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Philosopher and writer refutes God’s existence in new novel

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Message: If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/41109/full/41109/philosopher-and-writer-refutes-gods-existence-in-new-novel/ Philosopher and writer refutes God’s existence in new novel Thursday, January 21, 2010 | by dan pine Not many novels include a 52-page appendix. Then again, not many novelists have a Ph.D. in philosophy or a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant under their belt. <div class="capDivLeft" style="width: 126px;"><img alt="Agoldstein, rebecca" class="left" height="180" src="http://www.jweekly.com/images/uploads/y_photos_2010/zv01_22_10/Agoldstein, rebecca.jpg" title="Rebecca Newberger Goldstein" width="126" /> <div class="caption">Rebecca Newberger Goldstein</div> </div> Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is two for two on that score. Thus, for her wickedly funny new novel, “36 Arguments for the Existence of God,” she actually worked through all 36 ontological arguments. And more importantly, their refutations. Reared in an Orthodox Jewish home, Goldstein today is an atheist. But like her novel’s protagonist, religion professor and bestselling author Cass Seltzer, she is “an atheist with a soul.” Goldstein will appear in the Bay Area as part of her national book tour, with a talk Tuesday, Jan. 26, at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco and an appearance Thursday, Jan. 28, at Kepler’s Bookstore in Menlo Park. “I’m a philosopher by profession,” says Goldstein, who has written many works of fiction and philosophy, “but I believe fiction can do things that nonfiction can’t. It can get you into the experience of people different from oneself. It’s a way to gain knowledge.” Some of her nonfiction works include biographies of 17th-century Dutch-Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza and German mathematician Kurt Gödel. It’s heady stuff, but for all the philosophy leavened into her new novel, Goldstein was careful to make it comprehensible to mere mortals. Her story opens as Seltzer, basking in newfound celebrity for his bestseller about atheism, contemplates an offer to move from his small Massachusetts college to the big show: Harvard. Complicating his life are a dazzlingly brilliant mathematician girlfriend, a brash anthropologist ex-girlfriend and his mentor, the Extreme Distinguished Professor Jonah Elijah Klapper, a comically conceited gasbag who recites Matthew Arnold writtings from memory, but rarely says anything original. Ridiculing university life, Goldstein — a former professor and habitué of academia — bites the hand that tenured her. She also goes after religion, though with a bit less tooth and claw. That may be due to fond memories of her Orthodox upbringing and her father, who died when Goldstein was a girl. As much as she warmed to her community, she decided by age 12 she could not believe in God. It was in her all-girls yeshiva that she first encountered Spinoza, who was excommunicated from Judaism for his secularism. “In our Jewish history class, we were studying modernity, which we were against,” she recalls. “And there was the bad boy, Spinoza. He was presented as the cautionary tale.” Instead, Spinoza inspired her to pursue philosophy, as well as adopt a secular humanist perspective. “If you’re Jewish, there are things that hold you to this way of life that are not necessarily metaphysical commitments,” she says. “Within my Orthodox Jewish family, especially the younger generation, I have nephews that wear black hats that have the same belief as I do. [Judaism] doesn’t concentrate so much on metaphysics, as practice and family and history.” Her atheism incorporates the same logic expounded by the so-called new atheists — Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins among them — who refute the existence of God primarily on scientific grounds. “There’s no empirical counterevidence,” she says. “The soul of science is that you make your predictions, and if they don’t come out, you give up.” Goldstein’s parallel careers as a philosopher and novelist drew the attention of the MacArthur Foundation, landing her a $500,000 grant in 1996. She says when she got the call, she thought it was one of her students pulling a prank. “It was very vindicating,” she notes of her fellowship, “because I go between these two fields. Philosophers didn’t take me seriously. It’s hard enough to be a woman doing math logic, and then you publish a novel.” Of course, her new novel just had to have the appendix, which summarizes all 36 arguments for the existence of God and then dismantles them. She says that’s just what philosophers do. “It’s an interesting exercise to try and pin down these vaguer emotional reasons that people have to believe in God,” Goldstein notes. “Religion is so much more than belief in God. It’s a very William James idea, that the arguments come after the fact.” Rebecca Newberger Goldstein will speak 8 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 26, at the JCCSF, 3200 California St., S.F. $10-$18. Information: (415) 292-1200 or <a href="http://www.jccsf.org">http://www.jccsf.org</a>. She will appear 7:30 Thursday, Jan. 28 at Kepler’s Bookstore, 1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park. Information: (650) 324-4321. “36 Arguments for the Existence of God” by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (402 pages, Goldstein Pantheon, $27.95)

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