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{PDF EPUB} 36 Arguments for the Existence of God a Work of Fiction by Rebecca Goldstein 36 Arguments for the Existence of God by Rebecca Goldstein Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} 36 Arguments for the Existence of God A Work of Fiction by Rebecca Goldstein 36 Arguments for the Existence of God by Rebecca Goldstein. W ith atheism fashionable and religious fundamentalism on the rise, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God gently mocks the delusions of both the godly and the godless. Cass Seltzer is an academic psychologist at a middle-ranking university whose book, The Varieties of Religious Illusion , becomes an unexpected bestseller because of an appendix that provides a series of refutations to proofs of God's existence. Cass's position is admirably moderate – that belief in God has little to do with the nature or value of religious experience – but he becomes an atheist poster-boy. He may have just received, at the novel's start, an offer of a post at Harvard, but Cass – neurotic and fairly drippy – can't help mooning over his absent girlfriend and worrying about an upcoming theological disputation. Most of the book is dedicated to Cass's time as a graduate student, when he fell under the tutelage of Jonas Elijah Klapper who, with his rotund physique, orotund periods and obsession with genius and mysticism, is a dead ringer for Harold Bloom. As Klapper's mind pirouettes across the literary and philosophical canon, Goldstein pitilessly exposes how erudition and verbosity can mask an intellectual vacuum: "As must anyone who regards with seriousness the eschatological idea that scaffolds the strata of the greater metaphysics", yadda, yadda yadda. Unfortunately, Goldstein as much as Klapper is a purveyor of superficial scholarship. Novels of ideas are crippled when their authors use the story to peacock their cleverness and patronise their audience. Here we are subjected to game theory for dummies, Kabbalah for dummies, Matthew Arnold for dummies – none of them integrated in the texture of the novel. Much of her comedy is abysmal, relying on flaccid wordplay, and even her good jokes are destroyed by the accompanying exegesis, as if she is concerned tha t her readers who don't get them should at least realise how well-read she is. More damagingly, the thesis that 36 Arguments attempts to dramatise – that religious attitudes are to be found in all sorts of areas of life – is essentially trivial. If being religious simply means "having strong feelings", then it is meaningless (and somewhat offensive to believers) to term this universal propensity to unreason as "religious" just because, in our more sober moods, we are suspicious of it. Rebecca Goldstein is a philosopher who has written on Gödel and Spinoza, but 36 Arguments proves that with fiction, a lot of learning can be a deadly thing. ISBN 13: 9781848871557. 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction. Goldstein, Rebecca. This specific ISBN edition is currently not available. Psychologist Cass Seltzer's book, The Variety of Religious Illusion, has become a surprise runaway bestseller. Dubbed 'the atheist with a soul', Cass's sudden celebrity has upended his life and brought back the ghosts of his past. Over the course of one week, Cass's theories about our need to keep faith are borne out in ways he could never have imagined. 36 Arguments for the Existence of God is a stunningly original novel, which explores the varieties of the human religious experience in a story of obsession, consuming love, and divine genius. By turns hilarious, moving and devilishly clever, Goldstein's novel is an exhilarating romance of heart and mind. "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. Amazon Exclusive: Rebecca Goldstein on 36 Arguments for the Existence of God. Dinner party hostesses used to be warned to steer the conversation away from politics and religion. I used to wonder why, but I don’t anymore. 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. It often seems that people on one side can’t begin to grasp what the world is like, what it feels like, for those on the other side. 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? These are not the sort of suspicions that the gracious hostess wants intruding at her candle-lit dinner table. But for me, as a novelist, it’s differences like these, indicating entirely different orientations toward the world, which are the most tantalizing to explore. Arguments alone can’t capture all that is at stake for people when they argue about issues of reason and faith. In the end, I place my faith in fiction, in its power to make vividly present how different the world feels to each of us and how these differences are sometimes what is really being expressed in the great debates of our day on the existence of God. The title of the book is 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction . I meant the subtitle to be understood as a sort of joke, but as a serious one, too. --Rebecca Goldstein. (Photo © Stephen Pinker) About the Author : Rebecca Goldstein's novels include The Mind-Body Problem and Mazel, winner of the 1995 National Jewish Book Award. Her most recent book, Betraying Spinoza won the 2006 Koret International Jewish Book Award. She is the recipient of MacArthur, Guggenheim, and Radcliffe fellowships and in 2005 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction. Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. The books plot meanders. It jumps back without warning, switches perspectives jarringly, and in some spots (when the Yiddish and the Jewish mysticism get thrown at you) the tale gets downright confusing and the names nearly impossible to keep track of. However, the humor is pervasive and her ideas are big. One of the most interesting aspects is how Goldstein's characters are in no way trying to paint religion in a negative light - in fact, Cass goes to great pains to avoid doing so. Goldstein's argument is logical, not emotional. The latter part of the book, an essay describing the 36 Arguments for God and the refutations are written concisely in stark contrast the novel before it. Every argument Goldstein presents is easily understood. An atheist would be hard pressed to find a better reference material if they're dragged into the age-old arguments: "Does God exist?" and "Can we be moral without God?" ( ) 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction by Rebecca Goldstein. by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. A Work of Fiction. - Return to top of the page - See our review for fuller assessment. Review Summaries Source Rating Date Reviewer Christian Science Monitor . 22/1/2010 Yvonne Zipp Commentary . 1/2010 Peter Lopatin Forward . 8/1/2010 Gordon Haber The Guardian . 10/4/2010 Steven Poole London Rev. of Books . 25/3/2010 Galen Strawson The LA Times . 17/1/2010 Jane Smiley New Statesman . 12/3/2010 Julian Baggini The NY Times . 21/1/2010 Janet Maslin The NY Times Book Rev. 31/1/2010 Liesl Schillinger The Observer D 21/3/2010 Jonathan Beckman The Telegraph . 23/3/2010 Lewis Jones The Times . 27/2/2010 Melissa Katsoulis TLS . 2/4/2010 Edward McGown The Washington Post . 27/1/2010 Ron Charles. "Thoughtful, witty, and -- I cannot stress enough -- really entertaining, 36 Arguments is part campus comedy, part romantic farce, part philosophical treatise. It is also, without question, the smartest kid in class. (. ) While the religiously inclined among us may beg to disagree that the truly intelligent don�t believe in God, the novel, and Cass�s character himself, are utterly disarming. But it must be said that the defenders of the faith in 36 Arguments for the Existence of God are an unappealing lot. They range from the humorless to the barking mad." - Yvonne Zipp, Christian Science Monitor. - Return to top of the page - The main character in 36 Arguments for the Existence of God is forty-two-year old Cass Seltzer, who has managed to jump on the 'new atheist'- tide (along with authors like Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens) and is now enjoying quite a ride. He's a professor, and his field is the 'psychology of religion', a field that, for almost two decades, had been all his -- "but only because nobody else wanted it." But all of a sudden religion is a hot topic again: it might have seemed that the whole god-idea had been widely written off, but now there are defenders of the faith(s) all over the place again -- and, as a consequence, there's a whole corps of 'new atheists' trying to reason them (or at least their misguided notion) out of existence. Cass hit the big times with his book on The Varieties of Religious Illusion . But the success he achieves is built, in part, on a misunderstanding: 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction. "Rebecca Newberger Goldstein does it all. She has written a hilarious novel about people’s existential agonies, a page-turner about the intellectual mysteries that obsess them. The characters in 36 Arguments For the Existence of God explore the great moral issues of our day in a novel that is deeply moving and a joy to read." —Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything is Illuminated.
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