New Novel about the New Atheism: Rebecca Goldstein's, 36 Arguments for the Existence of GodI get from these recommendations the same thrill that I got from the ad I saw (in 2005?) in The New York Times Book Review for Harris's book, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. I knew it would speak to me on my own wavelength.
"So extravagantly witty and smart that it's making everything else I've read recently seem drab."
—Ron Charles, Senior Editor at The Washington Post Book Review
"Comic and supremely witty, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God is both a satire of the academic world and a feast of philosophical and religious ideas."
—Alan Lightman, author of Einstein's Dreams [an excellent work, which I have read; by the way, Lightman is on the MIT faculty, along with Goldstein's husband, linguist Steven Pinker]
"You do not have to perpetrate an act of faith to confront the question of why there is something rather than nothing. It is faith itself that consists of nothing. Rebecca Goldstein, on the other hand, is quite something."
—Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great [ditto]
"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 [not yet]
And the list of Goldstein's publications is intellectually provocative. From a research university's online library catalog:
Goldstein, Rebecca, 1950-An Ian McEwan-class novelist? I'm rubbing my hands in anticipation, having this morning requested Properties of Light from my local library.
Betraying Spinoza : the renegade Jew who gave us modernity
New York : Nextbook : Schocken, c2006. [Spinoza!]
The dark sister
New York, NY : Viking, 1991. [according to Wikipedia, "a postmodern fictionalization of family and professional issues in the life of William James"]
Incompleteness : the proof and paradox of Kurt Gödel
New York : W.W. Norton, c2005. [a filched book about Gödel's incompleteness theorem graced my summer of 1965]
The late-summer passion of a woman of mind
New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, c1989.
Mazel
New York : Viking, 1995.
The mind-body problem : a novel
New York : Random House, c1983. [don't you worry about this too?]
Properties of light : a novel of love, betrayal and quantum physics
Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 2000. [let me know if you can explain quantum physics to me]
Strange attractors
New York : Viking, 1993.
36 Arguments for the Existence of God sounds like some excellent "talk about faith," possibly of the sort Russ Douthat had in mind in his op-ed piece, "Let's Talk about Faith", in Sunday's New York Times:
When liberal democracy was forged, in the wake of Western Europe’s religious wars, this sort of peaceful theological debate is exactly what it promised to deliver. And the differences between religions are worth debating. Theology has consequences: It shapes lives, families, nations, cultures, wars; it can change people, save them from themselves, and sometimes warp or even destroy them.
From my friend Rolf, a recommendation:
ReplyDeleteAnother author is:
Robert Wright,
The Evolution of God
Little, Brown, 567 pp., $25.99
See the critical review of this interesting Darwinian interpretation by Allen Orr, 'Can science explain religion?' in the New York Review of Books, Jan 14, 2010.
I've heard of Robert Wright, and of that book. I of course assume that science can explain religion (its roots, that is, in the human psyche), even if "the explanation" will remain various (and theoretical) for a while yet.