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36 Arguments for the Existence of God
Rebecca Goldstein
A Work of Fiction
Pantheon
January 2010
On Sale: January 12, 2010
416 pages ISBN: 0307378187 EAN: 9780307378187 Hardcover
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Fiction
After Cass Seltzer’s book becomes a surprise best seller,
he’s dubbed “the atheist with a soul” and becomes a
celebrity. He wins over the stunning Lucinda Mandelbaum,
“the goddess of game theory,” and loses himself in a
spiritually expansive infatuation. A former girlfriend
appears: an anthropologist who invites him to join in her
quest for immortality through biochemistry. And he is
haunted by reminders of the two people who ignited his
passion to understand religion: his mentor and professor—a
renowned literary scholar with a suspicious obsession with
messianism—and an angelic six-year-old mathematical genius
who is heir to the leadership of a Hasidic sect. Each
encounter reinforces Cass’s theory that the religious
impulse spills over into life at large.
36 Arguments for the Existence of God plunges into the great
debate of our day: the clash between faith and reason. World
events are being shaped by fervent believers at home and
abroad, while a new atheism is asserting itself in the
public sphere. On purely intellectual grounds the skeptics
would seem to have everything on their side. Yet people
refuse to accept their seemingly irrefutable arguments and
continue to embrace faith in God as their source of meaning,
purpose, and comfort.
Through the enchantment of fiction, award-winning novelist
and MacArthur Fellow Rebecca Newberger Goldstein shows that
the tension between religion and doubt cannot be understood
through rational argument alone. It also must be explored
from the point of view of individual people caught in the
raptures and torments of religious experience in all their
variety.
Using her gifts in fiction and philosophy, Goldstein has
produced a true crossover novel, complete with a nail-biting
debate (“Resolved: God Exists”) and a stand-alone appendix
with the thirty-six arguments (and responses) that propelled
Seltzer to stardom.
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