Cannot Say I Was Convinced
928300
My Literature for Young Adults class read this book and I have to say this was not my favorite. I admit it is generally a good book but you have to try and not think about it. Hannah does not actually seem suicidal until later in the tapes and even then the circumstances leading to her suicide could have been stopped. It seems like every major episode that lead to her suicide was something that she let happen to give her an excuse to do this. I'm not too far out of high school myself and if I let things slip away from me as a result of a stupid rumor I would have died thousands of times. I just cannot say that Hannah was remotely convincing.
3034244
Maybe I am not the brightest bulb :) , but it was NOT quite as easy as I was hoping to grasp the seven concepts.  I wish that he would have elaborated a little more.
1602117
I am not sure how much to believe in regards to the author's experiences. Not really a lot of new information and some of the experiences seem to be borrowed from other sources (e.g. the white matrix is one). But, most people don't believe my own experiences with the spiritual realm so I have to give him the benefit of the doubt.
901400
I was not sold on the idea this was an authentic COACH bag.  I did some research and still was not sold on the idea.  Something about this bag makes me doubtful.  I returned the bag for a full refund.  If I am going to pay this much for a bag, I need to be assured that its the real thing.
3661583
Maybe it's just me but this story line is a bit difficult to believe.
4454525
When I was half way through the book and the author had run out of descriptors, I forced myself to finish.  I'm sure the author meant well, and I'm sure he had a clear vision in his head for what he wanted us to see, but I just was not seeing it.  I am a committed Christian and have not given much thought to what hell is like, since I don't intend to experience it first hand.  I've also not given a great deal of thought to what heaven is like.  I trust Jesus when he said he would make a place for us.  Tunnel travel and such were not promised, although I might really enjoy it.
228161
Not sure if it was me or the instructions - I thought I was doing what they said but I couldn't keep it going well.
1453616
I found the concept to be odd. It was well enough written and obviously took quite an ammount of thought to produce but it left me unconvinced that it was real.
3818230
I know the author begs us to keep an open mind but I can't get into it. Maybe I'm just not in the right mind frame at this point? I don't know. Wasn't a win for me.
1249221
I'm sure it's me, but I found it hard to follow.  Honestly I'm not a real believer in this, but I figured I'd give it a shot.  I'm sure for someone who understands, it's a great book....
2601800
Ok I only watched 5 minutes, speaker goes from could be supposition and next sentence supposition is a fact. 5 minutes was enough. He may be enlightened I am not.
1929539
I have a hard time believing that the events that unfolded in this book are all entirely true.  I think the author took some liberties for the sake of spicing up the tale.  I don't know, but I'm not convinced that it was all true.
728637
Not quite sure about this book.  I had trouble figuring out if what I was reading was happening or was in the characters heads
1589605
Some of it was good, but it not completely believable by a true Christian.  I will stick to what the bible says.
1454329
I'm not quite convinced that Jesus was "More Than A Carpenter," and after reading this book, I feel that I am even further away from god than I was at the beginning. As I read the first chapter in this book I was already in disbelief, however, I continued reading it so that I couldn't cancel out the possibility that it might be helpful. I felt that Josh McDowell contradicted himself one to many times in this novel pushing me further away from belief. I decided to read this novel thinking it would bring me closer to god being that I believe that religion is important because without faith people go corrupt. McDowell states that he asked all these people certain questions and yet they are conveniently unable to respond back to them. When I was reading I thought to myself how easily I could have responded back to his interrogations. An example was when McDowell stated "How do you test other historical masterpieces (such as the bible) regarding their authenticity?" Along with that question he argued how can one prove that Martin Luther King JR. and George Washington were real? I would argue the point that Martin Luther King JR. and George Washington didn't do anything that another human couldn't have done, however, Jesus supposedly came back from the dead in which no other human has done before. McDowell also didn't contemplate the fact that some people consider the bible as a literary masterpiece rather than a historical one. The only part of this book I found helpful was the last chapter because rather than trying to back up his beliefs with facts he backed them up with his experiences which makes more sense to me. I truly feel that McDowell purposely wrote this book to make people lose faith, bringing himself closer to god. I wouldn't recommend this novel to anyone who is trying to become a Christian or a person who already is one.
1121521
I feel like you have to be English to understand some of the examples used. There seemed to be alot of opinion, and not enough fact to make me feel reassured
4898590
Though the premise is interesting, Mr. Harris did not convince me.  Essentially, Harris argues that there is no such thing as "free will", because when we make a decision, we are not fully aware of the process by which we arrive at the decision.  In other words, the concept of free will gets it backwards - first comes an unexplainable decision, then afterwards we ascribe it to free will.  The author backs up his thesis with data from experiments which chart brain activity and show that the brain reacts before the person is aware of having made a decision.

To my admittedly untrained mind, this is not a conclusive argument.  That parts of the decision-making process take place outside our consciousness to me does not mean that there is no such thing as free will.  It seems a more logical explanation that many decisions happen on a sort of auto-pilot, particularly those that are easy to measure in a laboratory environment, but that free will in most cases also has a role to play.  In fact, I think that the author misses a potentially rich area of study by denying any free will at all.  It would be interesting to investigate which kinds of decisions and which circumstances are associated with what we would describe as reason, and which are left entirely to mysterious subconscious forces.