The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

by Timothy J. Keller

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?

“no belief can be held as universally true for everyone,” that itself is a comprehensive claim about everyone that is the product of social conditions—so it cannot be true, on its own terms.

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.

Liberal democracy is based on an extensive list of assumptions—a preference of individual to community rights, a division between private and public morality, and the sanctity of personal choice.

A liberal democracy is based then (as is every community) on a shared set of very particular beliefs.

One of the principles of love—either love for a friend or romantic love—is

that you have to lose independence to attain greater intimacy. If you want the “freedoms” of love—the fulfillment, security, sense of worth that it brings—you must limit your freedom in many ways. You cannot enter a deep relationship and still make unilateral decisions or allow your friend or lover no say in how you live your life.

It is one thing to say that science is only equipped to test for natural causes and cannot speak to any others. It is quite another to insist that science proves that no other causes could possibly exist.

The gospel author Luke claims that he got his account of Jesus’s life from eyewitnesses who were still alive (Luke 1:1-4).

If this popular view is correct, we would expect to see many places in the gospels where Jesus takes sides in debates that were going on in the early church.

Or why ever make up the part on the cross when Jesus cries out that God had abandoned him? These things would have only offended or deeply confused first-century prospective converts.

Why invent women as the first witnesses of the resurrection in a society where women were assigned such low status that their testimony was not admissible evidence in court?13

The literary form of the gospels is too detailed to be legend.