CPBD 012: Nick Trakakis – The End of Philosophy of Religion
(Listen to other episodes of Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot here.)
Today I interview Christian philosopher of religion Nick Trakakis. Among other things, we discuss:
- The problem of evil and why two common theistic responses are inadequate
- The “God is mysterious” objection
- a concept of God that fits better with suffering
- analytic and continental philosophy of religion
Download CPBD episode 012 with Nick Trakakis. Total time is 52:42.
Nick Trakakis links:
- Nick Trakakis at Monash University
- Nick’s personal website
- End of Philosophy of Religion
- The God Beyond Belief
- William L. Rowe on Philosophy of Religion (edited)
- History of Western Philosophy of Religion (edited with Graham Oppy)
- Silent Transfigurations (a collection of Nick’s poetry, short stories, and philosophical musings)
Things we discussed:
- Greek novelist Nikos Kazantzakis‘ Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ (also a movie with the best film soundtrack of all time)
- Simon Glendinning’s The Idea of Continental Philosophy
- John Caputo’s On Religion and Philosophy and Theology
- Jean-Luc Marion
- Merold Westphal
- Kevin Hart
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In case it’s of any interest: an English translation of Kazantzakis’ 1909 doctoral dissertation, Friedrich Nietzsche on the Philosophy of Right And the State, appeared a few years ago.
http://www.amazon.com/Friedrich-Nietzsche-Philosophy-Right-State/dp/0791467317
Also, I want to thank you, Luke, for these fine, substantive, and entertaining interviews. Rob
Wow! I envy you. I’ll be sure to listen to other episodes! John W. Loftus
Fascinating interview from a fascinating guy. Your reposte to his point viz. skeptical theism was very interesting, where you told him your little story and he used the “theology escape valve” to try and sidestep the question in a way. Here, despite his objection to theodicy as a whole, his response was almost precisely the same as the theodicist albeit at a meta-level – to escape the ‘language-game’ of Christian analytical philosophy, now considered idolatrous (apparently Craig, Plantinga et al all believe in an idol and not the triune God), then to consider wider theological description which might solve or at least dissolve (paradoxically, the analytically formulated) the problem of evil.
As a fully signed up continental philosopher of religion (likely one of the few around these parts!), his stuff here was very interesting indeed. Might I suggest if you want to interview someone in this field you get hold of Philip Goodchild who has published widely on this topic and might be interesting to you give your political persuasions toward the left. Alex
Great interview.
I’d love to hear you interview Alex Pruss or Mike Almeida. PiusXII
Note: in addition to the regular blog feed, there is also a podcast-only feed.
The links in this sentence don’t work on my Firefox. The last one actually crashed my browser. Sabio Lantz
Sabio,
Depends how you have things setup to handle feeds and iTunes links. lukeprog
Great interview. I’m listening through chonologically, so I hope there are more episodes with theists from Orthodox and Catholic points of view. Zeb