MACARTHUR “GENIUS” FELLOW Rebecca Goldstein (Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton and author of The Mind-Body Problem, Properties of Light, and studies of Kurt Gödel and Baruch Spinoza) reads from her new novel and speaks about how she uses her characters to explore the tension between belief and skepticism. These positions cannot be understood through rational argument alone—they also must be explored from the point of view of individual people caught in the raptures and torments of religious experience in all their variety. 36 Arguments for the Existence of God plunges into the great debate of our day: the clash between faith and reason. World events are being shaped by fervent believers at home and abroad, while a new 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 continue to embrace faith in God as their source of meaning, purpose, and comfort. Why? Goldstein gives us her answer through fiction and philosophy.
Book signing to follow lecture.
