Reviews for The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

The average rating for The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-03-15 00:00:00 Jody Latham This is book three in my quest to find a good explanation of the Christian faith. Once again, I don't think this book is it. But in mitigation, I can now see that Christianity is so very very difficult to explain without drifting off into shimmery two-shakes-of-Four-Quartets-and-a-dash-of-Revelations language that my heart goes out to these guys who take on this task. Okay, my heart almost goes out to these guys. Part One of this book is where TK challenges and in his own eyes overcomes seven major doubts which people like me have, such as "there can't be just one true religion" or "how can a loving God send people to Hell". On that point, TK concludes that God indeed is a God of judgement and will send sinners to Hell : The belief in a God of pure love - who accepts everyone and judges no one - is a powerful act of faith. Not only is there no evidence for it in the natural order, but there is almost no historical, religious textual support for it outside of Christianity. The more one looks at it, the less justified it appears. Actually, this chapter is frankly not very frank. TK avoids saying who is going to get the big heave-ho. Does he think God will reject all non-Christians, for instance? Even if they're really excellent people? I had a friend once who in all seriousness thought I myself was going straight to hell - me! Inoffensive mild mannered me! It was because of my atheistical views. But he suspected he was also going to hell, because of certain other matters it would not be appropriate to discuss just now. So I wasn't too offended. But he did seem pretty casual about my burning in physical torment for all eternity. First devil: Yes, of course I believe you when you say you're sorry. You'll have a very long time to be sorry, Mr Reviewer. In fact, you might want to start thinking of some synonyms - "sorry" will get really monotonous. I suggest contrite, apologetic... anyway, you're supposed to be good with words, you'll think of something. Second devil : This one is too easy to torture, Colin. Can we give him to the new trainee and find somebody more challenging? **** I hardly agree with TK about anything, but I give him points for fearlessness and fiestiness. He plunges in and at least asks himself a lot of the right questions. And it would be interesting to discuss the whole book, but these religious reviews are getting way too long. So I'll stick to one chapter. THE USUAL PROBLEM OF EVIL For me this is always the big one. TK says, in essence, If you can't figure out why there is evil and suffering, please don't conclude there is no reason. It's because your brain is very small. Be a bit more humble. If you have a God great and transcendent enough to be mad at because he hasn't stopped the 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 don't know. So there's a reason why the driver of a bus taking kids home from their skiing trip had a heart attack as he was driving through a tunnel in the Swiss alps this past week so that he drove his bus right into a wall killing 22 children. Well, TK does admit that suffering like this is a genuine problem for the believer. But then he says that actually evil and suffering may be (if anything) evidence for God I think it goes like this: the atheists believe in evolution and natural selection, a process which is amoral (lots of suffering and death involved). But then they also believe that suffering is wrong, unjust. Where did this idea of wrongness and unjustness come from? The non-believer doesn't have a good basis for being outraged at injustice… 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 judgement. Here is a thread which runs all the way through the book. TK simply doesn't accept that there are such things as secular humanitarian values. He thinks all the atheist humanitarians have got their values from God but are in denial or are just ignorant of the source of their values. But I look at things differently. Certainly religion was where moral philosophies were formed and our most profound and ancient ideas (such as the Golden Rule) are necessarily based in religion because until the Enlightenment that was the only game in town. But gradually, by fits and starts, secular education and a scientific empirical point of view formed and over the centuries floated free from its religious moorings. Keller appears to think that if I accept evolution in all its implications then I accept human beings are part of that and are subject to its laws which are the bloody and merciless laws of natural selection. The strong eat the weak and no room whatsoever for compassion - Darwinism is natural untrammelled fascism. But I say that this overlooks two unique things that happened to humans - Self-consciousness And Language And these two remarkable things freed us from being natural Darwinian fascists. Maybe God gave us self-consciousness and language but I think we did that ourselves. By natural selection. Our secular hearts and minds are in the business of self-improvement, they have been for 50,000 years, it's a trial and error thing, they're still doing it, it's unstoppable. So we don't shrug at the latest serial killer and say well, he was a little too darwinian, but still, that's what us mammalian life-forms do, heh! Survival of the one with the most guns! So that's one strange idea the TK has, that non-religious people should be cool about evil and if they're not then they're crypto-religious. He returns to this idea later and quoted Arthur Leff : The fact is, says leff, if there is no God then all moral statements are arbitrary. I'll rephrase that : If there is no arbitrarily designated ultimate source of morality then all moral statements are arbitrary. But actually, he does provide some excellent examples of the uneasiness of morality - such as the female anthropologist who is convinced that each culture is to be cherished and protected and yet works earnestly to improve the conditions of women wherever she goes. The other idea he has relating to the problem of evil and suffering is one which boggled me. God has an afterlife in store for us in which all the evil and suffering will not only be redeemed but will be made to have never happened in the first place. Or maybe I'm not reading this bit right. the Bible teaches that the future is not an immaterial 'paradise' but a new heaven and a new earth… resurrection - not a future that is just a consolation for the life we never had but a restoration of the life you always wanted. This means that every horrible thing that ever happened will not only be undone and repaired but will in some way make the eventual glory and joy even greater. … All will be healed and all the might-have-beens will be. …Everything sad is going to come untrue and it will somehow be greater for having once been broken and lost. So, to summarise, another great old Byrds song which has fabulous harmonies: Farther along we'll know more about it, Farther along we'll understand why; Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine, We'll understand it all by and by But in the end I didn't dislike Timothy Keller at all, I warmed to him even in his weird-ass contorrrrrted-logic frankly ridiculous stuff about, say, the Bible's views about women. If I ever see him in a bar I'm going to buy him a beer and ask him one more question that's not in this book that's been really bugging me recently. It's this. Do all the universe's civilisations get a Jesus? In a galaxy far far away was there once - or will there be - an eight-tentacled Jesus? My old granny would have had a conniption fit at the very thought, but the 20 billion people on the Planet ZZGGFZZ need to be saved too, so they should get their Jesus too. What do you think, Timothy?

Review # 2 was written on 2008-03-21 00:00:00 Dan Moses I was converted from "educated" secularism in 2003. Every objection I had is addressed by this book for my background AND it's done by showing God in Jesus, and Jesus crucified. When I became a Christian, 3 other books: the New Testament, The Case for Christ, and Desiring God were primary in my conversion. The Case for Christ proves the Resurrection as a historical event. The New Testament self-authenticates itself as God's Word and shines Jesus Christ out to the reader. Desiring God presents that God is zealous for his glory, as he should be, and we humans can glorify him best by being satisfied totally by God and only by God. The Reason for God would be a perfect 4th book as making sense of the intellectual barriers to faith that have built up in the modern worldview.