Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up by John Allen Paulos (PDF)

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Are there any logical reasons to believe in God? The mathematician and bestselling author John Allen Paulos thinks not. In Irreligion he presents the case for his own worldview, organizing his book into twelve chapters that refute the twelve arguments most often put forward for believing in God’s existence. Interspersed among these counterarguments are remarks on a variety of irreligious themes, ranging from the nature of miracles and creationist probability to cognitive illusions and prudential wagers. Despite the strong influence of his day job, Paulos says, there isn’t a single mathematical formula in the book.

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Editorial Reviews: Review “Reasoned, cool and concise–a good-natured primer for infidels.” ―Kirkus Reviews“[Paulos] is as sure-footed as a tiger as he prowls through the theocratic landscape, pouncing on sloppy thinking. To a large extent he succeeds in demolishing the arguments of believers.” ―Phillip Manning, The News & Observer (Raleigh)“[Paulos] knocks the props from under the classic arguments for the existence of God . . . The book is written with a charming skepticism that is not off-putting or arrogant.” ―Chuck Warnock, Amicus Dei blog“Few of the recent books on atheism have been worth reading just for wit and style, but this is one of them: Paulos is truly funny.” ―Publishers Weekly“Irreligion will, I’m confident, take a distinguished place in what one might call the canonical literature of the New Atheism.” ―Norman Levitt, eSkeptic About the Author John Allen Paulos is a professor of mathematics at Temple University. His books include the bestseller Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences (H&W, 1988), Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up, A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market, and A Mathematician Reads the Newspapers. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. IrreligionA Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add UpBy Paulos, John AllenHill and WangCopyright © 2009 Paulos, John AllenAll right reserved.ISBN: 9780809059188PrefaceAre there any logical reasons to believe in God? Billions of people over thousands of years have entertained this question, and the issue is certainly not without relevance in our world today. The chasms separating literal believers, temperate believers, and outright nonbelievers are deep. There are many who seem to be impressed with the argument that God exists simply because He says He does in a much extolled tome that He allegedly inspired. Many others subscribe with varying degrees of conviction to more sophisticated arguments for God, while atheists and agnostics find none of the arguments persuasive. Such questions of existence and belief, if not the formal arguments themselves, have always intrigued me. I remember as a child humoring my parents when they discussed Santa Claus with me. I wanted to protect them from my knowledge of his nonexistence, and so I feigned belief. My brother, three years my junior, was only a baby, so it wasn’t him I was trying not to disillusion. My qualitative calculations had proved to me that there were too many expectant kids around the world for Mr. Claus to even come close to making his Christmas Eve rounds in time, even if he didn’t stop for the occasional hot chocolate. This may sound like quite a pat memory for the author of a book titled Innumeracy to have, but I do remember making rough “order of magnitude” calculations that showed that Santa Claus was way overextended. As I’ve written elsewhere, if there is an inborn disposition to materialism (in the sense of “matter and motion are the basis of all there is,” not in the sense of “I want more cars and houses”), then I suspect I have it. At the risk of being a bit cloying, I remember another early indicator of my adult psychology. I was scuffling with my brother when I was about ten and had an epiphany that the stuff of our two heads wasn’t different in kind from the stuff of the rough rug on which I’d just burned my elbow or the stuff of the chair on which he’d just banged his shoulder. The realization that everything was ultimately made out of the same matter, that there was no essential difference between the material compositions of me and not-me, was clean, clear, and bracing. My youthful materialism quickly evolved into adolescent skepticism, dismissive of just-so tales devoid of evidence. The absence of an answer to the question “What caused, preceded, or created God?” made, in my eyes, the existence of the latter being an unnecessary, antecedent mystery. Why introduce Him? Why postulate a completely nonexplanatory, extra perplexity to help explain the already sufficiently perplexing and beautiful world? Or, if one was committed to such an unnecessary mystery, why not introduce even more antecedent ones such as the Creator’s Creator, or even His Great-Uncle? This vaguely quantitative and logical mind-set no doubt predisposed me to choose the career I have—I’m a mathematician who’s morphed into a writer—and to view the world in the way I do. It is what has animated me to write the books and columns I’ve written, some of which have touched on what I call irreligion—topics, arguments, and questions that spring from an incredulity not only about religion but also about others’ credulity. As this and the above anecdotes suggest, I’ve always found the various arguments for the existence of God that I’ve come across wanting. There is an inherent illogic to all of the arguments that I’ve never dealt with head-on. Here in Irreligion I’ve attempted to do so. My approach in this book is informal and brisk (at least I hope it is), not ceremonious and plodding (at least I hope it isn’t). Interspersed among the arguments will be numerous asides on a variety of irreligious themes, ranging from the nature of miracles and creationist probability to cognitive illusions and prudential wagers. Beginning with a schematic outline of an argument, most chapters will briefly examine it and then present what I believe is a succinct deconstruction. The arguments considered range from what might be called the golden oldies of religious thought to those with a more contemporary beat. On the playlist are the first-cause argument, the argument from design, the ontological argument, arguments from faith and biblical codes, the argument from the anthropic principle, the moral universality argument, and others. These arguments overlap to an extent, but I’ve loosely categorized them in an order that seems somewhat natural. Don’t worry if your mathematical skills are rusty or even completely absent. Although I’m a mathematician, I’ve not included a single formula in the book. This doesn’t mean that mathematics plays little role in what follows. The subject enters in two ways. First, I invoke bits of logic and probability throughout the book, always taking pains in my expositions of them to avoid not only formulas but equations, complicated computations, and technical jargon. Second and more significant, mathematics, or at least my mathematical sensibility, reveals itself in the analytic approach, my choice of examples, and the distaste for extraneous details apparent herein. (Mathematicians are a bit like the laconic Vermonter who, when asked if he’s lived in the state his whole life, replies, “Not yet.”) Fully discussing the arguments for God and their refutations, together with the volumes and volumes of commentary and meta-commentary that they continue to generate, brings to mind the predicament of Tristram Shandy. He was the fictional fellow who took two years to write the history of the first two days of his life. In an effort to avoid Shandy’s fate and not lose the withered forest for the debunked trees, I’ve tried in this book—actually more of a handbook or a compendium—to sketch with a lightly heretical touch only the most trenchant refutations of the arguments for God. That is, just the gist, with an occasional jest. These refutations—some new and idiosyncratic, but many dating back centuries or even millennia—are not nearly as widely known as they once were, and therefore, I believe, there is value in having them all available in one place. (For this reason I’ve here adapted some sections from the other books and columns of mine that I mentioned above.) This effort is especially important now given this country’s rampant scripture-spouting religiosity and the policies and debacles to which it has already led and to which it may further lead. A representative of the Enlightenment, which, unfortunately, sometimes seems to be in the process of being repealed, Voltaire presciently observed, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” This dire forecast is all the more likely to come to pass when politicians and a substantial portion of a large political party are among the most effective purveyors of beliefs such as the “Rapture.” (On the other hand, I have little problem with those who acknowledge the absence of good arguments for God, but simply maintain a nebulous but steadfast belief in “something more.”) The first step in untangling religious absurdities is to recognize that the arguments for the existence of God depend on the definition of God. Who or what is God? Some authors write that He is ineffable or define Him in some idiosyncratic manner as synonymous with nature or with the laws of physics or in an indeterminate number of other ways. Most conventional monotheistic characterizations of God (Yahweh, Allah), however, take Him to be an entity or being that is, if not omnipotent, at least extraordinarily powerful; if not omniscient, at least surpassingly wise; if not the Creator of the universe, at least intimately connected with its origin; if not completely and absolutely perfect, at least possessor of all manner of positive characteristics. This formulation will, on the whole, be my definition of God, and the many flawed arguments for this entity’s existence will be my primary focus. Different traditions adorn Him with different narratives and attributes, but I’ll discuss neither these nor the broader cultures and attitudes associated with specific religions. An atheist I’ll take to be someone who believes that such an entity does not exist, and an agnostic I’ll take to be someone who believes that whether God exists or not is either unknown, unknowable, or a meaningless question. (I won’t discuss complex intermediate cases, represented in my mind by a friend who professes to being an atheist but, when asked why he adheres strictly to religious rituals, replies, “Because God commands it.”) Contrary to some, I think it’s certainly possible to be both an atheist and an agnostic. Think, for example, of the innumerable historical figures or events in whose existence or occurrence we don’t believe, but about whose existence and occurrence we’re not absolutely sure. The definitions of these terms are, of course, sensitive to the definition of God to which one subscribes. Define God in a sufficiently nebulous way as beauty, love, mysterious complexity, or the ethereal taste of strawberry shortcake, and most atheists become theists. Still, although one can pose as Humpty Dumpty and aver, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less,” others needn’t play along. One question people interested in the matters discussed in this book often have is whether, despite my present views, I ever had or perhaps somehow still have a formal religion. There is, of course, a significant difference between the formal religion one is born into or with which one is otherwise associated and one’s true beliefs. There are many paths to an irreligious outlook, my own, as I’ve indicated above, being somewhat straightforward. I simply never had a religious phase. As a consequence, I am not now renouncing a faith I once had, and this book isn’t intended as a sort of Epistle of Paulos the Apostate to the Theologians. Although raised in a nominally Christian home (my grandparents emigrated from Greece) and ensconced now in a secular Jewish family, I never found either religion’s doctrines intellectually or emotionally palatable, much less compelling. This is not to say that I don’t value at least parts of some religious traditions, ideals, and festivals (ranging from Passover to Thailand’s Loy Krathong). Nor is it to say I don’t acknowledge that there have been untold people who have selflessly served others in the name of their God. Nor is it to say that I don’t recognize that many intelligent people are religious. I mean merely to say that I am and always have been an atheist/agnostic and will herein attempt to explain why perhaps you should be, too. Let me end these preliminaries by noting that although a nonbeliever, I’ve always wondered about the possibility of a basic proto-religion acceptable to atheists and agnostics. By this I mean a “religion” that has no dogma, no narratives, and no existence claims and yet still acknowledges the essential awe and wonder of the world and perhaps affords as well an iota of serenity. The best I’ve been able to come up with is the “Yeah-ist” religion, whose response to the intricacy, beauty, and mystery of the world is a simple affirmation and acceptance, “Yeah,” and whose only prayer is the one word “Yeah.” This minimalist “Yeah-ist” religion is consistent with more complex religions (but not with the “Nah” religion) and with an irreligious ethics and a liberating, self-mediated stance toward life and its stories. Furthermore, it conforms nicely with a scientific perspective and with the idea that the certainty of uncertainty is the only kind of certainty we can expect. So, Yeah, let’s move on to the arguments for God’s existence. Excerpted from Irreligion by John Allen Paulos. Copyright © 2007 by John Allen Paulos. Published in 2007 by Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved.Continues…Excerpted from Irreligion by Paulos, John Allen Copyright © 2009 by Paulos, John Allen. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This is a wonderfully concise book, well presented, well shaded and well within reach of mathematically sad creatures such as myself. In fact it has more to do with the methodology of mathematics than actually doing the math. But what caught my attention amid some already familiar explanatory riffs is something I have yet to read very often within atheist texts and that is a simple statement of fact made by the author. As a child he had absolutely no feeling — emotional or intellectual — for the need of a god or religious doctrine. And I share that very specific mental state. My first response to organized religion at a very early age was always the same: the simple and clear and recurring thought that this just ain’t so. As the years went by I made a point of reading broadly on faith and the lack thereof, arriving at a conscious rather than solely intuitive understanding of my perspective. “Irreligion” offers another dose of comprehension for seeing life as it is in favor of imbuing it with mysteries which are mysteries only because already known answers remain unacceptable to believers, or are merely aspects of human experience still waiting to be understood. As Mr. Paulos so eloquently writes, in setting aside the superstitions of the past few millennia we sacrifice or compromise none of the intrinsic value of our lives.

⭐As a student of religious studies AND mathematics and having never heard of the author I picked this up as a fun and rather nerdy read. I have read all of the new atheist books as well as all of the new age apologists (D’Souza, Lewis, Craig, Collins, etc.) and a cursory glance at the back of this one made me feel as though it would be a light hearted fun rant through modern religion and mathematic principles.I was delighted to find the author is not only funny but brilliantly laconic, explaining how he sees most of the more common arguments seen today for the existence of a god or gods. For those who have taken multi variate, advanced calculus, advanced physics (anything where you are working with “proofs”) you will immediately feel right at home. Paulus commonly begins by taking the reader through what he sees as the logical proof an apologist is submitting and then finds the cracks with turn-of-phrase which is as clever as it is humorous.There is one section where he has a “dreamy instant message conversation with God” that I don’t particularly care for but I could see how someone could take some value from it.This book is not brilliance encapsulated as some may describe a Hitchens, Dennett, or Grayling. But instead it’s someone explaining why he is not a theist, rather than why you should not be a theist.He ends the book with a slightly outdated argument, which I’m sure at the time looked as though it was going to be a bigger deal than it was (the “bright” movement), but I have re-read this book several times and have found the contents enlightening every time.I would suggest it to anyone. Cheers!

⭐To appreciate this book, one must understand what readership it is aimed at. This appears to be the people on both sides of the divide between religious and nonreligious who are neither utterly convinced atheists (although those might enjoy the book as well), nor unquestioning believers. It is for readers who are intelligent and interested in the subject of God’s existence or nonexistence, but do not have the time or inclination to immerse themselves in 536pp philosophical books. These people would be most interested in the thoughts of another intelligent person, a person who has spent some time exploring the major arguments, and is capable of presenting them and his conclusions in a clear and concise manner. It is then up to the reader to agree or disagree with the reasoning.The book would not convince religious people whose minds are closed, even if they read it. It will not convince people who deny the role of reason in the question of God’s existence. And it is not a polemic with ivory tower theologians.This is a gentle book. Paulos does not bring up the horrific facts of the criminal history of religion that Dawkins, Hitchens and others have explored in recent books. He concentrates on a few common arguments for God’s existence, and shows how an intelligent person would find them wanting.

⭐Presents an excellent analysis of why claims of the existence of a god are necessarily illogical. Which is appropriate, since it is provable that there can exist no grounds for supposing that any god exists.

⭐From the author who used his doctorate in mathematics to examine commonly-held beliefs of investing and mathematical ignorance, comes John Allen Paulos’ newest book, Irreligion. Irreligion is definitely politically incorrect and, I must confess, is one of the reasons I loved it. In this book, John Allen Paulos examines logical arguments on the existence of God. Naturally, the existence of God isn’t a question that can be definitively answered, but Irreligion does a superb job of pointing out similarities between flawed logical reasoning and the arguments for God.Dr. Paulos isn’t trying to convert the world to atheism. Rather, he is attempting to get us all to be critical thinkers instead of refusing to even consider an argument because it has negative stigma attached. Irreligion is a book that has a rare mix of being fun to read while pushing us to think about a profound subject, and one can’t get into more profound territory than God.Still, I wonder, since religious people are generally happier, live longer, and heal more quickly, is it logical to question the logic of religion?

⭐Not quite the “virtuoso performance” referred to in a quote on the dust cover, but a mix of incisive demolition of many common “there must be a God because…” arguments and contrived logic that doesn’t quite do the job convincingly for others. It is a quick and thought provoking read though, and the simple logical approach that Paulos uses to analyse each argument for a deity is very powerful, clearly exposing where in the argument the leap of faith from the rational to the irrational occurs. This alone should cause many believers to gain a better understanding of why they believe, and to judge whether the foundation of their personal faith really stands up.

⭐Love maths n hate religion so right up my street

⭐John Allen Paulos is not alone in having been intrigued by “questions of existence and belief” since childhood, but few of us will have feigned belief in Santa Claus in order to protect our parents from our “knowledge of his nonexistence”. Unsurprisingly, Paulos suspects he has “an inborn disposition to materialism” (the “matter and motion are the basis of all there is” and not the “I want more cars and houses” kind). Don’t let this put you off if you think there must be more to the universe than atoms and energy. While his opening question – “Are there any logical reasons to believe in God?” – will make some wretch or reach for the remote, curious atheists and theists will find “Irreligion” irresistible.The book is organized into three parts: first come four classical arguments for God’s existence, then four subjective arguments, and finally four “psycho-mathematical” arguments. It’s worth emphasizing that these are arguments in the grown-up sense of offering reasons or evidence in support of a conclusion, and not simply statements of personal opinion. You’re meant to take them seriously, to be prepared to change your mind if persuaded, and, if you disagree, to offer reasons why. Faith so often “wins” because it avoids the hard work of argument and plumps for wishful thinking to get to where it wants to go.Each argument is clearly laid out, premises and conclusions enumerated and simplified so we see exactly what’s going on. (This admirable quality, the will to explain and not obfuscate, is more often found in scientists and novelists than in theologians or pedlars of new age quackery, who cater for and prey upon the ignorance of those who “are more impressed by fatuous blather that they don’t understand than by simple observations that they do”.) The first-cause argument begins with “1. Everything has a cause, or perhaps many causes.” It goes on to assert “there has to be a first cause” and ends with “5. That first cause is God, who therefore exists.” To see whether this argument – or any argument – is true involves examining the premises to see if they are reliable and then checking that the conclusion follows. The gaping hole here is the opening premise: “If everything has a cause, then God does, too, and there is no first cause.” If an exception is being made and one thing is allowed not to have a cause, “it may as well be the physical world as God”.There follow the arguments from design and the anthropic principle, and the ontological argument, then the subjective arguments from coincidence, from prophecy, from subjectivity itself, and from interventions, then the psycho-mathematical arguments, which explore complexity, cognition, universality, and Pascal’s notorious wager. Unfortunately for religion, if true, some of these arguments have a wider utility and could support all kinds of hogwash. Fortunately for irreligion, Paulos shows how each fails to convince.”How can an agnostic or atheist learn anything from someone who simply claims to know there is a God?” While acknowledging the fact that such “knowledge” is often strongly held and has a powerful effect on the person’s life, the problem is that the “knowledge” possessed by different religious people and groups “is quite contradictory.” It would be absurd to remind the reader of a novel “that writing about a character isn’t sufficient to conjure up his or her existence.” Holy books, whose taste for fiction is not widely enough recognized, ought to come with a health warning: “Statements or expressions can have a meaning yet lack a referent.” The Christian knows as much about Jesus as I do about Hamlet, but only one of us is confused about reality.In discussing so-called Bible codes, Paulos makes one of the few claims I am sceptical of: “Once the discovery of seemingly prescient sequences of letters is brought to our attention, it is only natural for us to wonder about the probability of their occurrence.” Natural for a professor of mathematics, perhaps, or, flatteringly, for a reader of his books, but not for the average buyer of a lottery ticket. That’s surely part of the problem: it’s not just that people can’t work out probabilities, but that they’re not even curious. One other dubious note is the glib credit paid to Jesus as a great moral leader “whose ideas constitute a good part of the bedrock of our culture”. There is truth in this, of course, but it should not pass by unexamined. Does Paulos rate the obscene notion of hell and eternal punishment as a crowning achievement of the human spirit? Or perhaps he was thinking about the more palatable (ifunoriginal) sayings?A smile is never far away from the serious. Humpty Dumpty – that unwitting theologian and splendid role model for the religious – gets namechecked in the preface: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.” If God is defined “in a sufficiently nebulous way as beauty, love, mysterious complexity, or the ethereal taste of strawberry shortcake” then “most atheists become theists”. Paulos prefers clarity and truth to these word games, and his book is an oasis of sense for anyone tired of “nonsense proffered in an earnest and profound manner”.”Irreligion” will not lead you into a spiritual desert nor will it suck meaning from your life. It is a handy prompt for when we stand up for what we don’t believe, and contains a message rarely heard above the din of competing faiths: “the world would benefit if more people of diverse backgrounds were to admit to being irreligious.”

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