The God Conclusion is my seventh published book. In my own horribly biased opinion, it’s the best I’ve written, and that’s not completely meaningless boasting, given that three of the previous six books won gold medals in their respective categories from Reader’s Favorite.
The book is doing okay on sales (at the moment #50 on Amazon’s Top 100 books in Religious Studies — Science and Religion, but I think that changes by the hour) but what I really need is book reviews so future potential readers have an unbiased opinion (that would be yours) on which to base their decision to buy my book. So far, I only have two reviews on Amazon.
The first review is a four-star review, which is good, but I’m reasonably convinced the person who wrote the review didn’t read the book, unless she’s an incredible speed reader. She downloaded the book one day and published her review the next. Although Amazon claims the book is over 550 pages long, the print copy is actually 322 pages, translating to a little over 90,000 words. It’s theoretically possible she read the entire book, but not very likely.
The content of that review is basically a generic description of the book. The reviewer says my argument is from the perspective of a dualist view derived from Judea-Christianity, which isn’t true at all: I defend Judaism and Christianity against the attacks Dawkins made against them in his book. Then I attack the best arguments for atheism using logic and scientific evidence. It’s not impossible to think that this person really did read the book; however, given the fact she came from a BookSprout campaign where people can take a free copy and write a review prior to the book’s release, I still have my doubts. There’s really nothing in her review that makes me believe she really read my book. Even though it was positive, I’m always going to have my doubts about how “honest” it was.
My second review to date came from someone attracted to this Facebook campaign who had made numerous antagonistic comments, but our conversations were somewhat interesting. He’s one of the fifteen or so people to whom I’ve given a free copy of my book in exchange for the promise of an honest review published on Amazon. Ultimately, I got what I asked for.
This second reviewer only gave the book a two-star rating. At first, I was mildly annoyed, mostly with myself for giving away a free copy of my book to someone I should have known would trash it, just based on his online comments. And my expectations were low enough, I thought — I sort of expected a three-star review, thinking he would probably hate the content but grudgingly concede it was persuasive and well-written. Then, after I gave him a free copy of the book and we continued to converse via the Facebook page, he let me know that he’s a big fan of Aron Ra.
Anyone who likes Aron Ra (really Aron Nelson, but with a bit of an ego problem) is not going to like my book. My expectations shifted from hoping for three-stars to expecting a one-star review. Then I read the review itself. It’s not nearly as terrible as I had come to expect.
Of course, the reviewer complained that I committed several logical fallacies, such as the fallacy of the excluded middle, because I wrote that we seemed to only have two choices when it came to the Big Bang/origin of the universe: we can believe it happened by accident, or we can believe it happened on purpose. The reviewer claimed that just because you can’t think of a third or fourth possibility, that doesn’t mean the possibility doesn’t exist. Okay, fair enough. Let’s think about this possible excluded middle for a moment. Another way of saying the universe was designed is to say the universe was created according to a precise and specific plan. Or, we can assume that a critical sequence of very important events all happened because we are very lucky, and we can restate that observation by saying the universe was created by accident. The logical “excluded middle” is to say the origin of the universe was a planned accident, but that is an oxymoron because if you have a plan, there is no accident. Science tells us that the Big Bang is the popular name for the singularity describing the origin of our universe. Science also tells us that the evidence the Big Bang took place is called redshift and CMB, short for Cosmic Microwave Background (Radiation.) Another “excluded middle” explanation would be to say the universe has always existed, a.k.a. the “steady state” or eternal and unchanging universe. The problem with this so-called compromise is that redshift and CMB have effectively ruled out the possibility of a steady-state universe, and the new question has become, what existed prior to the origin of the universe? Apparently, that will forever remain a mystery.
Frankly, most of the criticisms in the second review were rather tired and predictable, saying the book is allegedly filled with logical fallacies (as opposed to logical arguments) put forth in “classic creationist arguments”, and so-called “stunning admissions” and arguments that are ignorant or intentionally misleading (probably because they do not parrot the arguments of Aron Ra.)
Even so, I can say a few positive things about this negative review. First, the reviewer definitely read the whole book, and he did give his honest opinion. However, that opinion was pretty heavily biased toward atheism and he seemed to miss the entire point that the biggest problem of atheism is trying to explain the existence of intelligence allegedly stemming from decidedly unintelligent (also known as dumb) processes. The origin of the universe and the origin of life are vexing questions to be sure, but the origin of consciousness and the origin of intelligence are even more stupefying. Seeking answers to these questions is not a trivial pursuit.
After reading my two-star review in greater detail, I’ve decided it wasn’t the worst thing in the world that could have happened. It’s another review, for better or worse. It temporarily brings down the overall average, but it is the guy’s honest opinion. He put time and effort into writing that review, so I have to say I appreciate him taking the time and putting in that effort. After all, the review even quotes me and ends by saying he can’t disagree with the point I made. If he’d given the book one more star, I’d be relatively happy with the final result. As it stands, I’m only mildly disappointed. Negative reviews add legitimacy: if every review was a five-star review, people would think they’d all been written by friends and family. This way, when people read the reviews, they tend to find them more believable.
It’s all good.
I’ve still got several more free copies available to anyone else interested in receiving a free copy in exchange for an honest review at Amazon. If you’re interested, send me a message from The God Conclusion Facebook page with your email address, and I’ll reply with a link from which you can download a free copy of either PDF or .epub. You don’t have to give me five-stars unless you feel like the book truly deserves it, because I truly only care about your honest opinions.
Kind of like marriage; for better or worse. Honesty is the best policy.
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