36 Arguments for the Existence of God A Work of Fiction By Rebecca N. Goldstein Pantheon Books, (2010), 402 pages ISBN 978-0-307-37818-7

Reviewed by Israel Drazin - April 2, 2010

This book by a novelist with a Ph.D. in philosophy contains both a 344 page novel and a 55 page appendix. The novel tells the tale of on a philosophy student who publishes a bestselling book called The Varieties of Religious Illusions, with an appendix that shows the weaknesses, indeed the irrationality of 36 arguments that people rely on to try to prove that God exists. The novel describes his relationship with several unusual but interesting educated and very active women, his bizarre teacher, and others.

The book is written in a humorous fashion with many illusions to academic matters and many alliterations (such as, "paralyzed in this purgatory of pedantry" and "Deedee is bodacious, blonde, and buxom, her teeth capped and her breasts implanted to perfection") and other affectations that pock enjoyable fun at the pompous college culture and its academics (as, "no reading to overly tax your strength. A little Robert Frost perhaps. Whitman, in moderation, when you're feeling more robust.").

The second half of Goldstein's book, like the novel, contains a serious, concise but complete, easily comprehensible, clear refutation of 36 different arguments that people - scholars, theologians, and laity - advance to prove that God exists. Goldstein shows that none of the arguments are logical; each can be refuted. No one, of course, uses all 36 "proofs." The great philosopher Maimonides (1138-1204), for example, used only four, all outdated because of modern science. But many people use one or several of them. Since these "proofs" are refuted, if people want to accept the existence of God, they must either rely on blind faith or be an agnostic saying "Perhaps God exists. I don't know for sure and I can't prove it."

For example, one of the famous "proofs" for God's existence is "The Argument from Design": if a person finds a perfectly constructed complicated watch with many features, he or she "knows" that the watch "must have" been made by designer who had the watch's intricate functions in mind. Since the world and its many parts are perfect, it must have had a designer, and that designer is God. Goldstein points out that scientists have proven that people are frequently fooled by an illusion of design; they see a pattern where none exists. And the scientists have shown that the world could have come into existence by pure chance.

• Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew who Gave us Modernity, by Rebecca N. Goldstein.
  Goldstein sets out to rediscover the flesh-and-blood man often hidden beneath the veneer of rigorous rationality, and to crack the mystery of the breach between the philosopher and his Jewish past.
  
  
• American Jewish Fiction, by Josh Lambert.
  A guide to 125 works of fiction, both novels and short story collections, which touch upon the Jewish-American experience and which were published from 1867 to 2007.