36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction [Advance Reader's Edition]

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein

ISBN 10: 0307378187 / ISBN 13: 9780307378187

Published by Pantheon, 2010

About this Item

Advance Reader's Copy issued in paperback, First Edition. Bright, clean & tight copy, unread in FINE condition. "Goldstein does it all. A hilarious novel about people's existential agonies, a page-turner about the intellectual mysteries that obsess them. The characters explore the great moral issues of our day in a novel that is deeply moving and a joy to read."---Jonathan Safran Foer. Pristine copy---no creases in spine, no age toning on pages---quite presentable. No jacket as issued.

Seller Inventory # RUB487

Bibliographic Details

• Title: 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction [Advance Reader's Edition]
• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication Date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0307378187
• ISBN 13: 9780307378187
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: Special Edition.
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Author

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein received her doctorate in philosophy from Princeton University. Her award-winning books include the novels The Mind-Body Problem, Properties of Light, and Mazel, and nonfiction studies of Kurt Gödel and Baruch Spinoza. She has received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and Guggenheim and Radcliffe fellowships, and she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005. She lives in Massachusetts.