Reason, Fiction and Faith: Are any of the arguments for the existence of God any good?

5th Mar 2010; 13:00

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Award-winning novelist and philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein visits the RSA to explore questions of faith, reason, fiction, and God.

Rebecca Goldstein’s latest novel 36 Arguments for the Existence of God tackles one of the great debates of our time - between God-believers and the so-called “new atheists” - and explores the rapture and torments of religious experience in all its variety.
In 1996 Goldstein became a MacArthur Fellow, receiving the prize which is popularly known in the States as the “Genius Award.” In awarding her the prize, the MacArthur Foundation described her work in the following words: "Rebecca Goldstein is a writer whose novels and short stories dramatize the concerns of philosophy without sacrificing the demands of imaginative storytelling.  Her books tell a compelling story as they describe with wit, compassion and originality the interaction of mind and heart.

In her fiction her characters confront problems of faith: religious faith and faith in an ability to comprehend the mysteries of the physical world as complementary to moral and emotional states of being.  Goldstein’s writings emerge as brilliant arguments for the belief that fiction in our time may be the best vehicle for involving readers in questions of morality and existence."


Join Rebecca Goldstein and her husband, cognitive theorist Steven Pinker at the RSA for a very special conversation, addressing a fascinating array of topics at the the interface of literature, science, religion and philosophy, including the dynamic between reason and emotion, the role of fiction in intellectual life and the mystery of consciousness.

Speakers: Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, philosopher, novelist and author of "Thirty-six Arguments for the Existence of God : A Work of Fiction" (Atlantic Books, 2010); Steven Pinker, Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, bestselling and award-winning author of "The Language Instinct", "The Blank Slate" and "The Stuff of Thought".


Chair: Matthew Taylor, chief executive, RSA

Suggested hashtag for Twitter users: #rsagoldstein

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