Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why The Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up By John Allen Paulos

In John Allen Paulo’s debut book, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences, this mathematician brought a sparkling wit and astute powers of observations to the widespread problems of math deficiencies and math avoidance. He followed that brief and potent book with several others including Beyond Numeracy: Ruminations of a Numbers Man and A Mathematicians Reads the Newspaper in which he brought those same qualities to bear on a variety of questions in which his mathematician’s perspective could throw a special light.

Paulos’s latest book is Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why The Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up. As is usually true of books by the perspicacious writer, the book is short and packs a powerful punch. Paulos systematically and succinctly lays out the case for atheism in terms easily accessible to the general reader. He does this by going through the major pro-God arguments one by one and discussing their weaknesses.

Irreligion is much less mathematically oriented than Paulos’s previous books but it shows the logical bent of his mathematical mind to excellent effect.

Even as a child, Paulos’s numerical orientation led him to skepticism. He recounts unraveling the mystery of Santa Claus: “My qualitative calculations had proved to me that there were too many expectant kids around the world for Mr. Claus to ever come close to making his Christmas Eve rounds in time, even if he didn’t stop for the occasional hot chocolate.”

Paulos brings this rational mind-set and spry sense of humor to attacking the major arguments for the existence of a Supreme Being.

The book is divided into three sections, each of which takes on four major pro-divinity arguments. The first section is entitled “Four Classical Arguments,” the second section “Four Subjective Arguments,” and the third section is called “Four Psycho-Mathematical Arguments.”

Among the Classical Arguments is the First Cause that is so often cited, in one form or another, by believers. This is the idea that everything must have a cause, that the causes cannot go back endlessly and that the First Cause is called God – who therefore must exist. Paulo writes that, while theists may see God as “the uncaused first cause,” it makes sent to ask, “Why cannot the physical world itself be taken to be the uncaused first cause?”

In the chapter about the argument that the physical universe is too complex to lack a creator, Paulos observes that many creationists try to enlist Paulos’s own favorite subject, mathematics, to insist on the necessity for an ultimate intelligence. He points out that capitalist economies become incredibly complex without being directed from On High and notes the irony that many creationists are “ardent supporters of the free market. These people accept the natural complexity of the market without qualm, yet they insist that the natural complexity of biological phenomena requires a designer.”

The second section on Subjective Arguments for God shows that Paulos well understands the emotional appeal that a Higher Power has to so many people. It gives a person a kind of comfort to feel that “everything happens for a reason” than to recognize, as Paulos and many skeptics do, that coincidence is inevitable given the sheer number of personages and events.

Paulos is not contemptuous of those who do not share his views. He makes the point that he does not “want to scoff too much at emotional need” and that he is not “dismissive of yearning.” However, it is one thing to yearn and other to believe. Acknowledging the beauty or comfort of a religion does not mean subscribing to one.

In the final section, Paulos notes the inevitable contradictions in the belief that a completely good and at the same time omnipotent God creating a universe with so much pain and suffering. Believers tend to retort that “we don’t understand His ways” and Paulos asks, “Why introduce Him the in first place? Is there such a shortage of things we don’t’ understand that we need to manufacture another?”

Irreligion is a thought-provoking book that should be read by anyone with an open mind regardless of his or her preconceptions.

This review is also up at epinions.com at http://www.epinions.com/reviews/Book_Irreligion_A_Mathematician_Explains_Why_the_Arguments_for_God_Just_Don_t_Add_Up_John_Allen_Paulos. My readers might wish to visit that website and rate my review for it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 3:49 pm and is filed under Book Review, Culture, Education, Entertainment, Humor, Intelligent Design, Media, Psychology, Religion, Science & Nature, Society, Vox Populi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. | 80 views | Trackback | Print this page |

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