36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction Feature
- ISBN13: 9780307378187
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction Overview
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.
36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction Specifications
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)
Customer Reviews
36 Arguments for the existence of God is a powerful, versatile, off-road vehicle from a book and author Rebecca Goldstein uses this literary SUV for the reader on a spiritual safari down to take a philosophical / theological ways that traditional ways Bypass human thought.
Both fame and wealth driven by the publication of his book The Varieties of Religious illusion that the life story of the protagonist Cass Seltzer powers of these sparkling, if uneven, exploration ofthe human experience of transcendence.
The book is an intellectual demands on its readers. After 36 comments were a course in college rather than a book (and in many ways more equivalent to a university course), would read the catalog, "a student must be, or want to become a polymath. Student must own or Oxford Dictionary or have a large enough vocabulary so that students use the word "learned" is the thought trivial. student must have the intellectualInclude flexibility concepts as "an atheist's soul."
Main Theme: Goldstein never doubt that the people are very likely to fall / get into a state of ecstasy of transcendence. What have examined whether such a transcendence of any evidence of contact with the divine, but as a mindset, a mindset that all drugs or alcohol, hypoglycemia, hypoxia is able to achieve this stimulation mental sign. In a mysterious and powerful presentation of their caseGoldstein writes a scene in the provision of a 6-year-old Hasidic prodigy named Azariah a sermon before the assembled Hasidim of his congregation. Azaria refers to figures as "maloychim" (Angel), and the results show that the number of "first Angel" (the first) is infinite. Azaria proclaims this test for the Hasidim, the wind in religious ecstasy, as revel in a feeling of infinite number of "angels" who descends from heaven. Cass Seltzer, non-believers of the clientele, which is also present during theEvent reacted in this way "The room is reeling with the Angels Cass Azaria rages against her translucent wings of the flames" and parallel to the religious ecstasy of the Hasidim, Cass finds "his face was wet with tears, as everyone in the room, its so deep trance and ecstatic dance as each jump Hasid. " The Hasidim are convinced that the source of her ecstasy is the experience of the divine, while non-believers would be Cass rather than to describe his experiencesRooted in the "tension between the silence of millions of neurons fire moves in silence", burning in some parts of the brain that light when we see a beautiful music, a thundering waterfall, or in possession of a newborn hearing for the first time.
The vocabulary is rich in 36 subjects, including words like metonymous, cantillated, quadronymous, epicerastic, decanal and Pareidolia. Goldstein's use of the word from Pareidolia no coincidence, is near the center of one of its themes:People form patterns where they exist, are among the clouds above us, the vagaries of the stock market or the events of everyday life. Goldstein, and I suspect that her husband Stephen Pinker so it would be a strong argument that we are programmed to recognize, a train of evolution is strong with the ability to adapt to the environment in which we live, that it marked an important feature of If contributions do not prevent us from outside in a snowstorm, or going into a dark alley. It couldnot so useful when the excessive use of patterns leads us to Jesus' face in water, stained wallpaper, or see the cheese burger or Patty on our Digitus Dei in a tornado or a tsunami.
This book will change the minds of all believers? Maybe a couple. But remember that the "line you tried to get under the net's basic analysis of this fleeting shadows of things unseen wings attack through the dense foliage of the votes religious sensitivity." My guess is that no hunter, no matter howits powerful spiritual weapons, and bring all things "winged". What is a bit 'different here is the use of Goldstein Azyra whisper to the heart, rather than simply a cannonade of logic.
Goldstein himself is the atheist "with soul" is often quoted in the book. Goldstein, although he seems determined to link the neuronal basis of the phenomenon of consciousness, loses nothing of his appreciation for the beauty of music, words, or poetry;surprisingly, in a passage in which the protagonist sees his lover asleep caught: "Did you see the fragility of the catch, the courage and understanding of the girls wanted this bold and beautiful. dappledness He saw her. Glory to God for dappled things He cited the silence on his second favorite poet. "
Weaknesses? Jonas Klapper, one of the main characters in the lives of young Cass has a mental descent into incomprehensibility, which is made much more detailed than necessary,Feeling one has when confronted with the book by Umberto Ecco Foucoult pendulum. The characters are often straw men / women, as the man who goes against Cass in a formal discussion on the existence of God debate on climate was a little 'uncomfortable, it lacks the crackling of the fire and much of the rest of book.
What is the conclusion of this ornate, stained, engaging story, throws light bulbs, if sometimes uncertain, a shower of bright sparks? Goldsteininvites the reader to confirm that the human brain did not evolve, do not fall into the design of primates, to understand everything, and we must accept "the incomprehensible brutality of the attacks from all sides." What should we do? Goldstein: "So we try the best we can do to meet the enormity of our existence improbable. And so we live as best we can for ourselves, or to live for us?" And we live in the best possible way for others, otherwise, what are we? "Rabbi Hillel did not receive a correct attribution of this passage.
The book is actually a plant, are shown in 36 arguments for the existence of God, and then denied. Great stuff to read, you're a believer or not, and a suitable place to romp cerebral Goldstein SUV, at the end of Cross-Country Park.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment