THE CHOSEN AND 36 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

Life is full of wonderful and sometimes luminating coincidences. One such has been reading, in succession, The Chosen by Chiam Potok and 36 Arguments for the Existence of God, importantly subtitled "a work of fiction." The first I read at the recommendation of Rabbi SW, who is sponsoring my study of Judaism for the purpose of conversion. First published in the middle part of the last decade of the 20th Century (sounds ancient when put that way), The Chosen conveys to readers with minimal or no understanding of Judaism some insight into the practice of Orthodox and Hasidic Judaism, very roughly the Christian equivalent of devout Roman Catholicism and Amish (see movie "The Witness") respectively. Set in the time frame of WWII and the postwar establishment of Israel as a secular Jewish state, the novel explores two divergent perspectives of what it means to be a Jew.

36 Arguments for the Existence of God, a work of fiction, is a "serious satire" of contemporary academia in the midst of the resurgent controversies over the relationship, if any, of science and religion. It is both a laugh out loud farcically funny lampoon and a brilliant and witty satire, replete with obscure and some not so obscure references to the western canon. All of the characters and objective co-relatives (pun intended) get skewered in one way or another, except for the Hasidic child prodigy, son of the charismatic Rebbe of the Valdeners. It is for the soul of this child (I think) that the fictional war of religion and science is fought. In that respect, the child prodigy closely resembles Danny Saunders, the intellectually gifted and chosen son of the Hasidic rebbe central to Chiam Potok's story.

To read either book, one might come away thinking that no one need apply for membership in this club unless first submitting a certified IQ test in the upper 99th percentile. The two main characters in The Chosen are, respectively, gifted in mathematics/symbolic logic (Ruben) and total recall on first reading of anything (Danny). The child prodigy in 36 Arguments combines both in one soul.

Somewhat deceptively, The Chosen begins with a baseball game in which Danny as a batter hits Ruben, the pitcher, and literally puts his lights out and lands him in the hospital. The rest of the book tracks the ensuing friendship and "enlightenment" of both characters and their relationship to Judaism.

In 36 Arguments, Cass Seltzer capitalizes on the science and religion controversies by the timely publication of his book The Varieties of Religious Illusion (conflating James and Freud), and becomes an "earner" as well as a "learner" through the popularizing of his work following a magazine article describing him as "an atheist with a soul." His book, like the book in which he is the character, has an appendix listing, along with a syllogistic refutation, 36 classic arguments for the existence of God. Each of the chapters also has a title styled as an "argument." Do not waste your time (as I did) trying to correlate the chapter headings with the appendix. Relax, read and laugh.

I enjoyed a reading from 36 Arguments by the author at our neighborhood bookstore, Politics and Prose. The author is a self-described secular humanist and probably closest in some ways to the mindset of the Cass Seltzer character, the "atheist with a soul." Certainly, she subscribes to a sort of ethical view that is the historical progeny of ethical monotheism apparent in Judaism and Christianity. She has a formidable training in analytic philosophy and symbolic logic. Perhaps, for that reason alone or in combination with her own experience with "the varieties of academic illusion," she has no expectation that anyone will, as a result of the 36 Arguments or the strenuous efforts of other professional pamphleteering atheists, change their beliefs or their behavior, and vice versa. Rather she offers the "novel approach" as a way of provoking thought and introspection. At this, she succeeds.

I was not aware, prior to the reading, that the author had some connection with another author who has had substantial influence on the contents of this website, Steven Pinker. The relationship is subtly revealed in a copyright mark under a picture of the author on the book's dust jacket. Another character in the book, Roz the anthropologist, probably knows that some aboriginal tribes will not permit photos to be taken under the belief that the photo also captures the soul. I am sure, based on reading most of Pinker's published work, that he knows this. I will need to check with the Patent and Trademark Office, however, to determine whether the copyright extends to facets of photo underlying the image.