The God Debates: A 21st Century Guide for Atheists and Believers (and Everyone in Between) (review)

The first thing that the reader notices when taking up John Shook's The God Debates is his refreshingly conciliatory tone. In a time when the "New Atheists" crowd the best-sellers lists with mud-slinging tomes and Evangelical Christians and others seem all too ready to return fire, Shook offers his work as a contribution to "ecumenical conversation" (p. 2), extending intrafaith and interfaith dialogue to include the nonreligious. In this book, Shook focuses his attention on the question of God's existence. This is, in part, a tactic to keep the conversation above the fray of what he calls "religious criticism" (pp. 2ff), or the attack on religions that results from a harsh evaluation of the atrocities, misconceptions, and other very human behaviors that emerge as one looks at the history of religions. Shook sustains a cool and fair approach throughout the book and even gives some attention to "non-traditional Christians" (p. 2), a group dismissed out-of-hand by some contemporary atheists as being not-really-Christian.

The God Debates is a carefully argued book and often yields helpful clarifications and elucidating schemas. The helpful clarifications begin with a distinction between "dogmatic atheism" and "skeptical atheism." "Dogmatic atheism "denies the existence of god positively," while skeptical atheism "distrusts the capacity of the human mind to discover the existence of god" (p. 18). Shook is obviously in the latter category, and he confesses that since Christianity is the religion that he knows best, his is a kind of Christian atheology (p. 13). This is just one example of Shook's admirable ability and willingness to acknowledge plurality and particularity in the debate.

A good example of Shook's effective ability to schematize the material is the basic structure of the book. Shook categorizes various ways of arguing for God's existence according to methods and approaches held in common: "Theology from the Scripture" refutes theories of special revelation and Biblical apologetics. "Theology from the World" tackles design arguments and ontological arguments as well as arguments from morality and religious experience. "Theology Beyond the World" focuses on cosmological arguments, while "Theology in the Know" largely focuses on the Reformed epistemologists. "Theology into the Myst" refutes a pure mysticism while also discussing various theologies that in some way account for the mediated nature of any knowledge of God.

Another helpful schema is Shook's closing summary of twelve religious/ nonreligious worldviews. While this schema can be a bit dizzying, it does yield some interesting insights, like how it is that Ecumenical Mysticism and Nihilistic Rationalism share similar weaknesses or what makes Conservative Catholicism and Evangelical Fundamentalism ideological neighbors.

The biggest weaknesses of this book may stem from an audience problem. The subtitle of the book, A 21st Century Guide for Atheists and Believers (and Everyone in Between) and some aspects of the book's approach would seem to indicate that the book is perhaps addressed to interested lay readers and beginning students. Shook generally does a good job of explaining the terms that he uses, though he does not avoid technical language, and he also does not clog up the work with extensive footnotes and references. But I am not at all sure that novices would be willing and able to tackle the very careful, sometimes almost tedious argumentation that Shook employs. Lists of enumerated principles and premises replete with counterarguments given in reference to the symbol assigned to the original principle and the like are large pills for the initiated let alone the apprentice. On the other hand, Shook's meticulousness does yield fruit for the expert's consideration. But if the book was intended for professionals and advanced students, then the lack of references is a very serious flaw. More often than not, Shook refutes arguments without saying who holds the argument that he is refuting. Sometimes I was left wondering if there is...