From almost every measurable point of view, my new Facebook advertising campaign is a smashing success. In just a couple of months, we've reached well over 100,000 people and gained more than 4,000 new friends who like the Facebook page. According to the advertising consultant I've hired, we are absolutely killing it on the cost per click at only about 3 cents per click. In fact, the only measurable input that isn't absolutely breaking records is actual book sales. While The God Conclusion recently cracked the Amazon Top 100 books in the Religious Studies -- Science and Religion category, sales continue to lag well behind the trajectory of the advertising campaign. If only ten percent of the people who like the Facebook page bought the book, I'd have more than twice as many sales as I currently do. It's only been on sale for two weeks, but I'm not ever going to be able to retire on these numbers. I'm only kidding about retirement--I intend to keep writing until I die--but writers do like to be rewarded for the fruit of their labors with book sales. Thus far, I've had one published book review through a campaign I ran at a company called Book Sprout, and I expect another review to go live at any moment because the person who left the review told me how he rated my book. Frankly, I'll soon have two published reviews, and neither of them will give the potential reader an accurate portrayal of what my book is about. In the case of the Book Sprout review, that reviewer rated the book four stars, which is good. However, the reviewer in question downloaded the book on … [Read more...]
President Chance the Gardener
[Yet another rejected piece for American Thinker. There is one editor there who seems to hate everything I write. Luck of the draw, I guess. Or...dare I say it? This one might not be as good as my other work. I'll let you decide, except I've added a few lines in this piece to juice it up. See Dr. Strangelove for more details.] In 1980 when I was only twenty years old, I saw Being There for the first time and thought I was watching one of the most brilliant satires ever conceived. Peter Sellers starred in the film as Chance the Gardener, a barely functional illiterate with a talent for pruning roses and not much else. Chance learns everything he knows by watching television, which meant he knows practically nothing. The film begins with Chance living at the estate of a wealthy benefactor who dies and leaves Chance homeless. Suddenly thrust into the real world for the first time, Chance wanders the streets of the Capitol and finds himself reduced to begging complete strangers to feed him but then a minor accident dramatically changes his fortune. A limousine chauffeuring around the wife of one of the most powerful men in Washington accidentally backs into Chance (who was distracted by watching himself on television) injuring his knee and the next thing we know, Chance is living in the home of an even wealthier benefactor, Ben Rand (played by Melvyn Douglas), and through Rand, gains access to the very highest levels of government. Even his name was the result of a miscommunication: when Chance identifies himself as “Chance the gardener”, Eve Rand (Shirley … [Read more...]
The God Conclusion officially available July 7th
Sorry if you've seen this announcement once before, but when I changed name servers at the host of my website, I lost the content of a couple of previous posts, and this was one of them. The God Conclusion will be officially made available for sale on July 7th, although the book can be preordered currently through Amazon. The back cover reads: "A POWERFUL RESPONSE TO RICHARD DAWKINS In his sensational international bestseller, The God Delusion, author Richard Dawkins attempts to demonstrate the supreme improbability of the existence of a supreme being by using arguments based in science and almost succeeds. Almost. Now in his book The God Conclusion, author John L. Leonard takes a closer look at the same scientific evidence but adds a logical perspective to reach a surprisingly different result -- the probability that some sort of supreme being exists is extremely likely, a claim well-supported by scientific evidence. After going through The God Delusion chapter by chapter and point by point to rebut the arguments of Dawkins, Leonard presents his own unique interpretation of what the scientific evidence really tells us and challenges all of us to examine our beliefs, no matter what beliefs we may currently hold." Even if you don't like Richard Dawkins or care about his arguments against religion, you'll want to see the evidence to which I refer before dismissing it. The book is obviously available for Kindle, but every other format, including print, will be available on July 7th. Below you can watch the first "book blurb" trailer. … [Read more...]
The Way of the Cell
Professor Franklin Harold of Colorado State University, described as "one of the world's most respected microbiologists" has included some fascinating observations in his book The Way of the Cell on the subject of abiogenesis. The mini-reviews on his book's back cover lend some credibility to the claim about Dr. Harold's professional credentials, one being written by renowned biologist Lynn Margulis, who said, "Witty and erudite, this scientific book hails as a literary achievement.Comprehensive and up to date, Franklin Harold traces the roots--historical, thermodynamic, and biochemical--of today's biological revolution." His chapter titled "Searching for the beginning" is so remarkable, it seems prudent to start at the beginning. Dr. Franklin writes, "Of all the unsolved mysteries remaining in science, the most consequential may be the origin of life. This opinion is bound to strike many readers as overblown, to put it mildly. Should we not rank the Big Bang, life in the cosmos, and the nature of consciousness on at least an equal plane? My reason for placing the origin of life at the top of the agenda is that resolution of this question is required in order to anchor living organisms securely in the real world of matter and energy, and thus relieve the lingering anxiety as to whether we have read nature's book correctly. Creation myths lie at the heart of all human cultures, and science is no exception; until we know where we come from, we do not know who we are. The origin of life is a stubborn problem, with no solution in sight. There is indeed a large and … [Read more...]
The Watchmaker Analogy: a slight return
I am something of an advocate for William Paley's famous (but admittedly flawed and allegedly "debunked") Watchmaker analogy, as this previous article titled "A Blind Rock Maker?" should establish. As my previous article stipulates, the problem with the analogy is not natural selection, or that the idea of design is nothing more than a beguiling illusion, but in the mistaken notion that the rock itself might have always existed. We now know (or think we know) our universe had a beginning, and the rock simply couldn't have existed forever. Even the rock had an origin. By Tony Freeth - Original publication: The Antikythera Mechanism Research ProjectImmediate The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36445604 Today we have a new hypothetical scenario: what if we stumble across a stone in the forest (or, in the case, at the bottom of the ocean) that on closer inspection, appears to have sophisticated wheels and machinery for some strange, unknown purpose? The image above is a computer-generated replica of the back panel of the Antikythera device, discovered by sponge divers in a rock found among wreckage from a shipwreck located offshore from the Greek island Antikthera in 1900. The mechanism is truly extraordinary, and appears to have been designed to track (among other things) the Metonic cycle, a period of every nineteen years during which the reoccur at the same time of year, and the movement of the five known planets at the time. The inner workings are composed of at least 30 gears with a precise number of … [Read more...]
