36 Arguments for the Existence of God | Rebecca Goldstein | Talks at Google

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is the author of the novel, Mind Body Problem. Goldsteins 36 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD: A Work of Fiction is a hilarious, heartbreaking, and intellectually captivating novel exploring the rapture and torments of religious experience in all its variety.

After Cass Seltzers book becomes a surprise best seller, hes 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 spirtually expansive infatuation. A former girlfriend appears: an anthropologist who invites him to join her 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, heir to the leadership of a Hasidic sect. Each encounter reinforces Casss 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. Not since the Enlightenment has this collision been so much on peoples minds. World events are being shaped by fervent believers at home and abroad, while a new, aggressive 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 embrace faith in God as their source of meaning, purpose, and comfort.