The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

by Timothy J. Keller

That is, if, through testing, it leads us to expect with accuracy many and varied events better than any other rival account of the same data, then it is accepted, though not (in the strong rationalist sense) “proved.” In Is There a God? Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne argues powerfully that belief in God can be tested and justified (but not proven) in the same way.12 The view that there is a God, he says, leads us to expect the things we observe—that there is a universe at all, that scientific laws operate within it, that it contains human beings with consciousness and with an indelible moral sense. The theory that there is no God, he argues, does not lead us to expect any of these things. Therefore, belief in God offers a better empirical fit, it explains and accounts for what we see better than the alternative account of things. No view of God can be proven, but that does not mean that we cannot sift and weigh the grounds for various religious beliefs and find that some or even one is the most reasonable.