to look at the existential solutions from which we have to choose, you’re going to believe in either “natural” or supernatural magic.
The problem with deep time as the solution of choice is that we must assume entities that only appear to be designed can based intelligent design on the undesigned organism.
To this day, the personal computer remains an inferior approximation of the human brain, the thing that the computer is modeled to emulate as much as possible.
It seems kind of silly to believe the design of an intelligent object can be based on the product on stupid luck, simply if allowed enough time for basically anything to happen.
11. The universe could have always existed.
Not true, according to an overwhelming majority of physicists, who have declared that redshift and cosmic microwave background radiation, also known as CMB, have effectively debunked the steady state universe theory in favor of Big Bang cosmology or some variation of a secular creation theory that attempts to describe the origin of this particular universe.
10. We don’t know enough about the universe to say it was fine-tuned.
Actually, physicists know a lot more about the composition of this universe than one might realize. Nor is fine-tuning “my” argument — I’ve merely accepted that the physicists who’ve suggested the universe has been fine-tuned make a compelling case for their argument.
In his book The Living Cosmos, physicist Chris Impey wrote this:
“Apart from hydrogen, everything else is just a trace element. Just how rare? Suppose a deck of cards represented randomly selected atoms in the universe. In one deck of cards, the aces would be helium atoms and the other forty-eight would be hydrogen atoms. You’d need thirty decks of cards before you’d expect to find one carbon atom. In the thirty decks of cards, there’d be a couple of oxygen atoms, too, but all the other cards would be hydrogen or helium. You’d need to search three hundred decks to find a single iron atom…How do we know what the universe is made of? Astronomers use remote sensing by spectroscopy to measure the composition of star stuff. Each element has a unique set of sharp spectral features that acts like a fingerprint, so by identifying that fingerprint in starlight, astronomers can measure contributions of different elements.”
9. We don’t know enough about probability to assess the relative probability of the universe or the origin of life.
The calculations on which my arguments are based have been credited to their authors. It was Sir Roger Penrose who calculated the probability of this universe occurring by random chance as something like 1 in 10 to the 300th power, based on the work of Sir Martin Rees.
Others have come up with values even lower. I think we can safely assume the probability of this universe has been determined by the experts to be extraordinarily low, which is why new theories such as multiverse have cropped up.
8. Careful conjecture by scientists who argue science has proved God is superfluous any explanation for our existence is superior to anecdotal evidence of supernatural phenomena collected by amateurs.
What may be nothing more than anecdotal evidence to a critic may be considered empirical evidence collected according to scientific method by the actual person who is actually investigating those claims. It’s a lot easier to dismiss something if you never seriously evaluate the evidence in support of it.
7. Your work hasn’t been peer-reviewed. You haven’t been nominated for a Nobel Prize.
I hate to be repetitive, but so what? I’m not claiming my book is a science textbook. I never expected to be nominated for the Nobel Prize. I would say I don’t deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, but neither did Al Gore, and he got one. I would take the money that goes with it, no doubt.
But in particular, I’d like to note something else Richard Dawkins slipped up when he made this reference to modern peer review in the same article previously referenced:
“Even without his major theoretical achievements, Darwin would have won lasting recognition as an experimenter, albeit an experimenter with the style of a gentlemanly amateur, which might not find favor with modern journal referees.”2
Peer review does not determine what is and isn’t science–it only defines the means by which some prima donna academics who consider themselves absolute authorities can manipulate conventional wisdom, at least temporarily. Look no further than the influence of peer review on the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction.
6. NDEs are nothing more than euphoric hallucinations caused by chemical reactions in a dying brain.
Actually, there is scientific evidence known as corroborated veridical NDE perceptions that, if true, clearly and completely debunks that argument.
5. Corroborated veridical NDE events defy the laws of physics.
The problem with that assertion is the claim that accurate new memories can be formed by an individual while separated from his physical brain can and has been investigated. Rather than being debunked by having the evidence investigated and proved false, investigations have allegedly been able to corroborate many examples of this “impossible” evidence that would seem to defy “laws” of physics as they are currently understood. Refusing to look at evidence such as the Pam Reynolds memories apparently created outside her physical body during her famous “Operation Standstill” surgery, an extraordinarily well-documented medical procedure in which her physical condition was being carefully monitored by scientific instruments and medical observers while the events in question occurred.
4. Your book is nothing but quote mining. You’ve taken experts out of context and twisted the intended meaning of their words.
Quote mining has been defined as the deceitful practice of taking a quote out of context to make it appear the author of the quote agrees with your position.
In my book, my practice has been to quote various scientists verbatim to illustrate their obvious bias toward atheism, but I’ve never pretended any of them agreed with me. I’ve merely used their own words, properly referenced and attributed to each source, and used the exact words of these atheists posing as scientists to expose the fallacy of their logic. One particularly persistent critic insisted that one quote in my book from George Wald was quote mined, apparently because the talkorigins website said as much.
However, the context in which the quote was used did not attempt to twist the meaning of what Dr. Wald was saying in order to deceive the reader. Dr. Wald and I were agreeing that in his context, the word “impossible” was changed to mean “highly improbable” and not the literal interpretation of the word.
My argument was to show how the quote illustrated how the atheist/scientist deliberately created a bias toward his atheistic worldview by attempting to redefine impossible to mean something else.
This particular critic seemed to be worked up that the phrase “It will help to digress for a moment to ask what one means by “impossible” had been omitted from Wald’s quote but that utterly fails to negate the point I succeeded in making in my book this critic refused to read.
As a writer who depends on the English language, let me be clear in saying the meaning of the word “impossible” is not open for negotiation.
The word impossible simply means “not possible”, as in “can never happen.” It doesn’t mean “highly unlikely”, unless that interpretation is being deliberately used in a deliberate attempt to create confusion by the quote’s author.
It seems the only time that atheists use the word ‘impossible’ and actually mean it is when they claim it is impossible to believe in a supernatural God.
Only then do they sincerely mean ‘not possible.’
Because I was not twisting, but in fact reinforcing the intent of Wald’s words with my specific usage of the correctly cited example, my book will not require any retractions or corrections due to its usage.
3. Evolution is a fact. No scientist agrees with you.
Evolution is not even a scientific theory — those are called speciation and natural selection. Evolution theory is an atheistic philosophy formed by an interpretation of scientific evidence that assumes descent rather than design as the only possible explanation for modern life, which is absurd.
Until Darwin wrote his book, the only person who might have been said agreed with him about his theory of natural selection was Alfred Russell Wallace.
And Galileo failed his peer review. As long as it is assumed evidence of something cannot exist, that evidence will successfully be ignored until the alternate theories all have failed completely.
2. The Earth cannot be/must be 6,000 years old. You aren’t a “real” Christian.
On some issues, it truly seems impossible to please anybody.
Apparently, I can’t get away with just saying “I don’t know, and I don’t really care.”
But it’s true; I don’t. It isn’t critically important to know, I don’t think.
I have referred to myself as YEC-agnostic, which means I really don’t know how old the Earth is. Scientists have estimated the age of the Earth as approximately 4.54 billion years, I am aware of that much. Evangelical Christians may reply that according to the calculations of Bishop Ussher, the Earth is only 6,000 years old.
The only thing I know with absolute confidence is the Earth is older than me. Above and beyond that, I’m not sure how important it is to know the precise age of Earth when it comes to answering our existential questions, to be perfectly honest.
While recent discoveries of soft tissue in dinosaur fossils lends credibility to the argument at least some dinosaurs may have survived the Cretaceous extinction, but I’m not quite ready to declare it is likely that dinosaurs co-existed with humans in the past.
My Big Picture equation has no variable or constant to represent the age of the Earth. Because I don’t care. It won’t affect my worldview.
1. If God truly existed, evil would not exist. There would be no suffering in the world.
Ah, what truly seems to be the last gasp of desperation from an atheist desperately seeking any excuse to reject the logic that has been applied to the scientific evidence available for answering the existential questions in my book.
Several years ago, I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Michael Ruse by phone. We were discussing the Cambrian Explosion and the ability of various organisms to identify things called “environmental niches” these creatures were subsequently able to mutate in form enough to occupy. I wanted to understand how this process might have worked in the absence of any supernatural forms of intelligence to somehow manipulate DNA so these organisms would be better suited.
Apparently Dr. Ruse assumed my question was leading to the possibility a deity of some sort might exist, because he asked if God could create organisms perfectly suited for various environmental niches, why would this omnipotent entity allow evil to exist in the world? Why did God allow pain and suffering? He then brought up the subject of the devastating earthquake that had just occurred in Haiti.
I don’t remember how I responded to Dr. Ruse. I do remember how surprised I had been at the abrupt change in subject, going from asking specific questions about how evolution might have worked to the more abstract and completely unrelated question about the motives of God.
Today my answer to Dr. Ruse would be that God has given us three great gifts: the gift of reality, the gift of life, and the gift of free will.
Reality is the material world. We all have assets and material goods of some sort, no matter how poor we might be in comparison to others.
Life is self-explanatory. If you’ve been able to read and comprehend this article until now, you know what it means to be alive.
Free will is the least obvious of these gifts. We can choose to marshal our resources and try to help each other with humanitarian aid when a catastrophe strikes like the earthquake in Haiti or Hurricane Katrina, or we can selfishly hoard what we have been blessed to receive.
If God exists, and I believe He does, and if this supernatural form of intelligence created the universe as I believe, then He can be described as omnipotent, or all powerful. Therefore, it would certainly be within His power to destroy Satan at any given moment in time. However, in the absence of evil, we would not really be able to enjoy free will and choose between good and evil.
After completing this list and checking the word count, obviously I still need to work on my brevity.
Just remember, this list represents the most commonly heard criticisms of my book from people who haven’t read it.
Conversely, those who have actually read my book Counterargument for God and posted a review online have had complimentary things to say, for the most part.
Cited sources that weren’t from my book:
1. Gerdes, Louise. Intelligent Design Versus Evolution. Page 41. Detroit. Greenhaven Press. 2008. Print.
2. Ibid. Page 45.
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