John R. Shook

John R. Shook (b. 1961) is an American philosopher who works at the intersection of pragmatism, naturalism, and the philosophy of religion. He earned his PhD in philosophy from the University at Buffalo (SUNY) in 1994 and has held positions at Oklahoma State University, the Center for Inquiry, and the University at Buffalo, where he is a research associate in philosophy. He served as Director of Education and a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Inquiry, and has been active in the secular humanist movement through the Council for Secular Humanism. Shook's work develops a naturalistic philosophy of religion rooted in classical American pragmatism (Dewey, James) while engaging contemporary debates over theism, atheism, and secular ethics. In The God Debates (2010) he surveys and critiques major theistic argument strategies—scriptural, rationalist, scientific, and experiential—arguing that none meets the evidential burden, while distancing himself from the more polemical tone of the New Atheism. As co-editor with Phil Zuckerman of the four-volume Atheism and Secularity (2010), he helped consolidate empirical and philosophical research on unbelief as an academic field. Shook has also written on the cognitive science of religion and the history of American freethought. Critics from analytic theology (e.g., proponents of Reformed epistemology) reject his evidentialist framing of religious belief.