Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Here’s Jewish Canadian lawyer Ezra Levant on the flop of the recent antiChristian also anti-ID book

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Apparently, Canadian Marci McDonald’s Random House anti-Christian book is a commercial flop. Go here, here, and here for intelligent-design related “marcis” = obvious errors such as claiming that proud Presbyterian Phillip Johnson, author of Darwin on Trial , had become a Catholic.

At some point, truth needs evidence, not conspiracy thinking.

It’s about time that some of this stuff started to just plain flop. The thinking public deserves better.

 [Note 1: I don’t know  how to comment on Sal Cordova’s useful quotation from Ez Levant because, for some reason, this post is not allowing comments. Too bad, because there was a useful one demonstrating the tank in ratings of “The Armageddon Factor”.   Essentially, there is no Armageddon factor in Canada.  If you want to worry about something, worry about the Gulf oil spill or the nuclear buildup in unfree countries, not about an Armageddon factor in Canada.]

[Note 2: I still can’t comment on Sal’s posts, and don’t know what I am doing wrong. Presumably, the nerd from Nerds on Site, an excellent service for small businesses*] will come back at some point, and I can ask him.

By Design or by Chance? succeeded despite, not because of, publisher wishes. The publisher had no idea what the Canadian division was doing, until the sheets were hanging in the drying room at an undisclosed local press. When told, they said it wasn’t their sort of thing.

We weren’t their sort of thing either, actually, but they were stuck with us at the time. Everyone had to flee, of course. But the book remains in print. I am grateful to anyone who considers it.

* Once upon a time, a long time ago in a time period you do not want to hear about, I had to drag the hard drive up and down flights of stairs in the Toronto subway. The down steps were much worse than the up ones. I sometimes tripped on the stairs, due to overloading … anyway … my point appears above.

[Note 3: Robert Byers at 5: Yes, the anti-Christian stuff is so true that any evidence against it is laughable, as the “marci” “Armageddon” book is. That is what attracted the attention of Jewish civil rights lawyer Ezra Levant. He has plenty of other things to worry about, given the “human rights” tolerance of Death to the Jews marches in Toronto, which were organized by people with some issue about Palestine (which, in Canada, might not even be big enough to qualify as a regional municipality). But he had the insight to see that the community most likely to just suppress that sort of thing was itself under attack. The reality is that anti-Christian sentiment has generally led to an increase in, not a decline in prejudice in my country. And if you are an American or a European, it will lead to that in yours too.

Christianity is a multicultural religion that attracts converts. As a result, prejudice is not built into the system, as such. No question, it exists, but it is not built into the system.

By the way, I hope that someone will wake up all the Americans who are likely sound asleep by now whenever they hear the word “Canada” (best known soporific in history) to see that exactly what happened here will happen to them too. The “human rights” establishment will persecute a Christian high school over “gay rights” issues, but never find time for “Death to the Jews” marches, and be too busy raising cain with Christians to deal with honour killings or female genital mutilation. And you will all be paying lavishly for their misdeeds. Also, while I agree that one must not, in general, draw too much attention to a flop of this type and magnitude, we need to prevent people from quoting from it as if it were a source of useful information about a poorly understood country.

In that case, Phillip Johnson is now a “Catholic” and I get “paid” here.

Comments
I am Canadian. in Canada the media is very anti-Christian, anti-Canadian, anti-kindness. They want to fight the battles for America's soul but in cAnada have little to do. its a very small establishment nation un representitive of the people. So very left wing. Very boring also. i question however bringing relevance to any book. Unless it actually is a influence on many people then even wishing disaster on its sales just brings strength or influence to any book that has sales. in this case it would stamp a anti-christian book with credibility. Sales must not be the measure of a books value in its substance. evil books can sell millions and good books sell none. The issue here is not the book but as the author of this piece , Ms O'Leary. has often said the rampant crusading Jihad against Christian faith and involvement based on that, and Christian identity in the establishment and some elements of the population. Glad to see the book a flop but its irrelevant to the bigger motivations and the bigger problem that has come to pass in North America. In fact I welcome these books because it gives opportunity to make accusations like I just did. If we believe there is a war against christianity then publicity about this is gained from their attacks. Well done or flops.Robert Byers
June 21, 2010
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As we know, the mainstream media tends to hype anything that could generate sales or pageviews for itself, regardless of actual quality. It's a shame, but the way it is.Ena Sharples
June 20, 2010
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #2,567,267 in Books It’s sales are hardly setting the world on fire!
Denyse O'leary's book, By Design Or By Chance? even after 6 years has a better sales ranking than Marci McDonald! And I don't think Denyse received any where near the amount of hype by the mainstream media that Marci McDonald is getting.scordova
June 20, 2010
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #2,567,267 in Books It's sales are hardly setting the world on fire!Ena Sharples
June 19, 2010
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Marci McDonald...appeared on practically every public affairs talk show in the country, and was given great publicity by her critics (including me). All of which hasn't been enough to prop up sales, which are sagging badly. being tenth in non-fiction sales in Canada means sales of under 1,000 copies a week -- probably more like 500 copies (or even less). The book is a flop, and deservedly so. It's mainly a collection of gossip, written in a rambling style that is largely unreadable. And even the parts that make some sense are just so factually unreliable, the book really is of no use to anyone, even those who agree with its bigoted thesis that Christians are evil and dangerous. ... The battle is pretty much over: Canadians have sized up her book and don't like it. The fact that Random House will likely never recoup their book advance to their house bigot is especially pleasing to me. And that's without even counting the defamation suits -- I know of at least one legal demand letter to Random House that, if not met with the appropriate apology and correction, could probably take whatever meagre revenues the book has earned. All in all, a happy ending to a bigoted book by an ageing slanderer.
scordova
June 19, 2010
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