The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

by Timothy J. Keller

Ironically, the insistence that doctrines do not matter is really a doctrine itself.

How could you know that each blind man only sees part of the elephant unless you claim to be able to see the whole elephant?

but if this is used to invalidate all claims to discern the truth it is in fact an arrogant claim to a kind of knowledge which is superior to

“What is the [absolute] vantage ground from which you claim to be able to relativize all the absolute claims these different scriptures make?”

How could you possibly know that no religion can see the whole truth unless you yourself have the superior, comprehensive knowledge of spiritual reality you just claimed that none of the religions have?

Everyone belongs to a community that reinforces the plausibility of some beliefs and discourages others.

We must still do the hard work of asking: which affirmations about God, human nature, and spiritual reality are true and which are false? We will have to base our life on some answer to that question.

You can’t say, “All claims about religions are historically conditioned except the one I am making right now.”

once you become aware that there are many other equally intelligent and good people in the world who hold different beliefs from you and that you will not be able to convince them otherwise, then it is arrogant

That would make the statement

“all religious claims to have a better view of things are arrogant and wrong” to be, on its own terms, arrogant and wrong.

Yet isn’t that very statement ethnocentric?

ethnocentrism is really a way of saying, “Our culture’s approach to other cultures is superior to yours.”

“a religion can be judged only on the basis of another religion.” You can’t evaluate a religion except on the basis of some ethical criteria that in the end amounts to your own religious stance.

Agnoticism is a religious stance

All of these are unprovable faith assumptions.

Therefore, their view is also an “exclusive” claim about the nature of spiritual reality.

What is religion then? It is a set of beliefs that explain what life is all about, who we are, and the most important things that human beings should spend their time doing.

the important thing is to choose to do what makes you happy and not let others impose their beliefs on you.

religion, it contains a master narrative, an account about the meaning of life along with a recommendation for how to live based on that account of things.

It is an implicit religion.

Everyone lives and operates out of some narrative identity, whether it is thought out and reflected upon or not.

this” or “You shouldn’t do that” reason out of such an implicit moral and religious position.

our view of what works is determined by

what we think people are for.

Even the most secular pragmatists come to the table with deep commitments and narrative accounts of what it means to be human.

Secular concepts such as “self-realization” and “autonomy” are impossible to prove and are “conversation stoppers” just as much as appeals to the Bible.

In the end Ms. B affirms the equality and dignity of human individuals simply because she believes it is true and right.

She takes as an article of faith that people are more valuable than rocks or trees—though she can’t prove such a belief scientifically.

Her public policy proposals are ultimately based on a...

all moral positions are at least implicitly religious.

The Biblical doctrine of the universal image of God, therefore, leads Christians to expect nonbelievers will be better than any of their mistaken beliefs could make them. The Biblical doctrine of universal sinfulness also leads Christians to expect believers will be worse in practice than their orthodox beliefs should make them.

Christianity not only leads its members to believe people of other faiths have goodness and wisdom to offer, it also leads them to expect that many will live lives morally superior to their own.

God’s grace does not come to people who morally outperform others,

Christians, then, should expect to find nonbelievers who are much nicer, kinder, wiser, and better than they are.

Christian believers are not accepted by God because of their moral performance, wisdom, or virtue, but because of Christ’s work

We cannot skip lightly over the fact that there have been injustices done by the church in the name of Christ, yet who can deny that the force of Christians’ most fundamental beliefs can be a powerful impetus for peace-making in our troubled world?

Tucked away within the assertion that the world is filled with pointless evil is a hidden premise, namely, that if evil appears pointless to me, then it must be pointless.

Again we see lurking within supposedly hard-nosed skepticism an enormous faith in one’s own cognitive faculties.

Many assume that if there were good reasons for the existence of evil, they would be accessible to our minds, more like St. Bernards than like no-see-ums, but why should that be the case?

If God had not allowed Joseph’s years of suffering, he never would have been such a powerful agent for social justice and spiritual healing.

Though none of these people are grateful for the tragedies themselves, they would not trade the insight, character, and strength they had gotten from them for anything.

If you have a God great and transcendent enough to be mad at because he hasn’t stopped evil and suffering in the world, then you have (at the same moment) a God great and transcendent enough to have good reasons for allowing it to continue that you can’t know.

suffering provided a better argument for God’s existence than one against it.

modern objections to God are based on a sense of fair play and justice.

The nonbeliever in God doesn’t have a good basis for being outraged at injustice, which, as Lewis points out, was the reason for objecting to God in the first place.

If you are sure that this natural world is unjust and filled with evil, you are assuming the reality of some extra-natural (or supernatural) standard by which to make your judgment.

Therefore, though Christianity does not provide the reason for each experience of pain, it provides deep resources for actually facing suffering with hope and courage rather than bitterness and despair.

Why was Jesus so much more overwhelmed by his death than others have been, even more than his own followers?

There may be no greater inner agony than the loss of a relationship we desperately want.

Jesus’s sufferings would have been eternally unbearable.