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{PDF} 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: a Work of Fiction 36 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD: A WORK OF FICTION PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Rebecca Goldstein | 400 pages | 01 Feb 2011 | ATLANTIC BOOKS | 9781848871557 | English | London, United Kingdom 36 Arguments for the Existence of God (Goldstein) - LitLovers Rebecca Goldstein—who has made a career out of presenting philosophical concepts in fictional form—offers with her latest book a showcase of the advantages and frustrations attendant to this curious medium. Under the tutelage of Jonas Elijah Klapper—a Harold Bloom caricature—Cass visited New Walden, a cloistered Hasidic enclave where men and women walk on different sides of the street and modernity has yet to intrude. There Cass meets Azarya, a child prodigy who at the age of six has derived complex mathematical proofs without any formal education. While in the past Cass waits to discover what Azarya will decide, in the present readers wonder whether Cass will prevail in his upcoming religion-and- reason debate at Harvard against a neoconservative Nobel Laureate. But the story is not entirely an intellectual adventure. The job of the philosophical novelist is not so much to answer questions as to raise them. The book alternates between expository chapters on the life and ideas of Plato in the context of ancient Greece and modern dialogues in which Plato is brought to life in the 21st century, and demonstrates the relevance of philosophy by arguing with contemporary figures such as a software engineer at Google headquarters, a right-wing talk show host, an affective neuroscientist, and others. Goldstein lives in Boston and Truro, Massachusetts. She married her first husband, physicist Sheldon Goldstein, in , [28] and they divorced in In a interview with Luke Ford, Goldstein said:. I lived Orthodox for a long time. My husband was Orthodox. Because I didn't want to be hypocritical with our kids, I kept everything. I was torn like a character in a Russian novel. It lasted through college. I remember leaving a class on mysticism in tears because I had forsaken God. That was probably my last burst of religious passion. Then it went away and I was a happy little atheist. In , she married [29] cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. American novelist, short story writer, biographer, philosopher. White Plains, New York , U. The New York Times. Retrieved 29 January Cultural Studies in the Future Tense. Duke University Press. Psychology of Women Quarterly. Oslo, Norway: Oslo Academic Press. Among these are the current debates that have been raging between God-believers and the so-called new atheists. When the person with whom one is conversing appears utterly opaque, then mistrust and contempt are easily aroused: How can he be saying that when the opposite seems so obvious to me? Is he stupid, dishonest, maybe just a touch evil? 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction | She is a fellow psychologist of a more scientific bent than Seltzer, renowned as the Goddess of Game Theory and creator of the Mandelbaum Equilibrium. At moments like this, could Cass altogether withstand the sense that—hard to put it into words—the sense that the universe is personal , that?.?.?.? The content of that further something is what Goldstein exquisitely adumbrates in the novel. The 36 arguments Seltzer believes he has refuted so decisively include the traditional ones proposed and debated by philosophers for centuries, as well as more contemporary arguments such as the Argument from the Hard Problem of Consciousness, the Argument from Mathematical Reality, and the Argument from Pragmatism. Yet even here he is being theologically teased, in this case by his author. Abandoning his goal of attending medical school, Seltzer chose instead to follow Klapper to Frankfurter University, where the preposterously grandiloquent don constituted the entire Department of Faith, Literature, and Values, fashioned by the university solely to lure him away from Columbia. Then there is his old girlfriend, Roz Margolis, now an anthropologist who wants to recruit Seltzer to support her new venture, the Immortality Foundation, which has set about to abolish aging. Insulated from the outside world and without benefit of any secular education, Azarya has independently discovered the concept of prime numbers —which he calls maloychim angels —and has arrived at the proof among others that there is no largest prime. And we live, as best we can, for others, otherwise what are we? In 36 Arguments for the Existence of God , Goldstein has fashioned a tale that does justice to the depth of the problem of reconciling a scientific worldview with the insistent yearning for transcendence, and has done so in a way that is philosophically sophisticated without being pedantic, and deeply moving without being weighed down by the burdensome dross of sentimentality. Login Access your Commentary account. Email address. Remember me. Forgot your password? Username or email. Reset password. Go back. Share via: More. You may also like. Goldstein can introduce so many abstract concerns because she chooses here, as in many of her other books, to make her characters professional scholars, a territory she knows well. That Goldstein is much more at home in the academic realm than in the religious gradually becomes clear. For Goldstein and her characters, the world divides into the rational and the irrational, the secular and the religious. There are the academics, who are either free of the superstitious bonds of faith or only subscribe to it for its social utility, and then there are the unenlightened masses. Goldstein seems to be overlooking the very real people in between her extremes. A novel that considers rational religionists and non-materialists on their own terms, while maintaining its strong intellectual reservations, would make a worthy sequel to this excellent but incomplete entry into the genre. Want to keep up with breaking news? Subscribe to our email newsletter. Law Schools Due to Coronavirus. Book Review: '36 Arguments for the Existence of God' | HuffPost There are some differences that reveal rifts so deep that dialogue breaks down. Among these are the current debates that have been raging between God-believers and the so-called new atheists. When the person with whom one is conversing appears utterly opaque, then mistrust and contempt are easily aroused: How can he be saying that when the opposite seems so obvious to me? Under the tutelage of Jonas Elijah Klapper— a Harold Bloom caricature—Cass visited New Walden, a cloistered Hasidic enclave where men and women walk on different sides of the street and modernity has yet to intrude. There Cass meets Azarya, a child prodigy who at the age of six has derived complex mathematical proofs without any formal education. While in the past Cass waits to discover what Azarya will decide, in the present readers wonder whether Cass will prevail in his upcoming religion-and- reason debate at Harvard against a neoconservative Nobel Laureate. But the story is not entirely an intellectual adventure. The job of the philosophical novelist is not so much to answer questions as to raise them. Goldstein can introduce so many abstract concerns because she chooses here, as in many of her other books, to make her characters professional scholars, a territory she knows well. And yet, all that insight feh! View all 31 comments. Jul 20, Margaret rated it really liked it. Not for the reader who is uninterested in philosophy, religion, science, mathematics, psychology, and so on, as this book is full of discussions and arguments about all of the above and more. Goldstein earned her doctorate in philosophy at Princeton and taught philosophy at Barnard. At the same time this novel is not for the person who is so overly invested in all of the above that s he cannot stand the perpetual puncturing of pompous professors, grad students, and other academic hangers-on that Goldstein includes in her novel. The novel itself barely has a plot in present time. Their contact during that week is limited to occasional email exchanges. The novel ends shortly after Lucinda returns to Cass and to Cambridge. Klapper is the entire department, and he is a kind of overbearing overwhelming sort who knows that he knows all and that all others know little. Klapper reminds me in a way of Harold Bloom, Professor of English at Yale, who in his heyday claimed to be an authority on almost everything, including Jewish texts, Irish poets, ancient texts, etc. Aside: When I was a grad student at Rutgers, Bloom came to give a talk. I had a good seat, close in and well-upholstered. It took almost no time for me to doze off. I was always exhausted. We also meet several family members; my favorite is Azarya Scheiner, who when we first meet him is the six year-old son of an exalted chief Rebbe of the Valdener Hasidic sect. Azarya is an incredibly gifted mathematician and all around genius. And he is also the sweetest child and later young man who serves well to make Hasidism clear and sane, even to those who know little or nothing about ultra Orthodox Judaism. Cass was brought up well outside the sect. But the Valdeners are family, even if they are faithful and Cass does not believe. The book ends with a great debate. To be proven: God exists. Whatever you think of the arguments in this debate, I found them compelling on both sides. We could all learn lots about reasoning and argument by following what both debaters say. At the same time Cass makes his case against the existence of God, he also clearly values The Valdener sect, which knows God exists and would never argue about it.
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