God Explained In A Taxi Ride

*disclaimer : No insult to any religion meant. This is a review into the writer's possible-state-of-mind" *credits to Paul Arden for excerpts and illustrations*

When I saw this title, I was wondering which religion was this writer (Paul Arden)trying to evangalize; Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, or even Scientology? It was a pleasant surprise that when I started on my first page;
"Billions of words in millions of books have been written on this subject, and yet no one is any closer to an answer. It's about time a less wordy version was made available , a book on God that you can read in the length of a taxi ride"

Well, that's candid and a mammoth task if God could actually be explained in a taxi ride... and I wonder how far would that taxi need to travel. Of course any novel read is to be taken with a pinch of salt and not to taken literally. It's a simple write up/explanation/point-of view was written on the left side of the book and simple doodles/illustrations filled the right.


The illustrations had a wry sense of humour and sometimes were downright hilarious in itself. This book does not tell you who or what to believe, that is left to the reader. What this book does is to expose the reader to profound, radical and questions which only the reader can reflect on. Excerpts from the book:

A young child asked his father if he could prove there is a God. "I can't prove it," he said. "It's like the wind. You can feel it but you can't see it."

I did not quite agree that he viewed Buddha as a little fat man (he was probably confused with one of the bodhisattvas) but given the nature of this book, he may have wanted to described to non-Buddhist readers a figure which they normally encounter in some Chinese restaurant.

There are a few chapters which echoes with our world today, war, suicide bombings, religious zealots. References to the tower of Babel and how the writer surmised that wars are started not because you are of different religions, it is because you do not understand each other. I am sceptical if there are any religion (cults excluded) out there which require you to sacrifice fellow human beings to please the powers that be.
The words on an illustration regarding the scientific take of reincarnation made my Saturday afternoon. Again, I don't think his take on the Buddhism idea of reincarnation is theoratically correct and I think he may have been confused between Taoism and Buddhism.

You die; You’re buried and fertilize the plants; The plants are eaten by the snails. Man eats the snails. Now you are a Frenchman.Voila!

To end off this post, here is a chapter to ponder.

Why does God need you to defend him?It must be beacuse you think you are more powerful than your God. If you think your God is weaker than your then that is not much of a faith. Does it not follow then, that people who fight wars for religion don't have much of a faith?