Book Title: Finding God: To Believe or Not to Believe
Author: Nicholas Oliva
ISBN: 098461432X
Publisher: Old Line Publishing
Link to purchase
Reviewer: Vonnie Faroqui for WITS
To Believe or not to Believe. . .
That is the question, isn’t it?
Nicholas Oliva writes a thought provoking and insightful book that challenges the ego attachments we have about the beliefs we hold. This book will not appeal to those who are threatened by challenges to their faith and religious ideologies, or to those with low level reading skills. It is well written and filled with ideas that are sure to spawn heated and complex intellectual debate. Moments of humor lighten what might otherwise prove to be too cerebral a tone for some readers.
Oliva explores concepts of belief in relation to our experience of God and the spiritual. The author asks his readers to take a hard look the beliefs they hold concerning life, death, and God, and draws from historical, scholarly evidence, and scientific theory to address limiting religious beliefs and atheism.
The difficulty with this book is that there has been centuries of biased, agenda driven effort to suppress information and debate of the kind Oliva presents with his book. Many readers may have a negative reaction to the book, without ever getting past the first chapter, simply based on their prior religious conditioning.
As the author says . . . and I paraphrase, “We all die. There is no empirical evidence as to what happens after that. Everything we believe is based on conjecture and faith.” The author shares an account of his own near death experiences and the affect dying had on his spiritual views and shift in paradigm. This book attempts to level the playing field with open discourse on diversity of belief.
This is an eloquently written book and an attractive volume. It is suitable for gift giving or to get a rise out of those annoying relatives, who are less than considerate when it comes to diversity in faith. If you are looking to explore new paths and spiritual dimensions, this is a book for you.
Join us Friday, November 5, 2010 as WITS Podcast host Vonnie Faroqui interviews the author, Nicholas Oliva.
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