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The God Conclusion
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins has sold more than three million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling books promoting atheism of all time.
Now John Leonard systematically dismantles the argument in The God Delusion point by point, leaving the reader with very few questions as to which worldview is more logical. After he has dispensed with Dawkins, Leonard makes a powerful argument for intelligent design that should eliminate any lingering doubts in the mind of the reader about whether supernatural intelligence exists.
The God Conclusion provides the most comprehensive and logical answer to our existential questions.
God exists.
Now John Leonard systematically dismantles the argument in The God Delusion point by point, leaving the reader with very few questions as to which worldview is more logical. After he has dispensed with Dawkins, Leonard makes a powerful argument for intelligent design that should eliminate any lingering doubts in the mind of the reader about whether supernatural intelligence exists.
The God Conclusion provides the most comprehensive and logical answer to our existential questions.
God exists.
332 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 7, 2022
15 people are currently reading
8 people want to read
About the author
John L. Leonard
9 books5 followersJohn L. Leonard was born in Savannah, Georgia and graduated from Savannah Christian School. He holds a BBA in Management Information Systems from the University of Georgia and worked as a computer programmer for more than twenty years before becoming a writer.
John writes detective novels under the pen name Rocky Leonard. His first detective thriller was published in 2012.
John has spent most of his adult life in the northern suburbs of Atlanta. His writing has also been influenced by shorter stints working as a bartender, real estate investor and landlord.
He has been married to wife Lisa for twenty-one years and is the proud father of two and grandfather of three, as well as pack leader for several wonderful dogs and a hostile Maine Coon cat.
His first non-fiction book was published in 2010 by epress-online.
The local color in his writing is equally authentic whether the setting is a Georgia beach, downtown Atlanta, or the Appalachian foothills in north Georgia.
John writes detective novels under the pen name Rocky Leonard. His first detective thriller was published in 2012.
John has spent most of his adult life in the northern suburbs of Atlanta. His writing has also been influenced by shorter stints working as a bartender, real estate investor and landlord.
He has been married to wife Lisa for twenty-one years and is the proud father of two and grandfather of three, as well as pack leader for several wonderful dogs and a hostile Maine Coon cat.
His first non-fiction book was published in 2010 by epress-online.
The local color in his writing is equally authentic whether the setting is a Georgia beach, downtown Atlanta, or the Appalachian foothills in north Georgia.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 11, 2025
Review of “The God Conclusion” by John L. Leonard
The God Conclusion is a curious book. It isn’t quite a scientific work, nor a theological study, nor a philosophical argument. It’s a personal manifesto shaped by years of private reflection, stitched together from scientific terminology, religious conviction, and a long-standing fixation on one man: Richard Dawkins.
Taken on its own terms, Leonard’s ambition is huge. He wants to dismantle atheism, demonstrate the probability of a creator God, and expose what he sees as Dawkins’ intellectual blind spots. Unfortunately, the book struggles to achieve those goals. What it reveals instead, sometimes unintentionally, is the portrait of a writer who once admired Dawkins deeply, felt personally dismissed by him, and has spent fifteen years constructing a counter-narrative in response.
This isn’t a hatchet job. Leonard is neither malicious nor unintelligent. But the book deserves a sober, unflinching analysis.
________________________________________
A personal narrative presented as objective reasoning
Leonard insists that his conclusions are rooted in scientific evidence and logic. Yet the structure of the book suggests something else. Before presenting any argument, he foregrounds a deeply emotional religious experience, the moment that reshaped his worldview.
He claims this experience is not evidence, yet he places it at the centre of the book, and everything else builds outward from it.
The result is a text that sounds like scientific critique but functions like an attempt to retrofit rational justification onto beliefs adopted first for emotional reasons.
________________________________________
The Dawkins Problem
The centre of gravity here isn’t God.
It’s Richard Dawkins.
Leonard quotes him constantly. Examines his tone. Dissects his interviews. Explores his childhood. Revisits his arguments. Rewrites them. Invents objections. Struggles with grievances. It feels much less like academic engagement and much more like unresolved hero-worship turned inward.
It isn’t hatred. It’s disappointment.
A kind of wounded admiration.
At several points the book reads like someone who once craved Dawkins’ intellectual approval and can’t quite let go of the slight. The emotional imprint shapes the argument more strongly than the evidence does.
It occasionally resembles a breakup letter disguised as cosmology.
________________________________________
An earnest writer, out of his depth
Leonard is not a scientist, philosopher, or trained theologian. He is a well-read layperson who has absorbed lots of material at the surface level, but not deeply enough to understand the technical foundations or the internal debates of the fields he critiques.
This produces recurring issues:
1. Misunderstanding evolution
Leonard repeatedly misrepresents foundational concepts. Examples include:
• treating common ancestry as “plants and animals breeding together”
• implying that phenotypic similarity determines phylogeny
• using genetic reuse as evidence of conscious design
• presenting evolution as a linear progression rather than a branching process
These misunderstandings undermine the confidence of his “big-picture” claims.
2. Misusing probability
Improbable events are repeatedly described as effectively impossible, and probability is treated as a proxy for intention. Yet no actual probabilistic calculations are provided.
In scientific contexts, probability is only meaningful when the underlying model is correct. Leonard assumes his model (design) and then interprets improbability accordingly. This is circular.
3. Treating fine-tuning as a solved conclusion
Fine-tuning is presented as if it has one obvious interpretation: intentionality. In reality, the subject is deeply contested within physics. Leonard shows no awareness of the alternative models or their implications.
4. Filling scientific gaps with narrative certainty
Throughout the book:
• unknowns are interpreted as evidence for intention
• contingency is reframed as design
• randomness is imbued with meaning
His preferred conclusion always fills the space left by uncertainty, not because the evidence points there, but because his worldview does.
________________________________________
A comforting story, not a coherent theory
Leonard’s “big picture” argument is not constructed from converging empirical evidence. It is built from a narrative that feels intuitively meaningful to him. Statements such as:
“It all fits together nicely because it is all part of a plan.”
sound more like psychological coherence than scientific inference.
This type of thinking is familiar across belief systems:
• reincarnation frameworks
• cosmic-consciousness models
• divinely-guided destiny narratives
• some conspiracy-worldviews
Not because they are delusional, but because they impose order on uncertainty. Leonard is doing the same thing in more sophisticated language.
________________________________________
Not dishonest, just enclosed
Leonard is sincere. He genuinely believes he is presenting an overwhelming argument. But his framework is internally self-reinforcing. If you accept the premises, the conclusions feel inevitable. If you don’t accept the premises, the argument dissolves.
His statement:
“I can describe what I see to you, but I can’t make you see it.”
Is telling.
It’s not scientific epistemology.
It’s the language of personal revelation.
________________________________________
What the book actually achieves
Strengths
• readable and engaging
• sincere attempt to grapple with opposing viewpoints
• avoids the harshest forms of fundamentalism
• provides genuine insight into one person’s existential journey
Weaknesses
• frequent scientific misinterpretations
• reliance on rhetoric over data
• fixation on Dawkins overshadows the actual argument
• emotional conviction presented as logical necessity
• conclusion predetermined by worldview, not evidence
________________________________________
The fairest possible conclusion
The God Conclusion is not a scientific argument.
It is not a philosophical breakthrough.
It is not a refutation of atheism.
It is a deeply personal intellectual memoir of a man who:
• had a transformative religious experience
• admired Richard Dawkins
• felt dismissed by scientific atheism
• spent fifteen years building a meaning-rich worldview
• and wants others, Dawkins included, to see what he sees
Read as theology, it is earnest but simplistic.
Read as science, it is flawed.
Read as psychology, it is fascinating.
The book tells us far more about the author’s need for meaning than about the existence of God.
And in that sense, it succeeds, just not in the way its author intended.
The God Conclusion is a curious book. It isn’t quite a scientific work, nor a theological study, nor a philosophical argument. It’s a personal manifesto shaped by years of private reflection, stitched together from scientific terminology, religious conviction, and a long-standing fixation on one man: Richard Dawkins.
Taken on its own terms, Leonard’s ambition is huge. He wants to dismantle atheism, demonstrate the probability of a creator God, and expose what he sees as Dawkins’ intellectual blind spots. Unfortunately, the book struggles to achieve those goals. What it reveals instead, sometimes unintentionally, is the portrait of a writer who once admired Dawkins deeply, felt personally dismissed by him, and has spent fifteen years constructing a counter-narrative in response.
This isn’t a hatchet job. Leonard is neither malicious nor unintelligent. But the book deserves a sober, unflinching analysis.
________________________________________
A personal narrative presented as objective reasoning
Leonard insists that his conclusions are rooted in scientific evidence and logic. Yet the structure of the book suggests something else. Before presenting any argument, he foregrounds a deeply emotional religious experience, the moment that reshaped his worldview.
He claims this experience is not evidence, yet he places it at the centre of the book, and everything else builds outward from it.
The result is a text that sounds like scientific critique but functions like an attempt to retrofit rational justification onto beliefs adopted first for emotional reasons.
________________________________________
The Dawkins Problem
The centre of gravity here isn’t God.
It’s Richard Dawkins.
Leonard quotes him constantly. Examines his tone. Dissects his interviews. Explores his childhood. Revisits his arguments. Rewrites them. Invents objections. Struggles with grievances. It feels much less like academic engagement and much more like unresolved hero-worship turned inward.
It isn’t hatred. It’s disappointment.
A kind of wounded admiration.
At several points the book reads like someone who once craved Dawkins’ intellectual approval and can’t quite let go of the slight. The emotional imprint shapes the argument more strongly than the evidence does.
It occasionally resembles a breakup letter disguised as cosmology.
________________________________________
An earnest writer, out of his depth
Leonard is not a scientist, philosopher, or trained theologian. He is a well-read layperson who has absorbed lots of material at the surface level, but not deeply enough to understand the technical foundations or the internal debates of the fields he critiques.
This produces recurring issues:
1. Misunderstanding evolution
Leonard repeatedly misrepresents foundational concepts. Examples include:
• treating common ancestry as “plants and animals breeding together”
• implying that phenotypic similarity determines phylogeny
• using genetic reuse as evidence of conscious design
• presenting evolution as a linear progression rather than a branching process
These misunderstandings undermine the confidence of his “big-picture” claims.
2. Misusing probability
Improbable events are repeatedly described as effectively impossible, and probability is treated as a proxy for intention. Yet no actual probabilistic calculations are provided.
In scientific contexts, probability is only meaningful when the underlying model is correct. Leonard assumes his model (design) and then interprets improbability accordingly. This is circular.
3. Treating fine-tuning as a solved conclusion
Fine-tuning is presented as if it has one obvious interpretation: intentionality. In reality, the subject is deeply contested within physics. Leonard shows no awareness of the alternative models or their implications.
4. Filling scientific gaps with narrative certainty
Throughout the book:
• unknowns are interpreted as evidence for intention
• contingency is reframed as design
• randomness is imbued with meaning
His preferred conclusion always fills the space left by uncertainty, not because the evidence points there, but because his worldview does.
________________________________________
A comforting story, not a coherent theory
Leonard’s “big picture” argument is not constructed from converging empirical evidence. It is built from a narrative that feels intuitively meaningful to him. Statements such as:
“It all fits together nicely because it is all part of a plan.”
sound more like psychological coherence than scientific inference.
This type of thinking is familiar across belief systems:
• reincarnation frameworks
• cosmic-consciousness models
• divinely-guided destiny narratives
• some conspiracy-worldviews
Not because they are delusional, but because they impose order on uncertainty. Leonard is doing the same thing in more sophisticated language.
________________________________________
Not dishonest, just enclosed
Leonard is sincere. He genuinely believes he is presenting an overwhelming argument. But his framework is internally self-reinforcing. If you accept the premises, the conclusions feel inevitable. If you don’t accept the premises, the argument dissolves.
His statement:
“I can describe what I see to you, but I can’t make you see it.”
Is telling.
It’s not scientific epistemology.
It’s the language of personal revelation.
________________________________________
What the book actually achieves
Strengths
• readable and engaging
• sincere attempt to grapple with opposing viewpoints
• avoids the harshest forms of fundamentalism
• provides genuine insight into one person’s existential journey
Weaknesses
• frequent scientific misinterpretations
• reliance on rhetoric over data
• fixation on Dawkins overshadows the actual argument
• emotional conviction presented as logical necessity
• conclusion predetermined by worldview, not evidence
________________________________________
The fairest possible conclusion
The God Conclusion is not a scientific argument.
It is not a philosophical breakthrough.
It is not a refutation of atheism.
It is a deeply personal intellectual memoir of a man who:
• had a transformative religious experience
• admired Richard Dawkins
• felt dismissed by scientific atheism
• spent fifteen years building a meaning-rich worldview
• and wants others, Dawkins included, to see what he sees
Read as theology, it is earnest but simplistic.
Read as science, it is flawed.
Read as psychology, it is fascinating.
The book tells us far more about the author’s need for meaning than about the existence of God.
And in that sense, it succeeds, just not in the way its author intended.
May 2, 2024
It was like a high schooler wrote this book. Basically seemed like it was copy and pasted from a YEC blog, especially the “scientific evidence” toward the end of the book. Two minutes of googling is enough to tear this book apart. Even banana man Ray Comfort could have made less embarrassing claims. I’m 100% going to do a deep dive into this book on YT soon.
May 31, 2023
Warning!
This is definitely a book for the open-minded person. Read if you dare. You might become a totally different person by the end of this book. The author did a tremendous job countering Dawkins arguments in this book.
It's a must-read.
This is definitely a book for the open-minded person. Read if you dare. You might become a totally different person by the end of this book. The author did a tremendous job countering Dawkins arguments in this book.
It's a must-read.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews