"The End of Christianity," My Biggest Problem, and My Promise to You
I have received some copies of The End of Christianity
already. Prometheus Books is in the process of distributing them. It has the look and feel of The Christian Delusion,
my previous book. From the planning stage to the final production TEC took a year and nine months of hard work. It is much easier to grab already published material and place it in a book than in getting new essays from scholars. The chapters in both books are new essays. They both took a lot of work.
And they are both great books, as the recommendations tell us coming from both Christians and skeptics who agree. There are several chapters worth the price of the books themselves. Which ones might only depend on your own particular interests. Even though I read and re-read them several times, editing and going back and forth with the authors, Richard Carrier, the copy-editor and production staff, I am reading it again in hard copy format wondering if the decisions made were good ones, and trying to locate any typos we may have missed. I just re-read Jaco Gericke's chapter titled: "Can God Exist if Yahweh Doesn't?" That chapter alone is worth the price of the book. It's awesome. I can only guess how Christians will try to gerrymander around it, since he closed all the loopholes they might want to use in escaping his conclusion, that God doesn't exist because Christians no longer believe in Yahweh, a tribal god among others in the Israelite religion.
Comparisons will be made between both books too. Which one is better? Which one will be used in college classes on apologetics and atheism? That might be a hard decision for some professors. So I'm interested in any comparisons made between them.
There are many atheist books that get great online reviews from other atheists. A few of these more recent books have lots of 5 star reviews at Amazon and very few 1 star reviews at all. Mine are hotly contested. If you were judging which atheist books to buy based on the number of 1 star and 2 star reviews, then you might overlook mine in favor of others. In my opinion it's because many of these recent atheist books are basically preaching to the choir, so they are ignored by Christians. Mine do not do that. Christians are reading my books. Because of this you would expect there to be 1 star and 2 star reviews of them from Christians, because they are more threatened by them.
I can understand why atheists might not want to read books like mine, or recommend them, because they take Christianity seriously. After all, atheists already know Christianity is a delusion and don't want to waste their money buying them or waste their time reading them. I wish they would though, if for no other reason than to help get them noticed, since high sales increase visibility. If they want to help rid the world of this delusion they need books like mine. Buying and recommending them helps get them noticed.
I would say this even if I was not the editor. Perhaps people don't understand this. Some people might think all I care about is self-promotion. That is emphatically not the case. They don't understand me. I care passionately about changing the religious landscape and that motivates me more than anything else. I basically live my life on the financial bubble, struggling to make a modicum of money to keep me alive. I have very few extras in life. I am not out to get famous or to get rich off of these books. People who have never written a book do not realize that a few hundred dollars every six months as royalties do not get you much for all of your efforts and does not a living make. There are a sizable number of Christians in my area who will not hire my services as a carpet cleaning company because of this site and my books. One good Christian told a friend of mine, "I would never let that man into my house." Others in my area agree, lots of them, since I was at one time an important minister and president of the ministerial association here in this small town where many people know each other. So I appreciate any donations you, my readers, send me when you click on the "Donate" button in the sidebar. It helps, all of it. It allows me to do what I do. Without these donations I would have to get a second job or move out of this area and start over, which could effectively silence me, since starting all over takes a great deal of work in a new community.
Money is therefore my biggest problem. I would love to go to atheist conventions and network with important atheists but I can't because it costs a lot of money. I would like to be a member of several different atheist organizations but there are too many of them and they all cost money. One such organization's board member told me they would not have anyone speak at their convention unless he or she was a member. Should I become a member then?
And when it comes to inviting atheists to speak at these conventions I basically get the leftovers. We already have an important atheist who was once a preacher, Dan Barker, who is the co-president of FFRF and has a track record of speaking for these conventions and debating. Not only is he well-connected with a very important voice for reason, but can you imagine slighting him by saying to him, "Sorry we're having John Loftus speak this year instead of you." And if you want a scholar who was a former believer then who wouldn't want Hector Avalos, Bob Price, Richard Carrier or Bart Ehrman to speak instead of me? I don't begrudge any of these atheist organizations for these choices. I would probably make the same choices myself. So my person-to-person networking abilities are extremely limited living as I do in northern Indiana.
But I promise I will continue doing whatever I can do despite these drawbacks. I cannot stop, not yet, not now.
already. Prometheus Books is in the process of distributing them. It has the look and feel of The Christian Delusion, my previous book. From the planning stage to the final production TEC took a year and nine months of hard work. It is much easier to grab already published material and place it in a book than in getting new essays from scholars. The chapters in both books are new essays. They both took a lot of work. And they are both great books, as the recommendations tell us coming from both Christians and skeptics who agree. There are several chapters worth the price of the books themselves. Which ones might only depend on your own particular interests. Even though I read and re-read them several times, editing and going back and forth with the authors, Richard Carrier, the copy-editor and production staff, I am reading it again in hard copy format wondering if the decisions made were good ones, and trying to locate any typos we may have missed. I just re-read Jaco Gericke's chapter titled: "Can God Exist if Yahweh Doesn't?" That chapter alone is worth the price of the book. It's awesome. I can only guess how Christians will try to gerrymander around it, since he closed all the loopholes they might want to use in escaping his conclusion, that God doesn't exist because Christians no longer believe in Yahweh, a tribal god among others in the Israelite religion.
Comparisons will be made between both books too. Which one is better? Which one will be used in college classes on apologetics and atheism? That might be a hard decision for some professors. So I'm interested in any comparisons made between them.
There are many atheist books that get great online reviews from other atheists. A few of these more recent books have lots of 5 star reviews at Amazon and very few 1 star reviews at all. Mine are hotly contested. If you were judging which atheist books to buy based on the number of 1 star and 2 star reviews, then you might overlook mine in favor of others. In my opinion it's because many of these recent atheist books are basically preaching to the choir, so they are ignored by Christians. Mine do not do that. Christians are reading my books. Because of this you would expect there to be 1 star and 2 star reviews of them from Christians, because they are more threatened by them.
I can understand why atheists might not want to read books like mine, or recommend them, because they take Christianity seriously. After all, atheists already know Christianity is a delusion and don't want to waste their money buying them or waste their time reading them. I wish they would though, if for no other reason than to help get them noticed, since high sales increase visibility. If they want to help rid the world of this delusion they need books like mine. Buying and recommending them helps get them noticed.
I would say this even if I was not the editor. Perhaps people don't understand this. Some people might think all I care about is self-promotion. That is emphatically not the case. They don't understand me. I care passionately about changing the religious landscape and that motivates me more than anything else. I basically live my life on the financial bubble, struggling to make a modicum of money to keep me alive. I have very few extras in life. I am not out to get famous or to get rich off of these books. People who have never written a book do not realize that a few hundred dollars every six months as royalties do not get you much for all of your efforts and does not a living make. There are a sizable number of Christians in my area who will not hire my services as a carpet cleaning company because of this site and my books. One good Christian told a friend of mine, "I would never let that man into my house." Others in my area agree, lots of them, since I was at one time an important minister and president of the ministerial association here in this small town where many people know each other. So I appreciate any donations you, my readers, send me when you click on the "Donate" button in the sidebar. It helps, all of it. It allows me to do what I do. Without these donations I would have to get a second job or move out of this area and start over, which could effectively silence me, since starting all over takes a great deal of work in a new community.
Money is therefore my biggest problem. I would love to go to atheist conventions and network with important atheists but I can't because it costs a lot of money. I would like to be a member of several different atheist organizations but there are too many of them and they all cost money. One such organization's board member told me they would not have anyone speak at their convention unless he or she was a member. Should I become a member then?
And when it comes to inviting atheists to speak at these conventions I basically get the leftovers. We already have an important atheist who was once a preacher, Dan Barker, who is the co-president of FFRF and has a track record of speaking for these conventions and debating. Not only is he well-connected with a very important voice for reason, but can you imagine slighting him by saying to him, "Sorry we're having John Loftus speak this year instead of you." And if you want a scholar who was a former believer then who wouldn't want Hector Avalos, Bob Price, Richard Carrier or Bart Ehrman to speak instead of me? I don't begrudge any of these atheist organizations for these choices. I would probably make the same choices myself. So my person-to-person networking abilities are extremely limited living as I do in northern Indiana.
But I promise I will continue doing whatever I can do despite these drawbacks. I cannot stop, not yet, not now.
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