John Allen Paulos

Hot on the heels of the birth of Christ comes yet another assault on religious belief. God knows, the godless have been on the pop culture offensive of late (see: Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Philip Pullman et al.), and if the other side of the barricades didn’t have such an overwhelming historical foothold, you could almost accuse the atheists of piling on. The irony of so many of the recent irreligious screeds is that they tend to be marked by the same brand of repellent intolerance that has been the appalling hallmark of God’s zealots through the ages. It seems sad that even the unbelievers are reduced to preaching to their choirs. As to whether John Allen Paulos has any truly fresh light to shed on the subject—hint: It says right there in the title that the man’s a mathematician, and his book undertakes all manner of logical refutations of God’s existence (yawn)—I’m afraid he’s ultimately just another dog barking at cars.