Rating: 
Summary: This book is an abomination.
Review: With the squishy, feel-good title, this book may accidentally end up on the shelves of many people who would never buy it for themselves when their friends buy it for them, knowing they are "religious." There is a version for everyone on your gift list - from young children or teens who are too unaware of the true nature of G-d to understand that they are being manipulated, to any adult, male or female, who wishes to see in print what they hope to be true: that G-d doesn't think anything is sin, and that the highest measure of whether anything is right is whether it is right for you. This book will confirm many in this error, and confuse many others who thought they knew what they believed. It is NOT recommended for people of faith.Any faith. This book is particularly offensive to believers in the Bible, with assertions such as G-d "does not forgive anyone" or that a person is a lesbian "for the same reason you are right-handed". But it should curl the hair of anyone who is a sincere adherent of any religion that teaches that we are accountable to G-d (or even a group of gods) in any way, that there is good and evil, that sin has consequences. Virtually every answer given to the serious questions asked is a gross misrepresentation of Who G-d really is. Even people who disagree strongly on what G-d is like will agree that He is not the entity portrayed in this book. I believe that G-d still speaks to men, but I do not believe that He is speaking these things that contradict everything that is in the Bible, which reasonable people have viewed as His Word for more than 5,000 years.
Rating: 
Summary: Was he really talking to God?
Review: I grew up in a very fundamentalist family. I had grown up with a fear of God the father and a dependence on Jesus Christ. Still I wasn't happy in my sprituality even though I prayed everyday. I wasn't happy with my life and wasn't thrilled with where I was in so many ways.
There are several things in the bible that seem to contradict what Walsh has said. I do find that troubling because its against what I've been taught. For example the state of the dead.
I have been taught that the dead know nothing until the reserection, yet even with in the bible that is not consistently represented. God said he was the God of the living not the dead. He said that He was the God of Abraham and Isaac in the present tense when they in the conventional sense of time were long dead.
I had long ago begin to worry at the concept of time. Any pilot will tell you that time is not the constant we often preceive it to be and Einstein radically changed our concept of time more appropriately labling it as space-time and not a constant at all but relative to each observer. (See a Brief History of Time(either the movie about Stephen Hawkins-- or the book by Stephen Hawkins) Starting from that point some of the contradictions in the Bible become much closer to resolution. And to be fair to Walshe his "God" does not demand that you accept anything you read as gospel. He only ask you to try implementing it in your own life and seeing what the results are. The other thing that people who are condeming the book in the name of the bible should know is that what we now call the bible was compiled over thousands of years in the case of the old testament and, the events of the new testament were recorded by people at least 400 years after the death of Christ. Stories were passed down from mouth to mouth by believers for hundreds of years before they were actually written down. Anyone who has ever done the whisper something in the ear of a circle of guest at a party knows that what was said originally is invariably changed by the time it hits the end of a circle of people.
In all cases the bible was not written directly by God but was inspired by God using the talents and shortcomings of the bible authors. Every thing they wrote was filtered by their perceptions of the world they lived in. Paul acknowleged this when he said our understanding was as though we were looking though a clouded mirror or glass.
If you are looking for an exact correlation between the bible and Walshes book you will not find it. If you know yourself to be a person that does not question authority and prefers to be told what is what and your world view and sense of safety is predicated on that world view then you will NOT profit from this book.
Also if you are a person that uses the bible to impose your world view on other people( and that is not meant to be seen as reproach to people who feel that this is important) you will by definition hate this book. The book is about individual responsibility rather then blind acceptance of another's authority. I realize that is a very frightening concept for a lot of people. If you are frightened by that then now is not the time for you to read this book. Its totally possible that at some point in your life in what we perceive as the future you will come to remember these words and you will be ready then to read the book.
But if you are a person for whom the strictures of religion have become less filling for the thirst of your soul, then this book will give you new wellsprings to consider.
Instead of conveying authority through historical figures it invites you to begin a dialog with God personally. The book challenges you to consider yourself worthy of that dialog and that God considers you worthy enough, holy enough to talk to you personally. I'm not convinced yet of everything Walsh said but I am actively engaged now in experimenting with living what he has suggested and I know that I have been irrevokably changed by reading the books. I no longer accept that Fear should be the motivation behind my choices in life. If you are happy with the state of your spiritual life then there is no need to read the books .... But if on the other hand you have been turned off of Christanity because you see the hypocrisy of people who call themselves christians,or people who ask you to abandon your own reason in the name of faith , or if you are a life long Christian who yearns to find not just peace but joy in your life I urge you to consider reading "Conversations with God". The book will not of itself tell you an exact formula for that joy in your life. You will have to work harder then you have ever worked but the work will be fascinating and interesting. It will be scary but exhilarating at the same time. I am amazed at the coincidences and connections that have been made including what led me to the book in the first place.
Rating: 
Summary: good setup for Will Shad's books
Review: Another reviewer said how this book was good for its time, but has been surpassed by 'The Truth:Will Shad's conversations with god', and 'the whole truth: will shad's continuing conversations with god'. I agree, because while Walsch's books are interesting, they deal with too much new age babble that anyone can logically disprove. Shad's books combine many of Wlasch's ideas in a more logical and entertaining manner. I still reccommend this series maybe as a setup for Shad's books.
Rating:
Summary: Let Synchronicity be your Guide
Review: One of the things I have notice about divinely inspired information is an extraordinary command of the language, and an ability to say a great deal with few words. You will find that within this book. You know... there are no accidents... It is not an accident that you are reading these words. It may have different meaning relative to you, but it is no accident. There is no doubt in my mind that CWG is from a divine source. And even if it is not, I don't care... I'll take brilliance and genius wherever I can get it. There may be those of you who doubt whether these could actually be the words of God, and I have no quarrel with that. A valuable addage is "Know a tree by it's fruits" And the fruits of this book are Love, and Understanding, and Happines, and Connection... And that's good enough for me. If you only read one book this year, this is the one. --Frank Boyd
Rating:
Summary: A Great Book!
Review: Neale Donald Walsch did a fantastic job with Book 1. The message is so powerful. It makes sense and everything fits together. I go to a Catholic High School and have been taught since I was a baby about God and after I read this book, I believe that I can never go back to my former beliefs.
Rating: 
Summary: ok, but has since been bettered by other books
Review: This book was original and controversial when it first came out, and I read it about five years ago. I liked it, but there seemed to be many contraditcions it in, the main one being: if we are all potential 'masters', and can control reality any way we choose, what if two 'masters' attempted to bring two contradictory events into being? I have since bought Will Shad's 2 excellent books of his own conversations with God, and they explained many of these contradictions in a better way. His books are in fact superior to Walsch's, and can be called the 'next generation' in the genre.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful
Review: This book was absolutely incredible. It has answered most of the questions I had been having on my own about Christianity. As a teen, I struggled with my faith because I felt there were inconsistancies. As a college student involved in the sciences, I had been seqarching for what I believe. This included thought about issues such as the Big Bang and Evolution. The answers I came up with were the same that this book 'revealed'. I reccomend reading it for anyone searching for faith, anyone who has ever felt dissolutioned with religion, who wants to think for themself. As far as heresy, well, I don't know. It would be very easy to write this book off as "work of the devil" because some of the ideas within do seem like heresy. This is something I am still not sure on. However, I know that the message it contains is not one of hatred. If you read it and think it is too out there to believe, think about this: If satan really wrote this, would he be encouraging us to love one another? Look at the things in the book that feel right before you look at those that feel wrong. If something is hard to believe as something God would say, look at the things that do sound like the loving, caring God that the Christian faith would have us believe. The argument that God has about the existance of hell, for example. Look at the logic behind it, and ask which sounds like the truth - what God says, or what your human teachers have told you.
Rating:
Summary: Conversations with God's enemy...
Review: Readers beware. Things are NOT always what they appear to be and "Conversations with God" is NOT what it seems to be. Inside and out, this book is very deceiving. Its white cover, the peaceful picture, and specially its name lead anyone to believe that this book is about God. But it is not. In its pages, words from the Bible mixed with the writer's goal to alienate the reader from God become pure blasphemy. I found great darkness in this book. With his tactics, the author tries to lure people away from God and if not careful, you won't even know it. Be strong! "Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes" (Eph 6:11-NIV). In a bookstore, this book is like a goat among the sheep. Like others, I also felt that it was my duty to warn you that this book is NOT inspired by God NOR the Spirit of God. Evidently, it was NOT God with whom the writer conversed. The author of CWG uses the name of God to deceit the children of God. He uses God's name to get to you and he is NOT honest about it. The Bible says, "Watch out that no one deceives you" (Matt 24: 4 - NIV). From the very first pages and in a very clever way, the writer prepares the soil to sow what he will want to reap later. He does it by trying to disarm the reader first. He asks you to forget all that your rabbi, pastor, priest, etc., have taught you up until now. He asks you to forget all that you have been "conditioned" to believe. That idea may seem appealing to many of us but once you forget all that you have learned about God, the author is ready to insert into your mind, practically anything he wants. Be alert! And, "take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one" (Eph 6:16 - NIV). As the writer goes on, he makes God look small in size, power, brains, inarticulate, and even unable to answer petty questions. I mean, the God who created the Sun, the stars, the trees, the flowers, every single and the billions of cells in your body (according to the writer), unable to answer one of his little questions! Then, of course, he makes himself look bigger and powerful; like a god. This man seems to know what it takes to begin a new religion; a religion of which he surely wants to be the god. I believe that at the very moment that we depart from God, we begin to suffer. Please don't take your eyes away from God so that God may not one day take His eyes away from you. God loves you. Bring all your burdens to Him. Do as Jesus did, he always went to God first, even prior to his crucifixion. Follow his steps. Jesus is the way. And don't forget Kind David's words: "Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever" (Psalm 23:6 - NIV). Note: For the ones who need proofs, the author's issue, "evil doesn't exist" could be easily solved if we ask people who have endured great suffering (e.g. war) if they believe that evil exists. It is not fair for us, happy spenders who think mostly of personal happiness, to say that evil doesn't exist. We could ask, for example, any Jew who lived and suffered persecution during the Holocaust (when Hitler savagely persecuted God's chosen people), if they believe that evil exists. If these Jews believe that evil exists, then it does but if they believe that evil doesn't exist, then it doesn't.
Rating:
Summary: books also speaks to the godless
Review: Seems that many of the reviews are from Christians in one form or another. I'm an atheist, though raised in the Roman Catholic tradition. My set of beliefs (as limited as they are) contradict other reviewers', but at least you'll have another viewpoint to consider. I enjoyed Book One because it vindicated a lot of what I thought about--there is no judging of our actions by some greater entity, each of us is a god, and when we die our souls (however we define it) all do the same thing regardless of how our life was led. Bad stuff derives from fear and good stuff derives from Truth, Love, and Joy. These ideas all makes sense to me, and Walsch presents them in easy-to-understand language, even though I did read the book slowly to better capture the thoughts. Lots of Walsch's ideas are Gaia theory--(read the last book in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series--he comes to the same conclusions). Reminds me, too, of The Force from Star Wars, which frankly doesn't sound too goofy anymore. I especially like Walsch's part about Joy--seems that many folks forget about physical and emotional pleasure balancing with their sense of purpose (which Walsch calls our ability/desire/need to create). Granted, I think much of the author's premise is new-age mullarky, but some of his lessons were good: for example, don't say you WANT something, such as, I want to go to Paris, have money, be fit...because then you just continue to WANT it. Half the battle to becoming better is phrasing ideas better and Walsch stresses that. The first half of Book One is more compelling (because it's about universal truths) than the second half, when Walsch starts to whine about his life and "God's" responses are directed to his problems (not mine). But many folks have Walsch's problems, so you might have a bigger connect than I did. Definitely worth reading to glean the good stuff that works for you...it's a nice reminder than we're okay after all.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful
Review: I have read all three of Walsch's "Conversation with God" books but found book one to be the most powerful. Nearly every page has some truth underlined. Reading this book, for me, was like reading a truth I had always known but momentarily forgotten. I have read book one three times now and I consider it a valuable lesson for living. God Bless You, Neale Donald Walsch.
Beverly J Scott author of Righteous Revenge
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