Irreligion Reviewed by Olle Häggström

John Allen Paulos’ latest book Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up [11], contains rather little mathematics. Yet the title is not terribly misleading: the book’s style would, in case we didn’t know that the author is a mathematician, hint strongly in that direction. Paulos’ basic strategy for analysis of arguments bears clear signs of a mathematical mindset: he strips the arguments to their bare bones and divides them into small steps, so that the strength and weakness of each of the steps can be readily evaluated. The application of this strategy to a wide variety of arguments for God’s existence constitutes the main content of his book. Here is Paulos’ bare-bones recounting of the ontological argument of Anselm, the well-known eleventh century Archbishop of Canterbury (pages 38–39):