Alan said: "Neal Donald Walsch claims he is Dialoguing and debating with God on a sort of buddy buddy peer peer relationship. So according to him he actually hears the very voice of the most hight god

I make no such claim my creation essay and others by myself are the result of of deep introspection, meditation and thing about the reason of existence. I don't see myself as a separate entity from god only a part of him that must remember what I have forgotten and write it down."

Recoverer responds: "I believe that what Alan stated is an important point.

When a person claims to present words that come from God himself, there is the possibility that a reader will assume that the words are always true, even when the words contradict what a person believes to be true. A person might make the mistake of believing according to what a person like Walsch says, rather than trusting their own judgment and intuition.

I've seen this sort of thing happen so much with people who follow gurus. Some gurus make the claim in one way or the other that when you speak to them you speak to God. People who follow such gurus often put the guru's words before their own discrimination. This can be a big mistake for various reasons.

Regarding what Walsch says, perhaps he says some good things at times, but I've also found that he says things that are false. Therefore, I don't believe it is correct for him to claim that his words come from God.

If he actually receives words from God, he should be able to sit in front of a panel of experts from different fields of knowledge, and answer all of their questions in an accurate manner. I doubt that he could do such a thing.

Therefore, perhaps he should call his books "Conversations with Myself," even if this would affect how much his books sell.

heisenberg69:

I believe that the man Jesus Christ lived because I had spiritual experiences and received spiritual messages stating that he did live as the man the Bible speaks about.

One night I had what I refer to as my night in heaven experience. I've spoken of this before on this forum, I'll describe it in a different way. I'll limit the discussion to the part that related to Jesus.

"I'm in space, but not physical space. In a manner that is much clearer and certain than I usually understand, I know that the Bible's story of Jesus is true. I'm really surprised that this is so, because I'm an atheist (remember, this is past tense). I don't see Jesus and nobody tells me about him, the knowledge of his reality exists in a manner that is way beyond how I ordinarilly understand something. This knowledge doesn't feel repressive. In fact, it feels quite wonderful and is connected to an understanding that lets me know that not only does the afterlife exist, I completely understand how it is possible for the afterlife to exist without having to think about it. It is just that I forgot about the afterlife while living in this World. Life in this realm of spirit is what my existence is truly about. The problems of the World are gone. The happiness level in this realm is absolutely wonderful."

This experience didn't inform me on a verse by verse basis, which verses in the gospels are accurate. The feeling I had was that the overall story of Jesus is accurate.

When it comes to what different people have wrote about Jesus, I figure people could work an argument one way or the other. I believe I'll have to stick to what my experiences have told me. I'm not the only person to have a non-physical experience that involved the spirit of Jesus. Because of my experiences, I'm open to considering what they say, rather than concluding that they had some sort of interpretive error.

Spooky,

After Constantine te availability of books by classical authors is generally due to Christian scribes.  So the Gospels are far more abundantly attested in the early manuscript tradition than Plato, Aristototle, or for that matter, Julius Caesar.  Also, we have far more information about Jesus' LIFE than the LIVES of either philosopher!  By the way, why do you believe there ever was a teacher named "Buddha" (Siddartha Gautama)?  Lives of the Buddha cannot be found until about 600 years after his death!  At least, the New Testament Gospels can be connected with eyewitness testimony and can be dated to the century in which He lived.

Don

The words that are attributed to the Buddha don't all sound the same.  For example, the Dhammapada (a Theravadin scripture) sounds quite different than some of the Mahayanist scriptures that are attributed to Buddha. I can't say one way or the other if a man known as Buddha existed, because I haven't taken the time to figure it out. I figure Buddhist teachings were started by somebody, and throughout the years evolved into different forms.

For example, Zen Buddhism (a form of Mahayana Buddhism) has a historical connection to Chan Buddhism, but is different in some ways.

Tibetan Buddhism (also a form of Mahayana Buddhism), even though it shares some of the same principles as Chan Buddhism, is quite different in some ways.

It seems as if the local culture has had a big affect on how Buddhism has evolved. Different teachers have come up with their own protocols. For example, Bankei's approach is quite different than the approach of the Tibetan teacher who first had people do thousands of prostrations each day.