John Allen Paulos is a mathematician (Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison) known for his academic work in mathematical logic and probability theory. I first encountered his work in his 1988 book Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences. At this time I was the research director for a full-service marketing research firm conducting public opinion surveys throughout the U.S. and Canada. I spent a great deal of time crunching numbers and then attempting to explain the meaning of the numbers to our clients. Innumeracy quickly assumed a prominent place on the bookcase close to my workstation and helped me understand why our clients didn’t see numbers the same way I did. Innumeracy was on the New York Times bestseller list for 18 weeks.
In 1995, Paulos brought out A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper and since slightly more than half of our clients were newspapers, I picked up this book. It was an interesting read and certainly built upon some of the ideas presented in Innumeracy. The Random House Modern Library’s compilation of the 100 best nonfiction books of the century includes this book.
In 2008, Paulos brought out Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up. Paulos discusses several basic arguments: Four Classical Arguments, Four Subjective Arguments, and Four Psycho-Mathematical Arguments.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics is often cited by creationists as providing evidence for creation through the intervention of a god rather than evolution. The law states that in a closed system, entropy always increases. In heat transfer systems, heat energy is transferred from higher temperature components to lower temperature components. Entropy is a process which reduces the state of order of the initial system and thus entropy is an expression of disorder. Since human societies show increasing order rather than disorder, deists claim that this shows the existence of a god. Paulos replies to this:
“There is a very detailed response to this, but here is a very short one: since living things are open to their surroundings and the earth is open to the sun, they are clearly not closed systems and hence are not counterexamples to the second law. Local human decreases in entropy are perfectly consistent with thermodynamics.”
Miracles are often used as a kind of “proof” that a god exists. Paulos writes:
“It sometimes seems to me that news coverage of these miracles is more extensive than coverage of scientific breakthroughs.”
Another argument some deists use to justify their belief in a god focuses on moral codes. They point out what they see as similarities in moral codes across the planet and attribute these similarities to a god, even though many of the religions in these other areas is atheistic or non-theistic. Closer examination, as Paulos points out, shows that the similarities of these moral codes is a bit dubious except on the broadest level—murder, theft, child care, basic honesty. Paulos writes:
“There is a compelling and irreligious alternative to it: an evolutionary explanation for the similarity of moral codes. Humans, even before they were humans, have always had to deal with a set of basic requirements. How will they get food, keep warm, protect themselves from predators and other humans, mate, and reproduce? Any group that doesn’t meet these basic requirements doesn’t last long.”
The rough similarity of moral codes, according to Paulos, is not because there is a god, but rather a set of natural constraints which human societies must conform to if they are to prosper.
Paulos also writes:
“An atheist or agnostic who acts morally simply because it is the right thing to do is, in a sense, more moral than someone who is trying to avoid everlasting torment or, as is the case with martyrs, to achieve eternal bliss.”
Paulos also points out:
“Still, people do often vigorously insist that religious beliefs are necessary to ensure moral behavior. Though the claim is quite clearly false of people in general, there is a sense in which it might be true if one has been brought up in a very religious environment.”
Norman Levitt writes:
Paulos deserves high praise for turning out a book that is brief, forthright, and amiable.
Ron Csillag writes:
Paulos provides a nice counterpoint to theoretical physicist Stephen Unwin's 2003 book The Probability of God, which calculated the likelihood of God's existence at 67 per cent, and to Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne's use of a probability formula known as Bayes' theorem to put the odds of Christ's resurrection at 97 per cent.
Writing in the New York Times,
Michiko Kakutani says:
In the course of this volume Mr. Paulos does provide some interesting asides about the so-called “confirmation bias, a psychological tendency to seek confirmation rather than disconfirmation of any hypothesis we’ve adopted, however tentatively” (which would seem to have applications to the Bush administration’s use of intelligence in the prelude to the Iraq war). And he also does an entertaining job of applying probability theory to people’s talk about miracles and amazing coincidences, which they’ve taken as evidence of the existence of God.
Overall, Paulos gives us some interesting things to consider. For those with an unshakable belief in a god, this might be a good book to avoid. For those with strong atheistic convictions, this book will simply reinforce what you think you already know.