Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up | 
| Author: John Allen Paulos
Publisher: Hill and Wang
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  35 reviews
Sales Rank: 13617
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 176
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0809059193
Dewey Decimal Number: 212.1
EAN: 9780809059195
ASIN: 0809059193
Publication Date: December 26, 2007
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Product Description
A Lifelong Unbeliever Finds No Reason to Change His Mind
Are there any logical reasons to believe in God? 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. The latter arguments, Paulos relates in his characteristically lighthearted style, “range from what might be called golden oldies to those with a more contemporary beat. On the playlist are the firstcause 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.” Interspersed among his twelve counterarguments are remarks on a variety of irreligious themes, ranging from the nature of miracles and creationist probability to cognitive illusions and prudential wagers. Special attention is paid to topics, arguments, and questions that spring from his incredulity “not only about religion but also about others’ credulity.” Despite the strong influence of his day job, Paulos says, there isn’t a single mathematical formula in the book.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 30 more reviews...
 Devastating the deity's dozen July 9, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Although titled "Irreligion", this book might be better typified by "Irrational". Paulos lines out the litany of weary old arguments in support of the deity now dominating Western society. Reading them simple, straightforward format, they seem more like excuses than arguments. There are a dozen of them, the Classical, the Subjective and the Psyche-Mathematical. Each has been addressed many times, of course, but Paulos' particular style of wit seems to breathe a new, if transient, life into them. Paulos' examination of each proposal is incisive and devastating, relying on a combination of a mathematician's logic and a showman's delivery.
In his Preface, Paulos states his skepticism emerged at an early age. He hasn't let it rest, working it to confront numerous situations. He early recognised the unanimity of things, which made him feel part of everything. Instead of attributing the universal relationship of matter to the supernatural, he turned instead to wondering why others did. In so doing he's accumulated a number of assertions purportedly supporting the notion of a deity. Each sets a condition, proposes an absurd - if frequently forwarded - supportive supposition to reach an unwarranted conclusion. A typical classic runs:
1. The world in general seems to evidence intention and direction
2. There must be a director behind this purpose
3. The entity directing must be a god, thereby proving its existence.
Paulos notes that the teleological argument goes back to ancient Greece, but is best typified today by William Paley's early 19th Century concept of "natural theology". That the idea remains current is a testimony to the failure of today's education or Western society's loss of a sense of logic. Paley influenced Charles Darwin in his early years, but the evidence Nature presented him on his HMS Beagle journey overturned Paley's failed assumption. Complexity means things are complex, but no designer is required, just time and opportunity. Paulos recommends a trumpet fanfare when we consider Darwin's achievement.
The author goes on to consider the remaining assertions, using logic that comes easily to a mathematician. He doesn't belabour the reader with formulae, since such arcane methods would leave one bewildered or exhausted. Instead, he laces his explanations with a wit that must be a wonderful experience in his classroom. He spares none, taking to task the recent works attacking various forms of belief as "arrogant and overbearing". Instead, he presents his refutations of the hoary assertions in a conversational style that can appeal to any level of reader, whether a sceptic or suffused with faith. He doesn't lash out, but presents the arguments for a deity as commonly stated, and shows their flaws without rancour.
As such, this book deserves the widest readership, perhaps starting with every minister of whatever faith permeating your local society. And he is at some pains to get his message across to his many countrymen who seem bent on "repealing the Enlightenment". If nothing else, the presence of such a threat makes this book mandatory reading - at least in North America. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
 Where is the logic? June 27, 2008
2 out of 7 found this review helpful
There has been a tidal wave of books promoting the intellectual and social benefits of atheism in the past few years. Sadly most have been badly informed and intellectually dishonest. Atheists, not the religious, are exposing themselves as the illogical ranters. Of course there are some outstanding atheists - Michael Ruse, Quentin Smith and Jordan Howard Sober come to mind, but sadly the face of rational atheism is represented by Dawkins, Hitchin and Dennett who all have lost debates with 'illogical believers' in the past 15 months. As for Paulos' book I would hesitate to describe it as even schoolboy philosophizing as it fails to reach any level of academic respectability and is, if anything, even worse than the aforementioned efforts from the `New Atheists'.
His first area of attack is the 'first cause argument' which Paulos states can be slightly amended to become the 'cosmological argument';
1. Everything has a cause, or perhaps many causes.
2. Nothing is its own cause.
3. Causal chains can't go on forever.
4. So there has to be a first cause.
5. That first cause is God, who therefore exists.
There are however two major problems with Paulos' version. Firstly no one in Western philosophical/theological history has even advanced the first cause/cosmological argument in this form. Paulos appears to have just made it up for this book. Secondly his version is not logically valid as the conclusion (5) does not follow from the earlier statements (1-4). All that is presented is a series of unconnected assertions unrelated to each other. Paulos' is constantly self-promoting his mathematical, logical mind but here he displays a complete failure to understand even the most basic logic.
A good example a modern first cause argument is the Kalam cosmological argument rediscovered and improved in modern thought by William Lane Craig.
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist
3. Therefore the universe has a cause
This argument is logically valid. The conclusion (3) follows deductively from 1 and 2. The soundness of the argument, that the statements are true, requires considerable knowledge of cosmology, set theory, physics and philosophy. Some atheists dispute statement s 1 or 2 as being unsound by arguing that the universe did not have a beginning or some things that begin to exist are uncaused usually by arguing that, as quantum mechanics cannot supply significant conditions for certain phenomena, statement 1 not universally true. Notice as well that God is not mentioned in this argument as God; it is argued by theists, is the best explanation as to why the whole argument is true. Of course atheists are could argue that the existence of the universe is down to pure luck or beyond our ability to comprehend. In any event intellectual atheists are aware of the power of this argument and are prepared to engage with the issues seriously. I find it extremely unlikely that Paulos is not aware of the true first-cause/cosmological arguments. It appears that he knows that he is unable to refute it and has resorted to a pseudo-argument to sell his book.
The rest of the book is basically the same, bad logic, poor understanding of philosophy, an inability to engage, and the refutation of theistic arguments that are essentially made up by Paulos.
Two of the reviewers Neil deGrasse Tyson and Joan Konner praise the books logic but there is none is sight.
For a serious look at atheism please try the atheist authors Sober, Smith and Ruse mentioned above.
Could be much better June 12, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The book is an interesting attempt. However, there are cases of superficiality and pseudo-objectivity.
How come for example the author attacks the Bush administration who struggles against irrationalities and dangereous extremism and fanaticism in the world, and not the latest one itself? Prof. Paulos has to notice that if the Islamo-Fascism will prevail in the world instead of the US, he will not be able to write such a book. i guess he will not be able to live.
Opher Liba, Math Educator, Researcher and Author
 Ace philosopher? June 11, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I really wanted to like John Allen Paulos' Irreligion, but I found myself progressively frustrated and disappointed with it. I have three primary complaints: his arguments are either too compacted, too haphazardly presented, or too sloppy; he's indiscriminate in the arguments for God's existence he analyzes; and his style, loaded with asides and one-liner attempts at humor, is both distracting and, after a certain point, annoying. But atheism is such a hot publishing commodity these days that nearly anything can get published, especially if its author is already well-known. This is too bad, because atheism is a position that deserves better than it's been getting lately from its popularizing champions.
Paulos admits in the book's preface that as a mathematician he prefers lean arguments. Fine. So do I. But there's a difference between leanness and incompleteness. In his efforts to strip down both traditional God-arguments and responses to them, he sometimes misses important points. In discussing the cosmological First Cause argument, for example, he accepts Hume's understanding of causality as if it's conventional philosophical wisdom. In his objections to the argument from design, he carelessly draws a whoppingly bad analogy between economic systems of distribution (which clearly are the products of design) and nondesigned evolutionary processes. In discussing the ontological argument, which is probably the best chapter in the book, he for some reason morphs, for no comprehensible reason, into a criticism of one of the so-called impossibility arguments against God's existence (which is predictably, by this point, lean to the point of sketchiness). And in discussing so-called subjective arguments for divine existence, he strawmans them to an extent that no theist would be stupid enough to say "Yep, that's what I believe!"
Moreover, the book gives the impression of being thrown together, or at least having a lot of filler. Design, ontological, and cosmological arguments are serious efforts to justify God's existence, and any equally serious atheist argument needs to respond to them. But what's the point of bothering to respond to silly claims about biblical prophecy and putative numerical codes, or extraordinary coincidences, or prayerful interventions? Surely Paulos could've spent more time rigorously examining more reputable arguments for God's existence if he'd spent less time goofing around with biblical codes.
Finally, Paulos just can't seem to resist cracking a joke on virtually every page of text. Sometimes the gags are so long-winded that he (or his editor) puts them inside parentheses, and the flow of the argument on either side of them is seriously broken. Before long, the reader (or at least this reader) wants to shout: "Enough with the jokes, already! They're not funny, and they're not helping!" Additionally, Paulos fails to provide any references for the many interesting articles and studies to which he refers. So anyone wanting to take a look at them has to do a lot of internet legwork.
At one point in his book, Paulos sarcastically refers to evolution-denying Ann Coulter as an "ace biologist." Don't get me wrong. Paulos is a much better thinker than Coulter. But, alas. In the same spirit by which he designates Coulter an "ace biologist," I think it's fair to say that, at least so far as this little book goes, he's an "ace philosopher."
 too little, too late June 7, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
As much as I enjoy the writing of John Allen Paulos (particularly A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper), I would have to characterize this book as being too little, too late.
Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation (Vintage) was the articulate first salvo of the New Atheists. This was followed by Richard Dawkins' masterful The God Delusion, which should be regarded as the consummate statement of the atheist position. The following year, Christopher Hitchens came out with God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, which was well-done, if a bit acerbic. But Hitchens was too late: he had already been comprehensively outdone by Dawkins, whose book is really all one needs to get started down the mind-cleansing path of non-belief.
And then this book comes along: much thinner, less funny, and certainly less exhaustive. Kind of hard to see what the point is. There's nothing that Paulos does here that hasn't been more capably and memorably done elsewhere.
It's readable, sure. But Paulos himself raises questions that cannot be capably addressed in such a thin volume. Nor does he seem to have the sheer erudition or organization Dawkins does.
In short, Paulos seems here to be idly musing in his armchair, whereas Hitchens and Dawkins are passionate, angry, and purposeful.
If you're only going to read one book from the so-called "New Atheist" crop, don't let it be this one.
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