The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

by Timothy J. Keller

Pragmatists say that we should leave our deeper worldviews behind and find consensus about ‘what works’ – but our view of what works is determined by (to use a Wendell Berry title) what we think people are for. Any picture of happy human life that ‘works’ is necessarily informed by deep-seated beliefs about the purpose of human life.21 Even the most secular pragmatists come to the table with deep commitments and narrative accounts of what it means to be human. Rorty insists that religion-based beliefs are conversation stoppers. But all of our most fundamental convictions about things are beliefs that are nearly impossible to justify to those who don’t share them. Secular concepts such as ‘self-realisation’ and ‘autonomy’ are impossible to prove and are ‘conversation stoppers’ just as much as appeals to the Bible.22