The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2008

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Part 1, Chapter 1

Part 1, Chapters 2-4

Part 1, Chapters 5-7

Intermission-Part 2, Chapters 8-9

Part 2, Chapters 10-12

Part 2, Chapters 13-14-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Intermission-Part 2, Chapters 8-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Intermission Summary

Keller begins his transition from Part 1 to Part 2. After highlighting some of the unproven assumptions behind the objections against Christianity, he now wants to outline the baseline assumptions that play into the argument he will make for Christianity.

Since Christianity is a diverse religion with hundreds of individual denominations, Keller specifies that he has in view not one small slice of Christianity (such as his own Presbyterian denomination), but rather the broad and unified stream of agreed-upon doctrine from the earliest centuries of the faith: “[A]ll Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Christians assent together to the great creeds of the first thousand years of church history […] For our purposes, I’ll define Christianity as the body of believers who assent to these great ecumenical creeds” (121). As such, Keller’s arguments for Christianity will focus on the broad themes of God’s existence and on the person and work of Jesus Christ as portrayed in the historical gospels.

Keller also reviews some of the philosophical models for seeking knowledge, arguing that many of the critics of Christianity are depending on a particular model—strong rationalism—which has long been avoided by philosophers: “[Strong rationalism’s] proponents laid down what was called the ‘verification principle,’ namely, that no one should believe a proposition unless it can be proved rationally by logic or empirically by sense experience” (122). This view is problematic because almost no area of human knowledge actually lives up to those standards, so it ends up being an insufficient model on which to build one’s life: “Strong rationalism also assumes that it is possible to achieve […] a position of almost complete objectivity, but virtually all philosophers today agree that is impossible” (123).

By contrast, Keller proposes to use the model of “critical rationality,” which admits that while no argument will likely persuade all people everywhere, there are arguments that many or most rational people will find persuasive. By considering a cumulative case built on multiple such arguments, Keller believes he can construct a rational approach to Christianity that most reasonable people will find persuasive.

Chapter 8 Summary: “The Clues of God”

Keller begins Part 2 of the book by establishing the terminology he will be using in his arguments for the Christian faith. While skeptics point to the need to provide “proofs” for Christian truth-claims, Keller believes this is misguided. As established in his advocacy for critical rationality in the Intermission, Keller does not see a quest for proof—which implies a model of strong rationalism—as philosophically possible. Rather, he holds that the correct way to go about it is in looking for “clues” that might point to the truth of Christianity, and if one considers enough of these clues with an open mind, he feels that the cumulative case for Christian faith far outweighs any alternatives: “Most readers who take the time to think through Plantinga’s list [of arguments for the existence of God] will find some items compelling and others not. However, the accumulated weight of the ones you find appealing can be very formidable” (132).

Keller details four distinct clues in this chapter: (1) the general scientific agreement that the universe had a beginning, which accords with the Christian view; (2) the fact that the numerical constants of our universe are finely tuned for the existence of life, appearing to hit the infinitesimal odds of a cosmic lottery; (3) the fact that nature operates by fixed and regular natural laws, which would not necessarily be expected in a chaotic universe governed by chance; and (4) the fact that we perceive meaningful beauty in the world around us, which again runs counter to purely materialistic expectations.

Of this fourth argument, Keller says, “[E]ven though we as secular people believe that beauty and love are just biochemical responses, in the presence of great art and beauty we inescapably feel that there is real meaning in life, there is truth and justice that will never let us down, and love means everything” (138). Alongside his scientific arguments, this “clue” fits with humanity’s innate moral sensibility to demonstrate that (in Keller’s view) all people actually appear to believe in God, whether they admit it to themselves or not.

Keller closes the chapter by responding to a criticism of the foregoing argument that holds that we cannot trust our own thoughts and perceptions with regard to beauty or morality because they are simply the results of biochemical reactions driven by natural selection and thus offer no warrant for believing them to be reliable. Keller responds by pointing out that if that were so, then the same principle would apply to the thoughts and perceptions of atheists regarding the nature of the world, and we would have no warrant for believing those thoughts to be reliable, either.

Chapter 9 Summary: “The Knowledge of God”

Keller points to another clue for the existence of God: the innate sense of morality shared by all humans. While codes of ethics vary to some extent from culture to culture, most people in the world agree that certain behaviors are intrinsically wrong, and this holds true even for modern skeptics who adhere to relativistic perspectives: “Aren’t there people in the world who are doing things you believe are wrong—things that they should stop doing no matter what they personally believe about the correctness of their behavior?” (151). Keller argues that everyone—even moral relativists—will ultimately concede that they do, in fact, hold that certain behaviors are immoral and should be stopped whether or not the practitioner believes them to be immoral.

If that is the case, then it points to the existence of a universal morality that applies to all people, but such a standard cannot possibly be the result of merely random chance. If human beings are simply animals that arose from purposeless natural processes, then there is no ground for defending human rights more strongly than the rights of any other living thing. Keller points to the nihilist and existentialist philosophers of the 20th century, who realized the emptiness of human claims to be able to build a binding sense of morality without a greater purpose to ground it in: “If there is no God, argues Nietzsche, Sartre, and others, there can be no good reason to be kind, to be loving, or to work for peace” (158).

Keller then points to the Christian gospel as the answer for the quandary. If a certain premise, such as the idea that there is no God, leads ultimately to a conclusion that contradicts our clear sense of right and wrong—such as that it is of no moral consequence to torture infants for one’s own pleasure—then Keller suggests that we must change the premise and consider whether God’s existence might be the source of the morality that we innately know: “If the world was made by a God of peace, justice, and love, then that is why we know that violence, oppression, and hate are wrong” (162). Without a transcendent grounding for human morality, all questions of right and wrong are ultimately meaningless. Since that goes against what we innately know, Keller urges us to consider that there might just be a transcendent grounding for our moral sensibilities after all.

Intermission-Part 2, Chapters 8-9 Analysis

With the Intermission, Keller begins his transition toward Part 2 of the book, which is concerned with making Rational Arguments for Belief in God. His book is thus split between a “negative” aspect—that is, negating the objections to Christian faith—and a “positive” aspect, focused on building arguments rather than tearing down arguments of others. This separation into negative and positive aspects is not descriptive of each section’s respective tone, however, as Keller maintains a winsome and respectful tone throughout Parts 1 and 2, which is one of the overriding features of his style as an apologist.

The Intermission deals mostly with formal considerations of terminology and epistemology, setting delimitations on Keller’s definition of Christianity (which he uses in a fairly broad sense to refer to the common core of orthodox Christian tradition) and specifying his approach to rational argument, which relies on a cumulative portrayal of evidence rather than on a single proof. Though the Intermission’s content is dissimilar from the rest of the book, it is necessary to establish the framework on which Part 2 will proceed.

Part 2 represents Keller’s intentional treatment of one of the major themes of the book, that of Rational Arguments for Belief in God. In Chapters 8 and 9, he begins to present his case for some of those arguments. Rather unconventionally for a work of Christian apologetics, Keller uses only these two chapters to focus on philosophical and scientific areas of argumentation, which tend to receive the fullest and most detailed treatment of any area from other apologists. This fits with Keller’s overall practice as a pastoral writer rather than an academic one, and so he devotes the greater part of Part 2 to correcting doctrinal misunderstandings and portraying the beauty of the Christian gospel (See: Chapters 10-14).

While Part 2 is no longer specifically devoted to the theme of Addressing Objections to Christianity, Keller continues to treat such issues as they arise. For example, although Chapter 8 is concerned with making rational arguments from science and philosophy, it also deals with objections that arise in response to those arguments, such as the skeptical claim that humanity’s inherent morality is simply the product of an evolutionary process and therefore not to be trusted as a signpost for truth. Keller deals with that objection, as with the ones covered in Part 1, by assessing the philosophical assumptions that lie behind it and arguing that the positions are circular and self-defeating. Keller does not, however, address any nonreligious ethical positions that argue that the evolutionary process of morality has enabled humans to develop qualities of empathy, cooperation, and kindness that are beneficial in ensuring the continuance of human societies. Likewise, in conflating nihilism and existentialism as interchangeable, he chooses not to address the arguments of existentialist philosophical thinkers such as Albert Camus, who argued for both the possibility and even necessity of morality even in a life that had no innate God-given meaning. Thus, on such matters, Keller usually prefers to limit his response to one specific version of a skeptical argument.

In Keller’s handling of the issue of morality in both Chapters 8 and 9, the theme of The Insufficiency of Relativism arises yet again. Whereas many skeptics in the modern secular West tend to believe that moral codes are relativized by local culture and historical contingencies, Keller claims that almost no one actually lives as if morality is relative. Rather, he claims that if we judge people by their reactions to grave moral evils, it quickly becomes clear that they adhere to a belief in a universal moral code, not merely a relative one, and so relativism’s weakness as a philosophical principle is apparent once again.