Talk:Neale Donald Walsch

Maybe there should be a note at some point, perhaps before the article, that the only objective thing you can say about the "God" in the books is that it is a literary device, and that this article discusses it with this in mind, and also when not discussing the book that the implication is that the God being discussed is the real-life idea, whatever that is for some people. Right now it kinda sound interchanged, like it's being assumed most people are taking this as an actual conversation (whether or not it was, the Wikipedia doesn't take sides, right?)...

Part of it like the "met with criticism" sentence are chunky and floaty. If it's not a big deal, it shouldn't be there, if it's a big schtick part of what people know about him when they think of the name, it needs better priority in the article. 70.118.235.203 21:42, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

His recent blog on his site (April 7, "Signs are everywhere") makes me sick...the one above An Inconvenient Truth. It was clever enough to ask people to buy the book to get it better exposure, knowing he has a cult following, but asking people who already bought it to join a "God's Sales Force?" Zealot a bit? He's a respectable writer but it ends there because after 800 years of being alive he doesn't know how to quit when he's ahead.

Is Neale a modern day prophet?

We may not realize it now but we may be having a prophet living in our midst in modern day America. In Neale's books, God tells him that he is a messenger for the masses. Does that qualify him as a prophet? Of course, Neale Donald Walsch is no Master yet but God seems to have chosen him to carry out some new messages about truth and life. Any comments? --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 14:46, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I find Neale's claims to be very hard to swallow. In the spirit of full disclosure, I'll point out that I am notably biased in favor of reality. All we have here, really, is Neale's word that God has spoken to him (whether or not "God" is something that actually exists is for a different Talk page :p). It's obviously hard to collect evidence on the communications of a purportedly non-corporeal, divine being; and so until Neale can prove otherwise, his word is all he really has to back up the existence of these "conversations".

The way I see it, Neale expects us to take his word that he's talking with God. Consequently, we're supposed to take Neale's word for everything that "God" supposedly said, which if you're into the Bible, differs noticably from what God has supposedly said in the past. Pulling dialogue out of his posterior doesn't make him a prophet. Personally, I think that Neale is an hell of a salesman, and that God hasn't spoken to him any more than God had spoken to Jim Jones or to Pat Robertson or to the American President. Nortelrye 15:40, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Hardly. I'll be honest, he was doing well for the first couple of books, but then he started talking like every other incredibly tedious 'new age' person, all fake plastic "love " and reliance on paraphrased Buddhist and Hindu ideas, and watered down Christianity. If he's a prophet then I'm the pope. --Stevefarrell 23:44, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, God has also revealed to him that he had about 600 human past lives and he has only a few more lives to go before realizing Him/Her or reaching the pinnicle of spiritual evolution. He also states that Neale is a messenger of truth in his present incarnation. Neale may (or may not) have changed to a more materialistic person but we have no right to judge his spiritual evolution. Even God does not judge him and He loves Neale a lot. (He also loves ALL of us including Hitler!) Personally, I feel that Neale's time on our planet is about to end. He just released his last "Conversation with God" book and he has given a lot of hope to the people on planet Earth. Let us give him credit for being brave to publish these books. A lot of people view Neale as a heretic because of the books he had published but Neale is very sincere about his work. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 15:47, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't see him as a heretic, as his idea of God matches closely my own (though I'm not so much a pantheist), as does his idea of how humanity should behave; and on the whole it's not incompatible with my religion. But as the comment above says, he's starting to sport these 'new age capitalist' tendencies, the kind of 'give me money and be fulfilled' approach to God. Plus, there's little proof that God actually is talking to him. The Lord may no more be talking to Walsch than He is talking to, say, George W Bush or the suicide bomber who says they're doing it in the name of Allah. All I'm saying is that, any idiot can claim prophethood, and they frequently do; some even claim godhood (see Yahweh ben Yahweh) or messiah-hood (David Koresh). However, I do subscribe to a lot of Walsch's ideas and beliefs, but I find new age 'brotherly love' to be somewhat pseudo. I don't know why. --Stevefarrell 16:25, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I feel that you might perhaps be mistaken. Nobody but Neale knows if God revealed anything to him. All we know is that Neale claims that God revealed things to him. We know that these things have been "revealed" to him because Neale says they have. That's all we have to go on -- just some guy's word...and it's really easy to make claims when there's no way they can be disproved. Personally, I think that Neale is full of it, but a good enough writer to make it marketable.

And I do claim the right to judge this so-called spiritual evolution! Look at what he's doing -- he's making lots of money off what appears to be a load of new-age babble mixed in with some "prophecies" all wrapped in a series of books! Neale may be a very smart guy for coming up with something so saleable, but that does not by any means make him a prophet or a particullarly brave man. While I do not begrudge a man the profit of his labors, I can certainly question his motives. I give Neale credit for being a skilled enough author and salesman to make the amount of money he has from something so ridiculous. Nortelrye 16:00, 18 May 2006 (UTC)