Book Review

I finished a novel today called 36 Arguments for the Existence of God. It was just OK. I mean, there were some pretty interesting views expressed in it, but the story itself kind of sucked.

But what got me really interested in it in the first place was that the main character is an outspoken and celebrated atheist (dubbed "the atheist with a soul") who holds views very similar to my own with respect to religion, God, belief, and all that. In fact, by the ninth page the author (Rebecca Newberger Goldstein) has pretty much encapsulated what I've been trying to say (and will continue finishing to say, one of these days) in my "What If It's Not About Belief?" posts. Check this out:

"When Cass, in all the safety of his obscurity, set about writing a book that would explain how irrelevant the belief in God can be to religious experience — so irrelevant that the emotional structure of religious experiences can be transplanted to completely godless contexts with little of the impact lost — and when he had also, almost as an afterthought, included as an appendix thirty-six arguments for the existence of God, with rebuttals, his claim being that the most thorough demolition of these arguments would make little difference to the felt qualities of religious experience, he'd had no idea of the massive response his efforts would provoke.

"He would never have dubbed himself an atheist in the first place, not because he believes — he certainly doesn't — but because he believes that belief is beside the point."

The debate at the end of the book is worthwhile and exciting, as is the appendix, where the 36 arguments, and their best rebuttals are actually spelled out. Too bad more than half of the middle bits are so boring and pointless. Oh well, I guess I still enjoyed it.

Off to play a show now!