Talking God: Philosophers on Belief

by Gary Gutting

As tensions simmer, and often explode, between the secular and the religious forces in modern life, the big questions about human belief press ever more urgently. Where does belief, or its lack, originate? How can we understand and appreciate religious traditions different from our own? Featuring conversations with twelve skeptics, atheists, agnostics, and believers—including Alvin Plantinga, Philip Kitcher, Michael Ruse, and John Caputo—Talking God offers new perspectives on religion, including the challenge to believers from evolution, cutting-edge physics and cosmology; arguments both for and against atheism; and meditations on the value of secular humanism and faith in the modern world. Experts offer insights on Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, as well as Judaism and Christianity. Topical and illuminating, Talking God gives readers a deeper understanding of faith today and how philosophers understand it.


From Talking God:


“[Some say] Buddhism is not a religion because Buddhists don’t believe in a supreme being. This simply ignores the fact that many religions are not theistic in this sense. Chess is a game, despite the fact that it is not played with a ball, after all.”—Jay Garfield, from chapter 10, “Buddhism: Religion Without Divinity”


“Why think that the creator was all-knowing and omnipotent?— Maybe the creator was a student god, and only got a B minus on this project?”—Louise Antony, from chapter 2, “A Case for Atheism”


“There are a large number—maybe a couple of dozen—of pretty good theistic arguments. None is conclusive, but each, or at any rate the whole bunch taken together, is about as strong as philosophical arguments ordinarily get.”—Alvin Plantinga, from chapter 1, “A Case for Theism”


“If you cease to ‘believe’ in a particular religious creed, like Calvinism or Catholicism, you have changed your mind and adopted a new position— But if you lose ‘faith,’—everything is lost. You have lost your faith in life, lost hope in the future, lost heart, and you cannot go on.”—John Caputo, from chapter 3, “Religion and Deconstruction”

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Religion

240 pages, Paperback

First published November 22, 2016

About the author

Gary Gutting was an American philosopher and holder of an endowed chair in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.

Reviews

[Edward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gutting, a tenured philosophy professor at the University of Notre Dame, has put together in this book twelve interviews, slightly edited for a book edition, that originally appeared in the New York Times philosophy bog, "'The Stone." He's interested in how these twelve philosophers, from believers to atheists, view the existence and relevance of "God". He generally succeeds in making all of their cases interesting, whether or not you agree with their conclusions.

What emerges is not talking about God (as one deconstructionist put it) as a "drive-by shooting," meaning that there are no once-and-for-all answers; it's a conversation which is always continuing. It's impossible to discuss all of the opinions which come out of these interviews, but following are a few of what I thought were their more interesting aspects.

Several empirical scientists gave their reasons for being atheists, one of them estimating that two thirds of all modern scientists are atheists. They can find no empirical, measurable proof for an entity that "created" the universe. There was some admission that it is equally impossible to "disprove" God's existence, but that the heavier obligation is to prove, not to disprove. But if you find both alternatives equally questionable then you fall in the category of agnosticism.

There are several opinions regarding religion and evolution. Can evolution be explained by chance, or is there an "intelligent design" behind some of the incredible mutations that have occurred over billions of years? There are arguments on both sides, of course. I found the "chance" ones most convincing as the inconceivably immense time spans involved could, I thought, explain some of the more complex evolutionary changes.

Then, of course, there is the question of whether the universe, as we know it, even had a beginning. Before the "big bang" did something exist? More disagreement on this point.

If there is a "God" what about his intervention in human affairs, some form of this belief being evident in the three Abrahamic religions that came out of the Middle-East - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Literalists think such interventions actually took place, but in each there is also room for symbolic interpretations of God's appearances.

All of these distinctions are unimportant in Hinduism, whose spokesman argues that all formative religious texts should be viewed, not as "truth-telling" but valuable as "transformational" in how they affect individual believers. Hinduism is like the banyon tree - its roots go in all directions, and if the believer is moved to good ethical behavior, then that is all that is important. That's not too far from a Jewish spokesman who says that "belief is not a Jewish notion." What's important is a religious "experience" one that may go far beyond the capacity of language to express it.

Gutting concludes these interviews with his own opinion that any religious faith, and that goes for atheism and agnosticism as well, needs a balance of critical reasoning to go with belief. Otherwise, they can too easily fall into narrow-mindedness and at worst, fanaticism. At their best, all religions have a fundamental ethic of love.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25/5. This is an incredibly interesting book on philosophy and theology. Talking God is a collection of interviews that covers a very wide range of positions, a few of which aren't very compelling or developed, but all are still well worth a read.

Philosophy of religion is where the beginning of my introspective intellectual history resides. After becoming an atheist in high school, I examined pretty much all of my other beliefs. I've oscillated into and out of the debate frequently, but it remains a topic that I have a deep passion for.

Thankfully, this book did not disappoint. Granted, some of the chapters were duds. Not completely so, but the interviewees' positions lacked substance and development. Even still, I enjoyed reading these, and the rest of the chapters were challenging and enlightening. Even when the views themselves weren't very interesting, I still found the task of challenging them to be rewarding in its own right.

I was surprised to see that this book was very egalitarian in its treatment of atheism and theism. Both came under heavy fire here, and I was grateful for that. Being challenged on my ideas is healthy and enjoyable to me, and I actually ended up changing my mind on some things. This is great. Reading philosophy should never not be challenging.

Another thing I was very happy to see was the diversity of religions on display. Philosophy of religion is often dominated by discussion of Christian conceptions of the divine, but that is such a narrow debate. Here, we also get views from Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. There are some very unconventional Christian viewpoints included too, but they fell into the dud category for me.

At the end, there is a conclusion chapter from the author, Gary Gutting, where he presents his own views on the matter. I found that his ideas were generally the most thought out. Throughout the book, his interview style includes frequent challenges to the philosophers' claims, and I appreciated this. It helped to show which ones actually had some reasoning behind them, and I found that these questions generally aligned with my own.

Talking God is a fascinating book that I sincerely wish was more well-known. Religion is something that is rarely given more thought than finding a viewpoint and then vehemently supporting it. This book challenges pretty much every idea available, and I really liked that. If you want a book that you will only agree with, you definitely need to read this book. If you are an open-minded person who likes to examine ideas, you should also read this book. Basically, anyone and everyone could find something to like in this, even if the entire thing isn't always perfect.

[Leena Dbouk · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would give this 3.5 stars. I enjoyed it, some of the articles were incredibly thought provoking, others were not. My biggest critiques were 1) I don't think theism was fairly represented or if those are the best arguments theism has to offer they needed to be more strongly defended 2) Some of the articles were arduous and if one didn't have a stronger background in philosophy they wouldn't be able to follow (e.g. the deconstruction article). 3) Gutting always got the last say in every article, whereas I felt as if the authors should have made the last plea/claim for their argument.

Overall, though, I think this is an important book for people to read, from theists, atheists and everyone in between. It's important to be more cognizant and aware of the other sides argument and not just write them off as "crazy religious people" or "heretical atheists" (or in my case "lukewarm agnostics").

[María Claudia Gazabon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es un libro de orientación filosofíca y personas con formación o interés en la filosofía pueden entenderlo mejor. Aún así no es inalcanzable para el resto. Disfruté de encontrar diferentes conceptos de la existencia de dios, alejados de los extremos más populares. Recomendado para los que tienen interés en temas de filosofía de Dios, religión y espiritualidad.

[Jeffrey Kahl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a brief and helpful guide to the views of atheists/agnostics who reject traditional Christian theism. I am a classical theist and devout Christian, but I believe it good for believers to understand that “atheism” refers to a range of views - many of them intelligent and coherent - and not all of them as militant as the New Atheists like Dawkins. I learned to be more reserved in making judgments of those who claim to reject any faith in the Divine. Some of them come from a place of genuine charity, are not out to destroy religion, and may even see the psychological and social benefits of religion despite their own lack of belief.

That said, I found the book to be incredibly one-sided. The book claims to be a dialogue, but only one genuine Christian theist is included in the discussion: Alvin Plantinga, whose proofs for God’s existence are not the strongest available. I would have enjoyed the book much more if classical apologists such as Edward Feser, R. C. Sproul, or Norman Geisler had been engaged in the dialogue. I think the book could have done a better job of presenting a solid case in favor of theism, but it didn’t.

[Travis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Talking God provides a broad, generally good overview of many of the primary points of contention in philosophy of religion, and it also provides an even more general discussion of religious traditions with which most Christians and Jews are only superficially familiar: Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam.

Nothing in Talking God will be new to anyone who has a background in theology or philosophy of religion or who has studied world religions. Overall, I was underwhelmed by this book with the exception of the chapter on the epistemological considerations related to the justification of theism and atheism. I was underwhelmed not because this is a bad book (it is not) but because for me, as someone with an educational background in both theology and philosophy, this book breaks no new ground and provides only a very shallow analysis of the relevant issues--though, to be fair, it is not aiming to be a detailed examination of the religious questions concerned.

For the well-read student of philosophy, theology, and religion, I wouldn't really recommend this book, but for someone new to these fields and interested in what a very diverse group of philosophers think about the big questions, Talking God is a solid introduction.

[Bill Zoelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. The interview style was a little awkward at first, but I grew to enjoy it. Others have complained about the failure of the book to articulate their perspective adequately. Personally, I'm not strongly tied to a single belief structure. It helped to broaden my understanding of the views that others hold and some of the motivators behind them. One additional perspective that I'd love to read about is the relationship between our microbiome and our beliefs/behaviors. Only 43% of our cells are human and the others that comprise who we are, have the ability to affect moods and behaviors – to what degree is still being uncovered. The person we call "self" is complex in both composition and motivation. How we think about life, death and spirituality may be influenced by the organisms that make up the majority shareholder of our being.

[Janelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This books takes itself very seriously, as do the interviewees. There’s an obvious lean towards the “what?” - what someone’s beliefs are, what their evidence is, what their credentials are. But what’s critically missing is the “why?” behind holding certain beliefs. Overall, it’s well written but lacks emotion and novel ah-ha! moments. Ultimately reads like a theology textbook.

[Kirsten Arding · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an enjoyable and well rounded book covering numerous views. What I liked most about it was that it had a healthy and respectable view on other’s opinions and perspectives. It wasn’t overly simplified but not too complex either to understand. I would highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in hearing various view points of the existence of God

[Sean Post · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t think some of his interviewees liked him much. The hostility was palpable. Appreciated the diversity of philosophical viewpoints.