Bernard Schweizer

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s 36 Arguments for the Existence of God is a novel that steers clear of both strident attacks against religion and sanctimonious pieties. Instead, it explores the reality of religious fervor and examines the merit of both religious and anti-religious stances. And yet… because it is so respectful, patient, and level-headed, Goldstein’s novel may be actually more subversive than other, more straightforward anti-theistic tracts.

From the novel: “God hates us more than we can hate Him, and we do not deserve that hate, and therefore against God we are always in the wrong… Well, that’s our relationship with God in brief, isn’t it?… We are ‘lucky’ that God is angry with us, ‘lucky’ that He made us, and even when we have not behaved badly in the vineyard and have done nothing bad at all, we should still bow and scrape, and murmur, like my father’s poor parishioners going down on their knees, ‘My mistake, my mistake, I am lucky that You are angry with me’—all because Adam, who was anyway created by this hateful tyrant and might not have wanted to be created, this poor Adam, ate the luckless apple. Oh when will humans murder this devilish concept of God?”