My review of Keller's The Reason for God

[Sandra Craft]

[I was going to put this in the reading thread, but I think it's probably a better fit here.  Sorry for the length (and believe me, I could have easily made it twice as long).]

I think I may be falling prey to Einstein's description of madness: doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.  I keep reading these Xtian apologists books in the off chance that one of them will have a reasonable justification for the existence of a god, rather than being just a retread of the same old-same old.

Why do I, an atheist, do this?  Two reasons: 1) if the existence of a god, any kind of god, could be proven or even just reasonably justified, that would be the greatest discovery of all time, and 2) believer dismissals of continuing skepticism as nothing more than refusal to consider their evidence stings.  It probably shouldn't.  I shouldn't care who thinks me close-minded, but I do even when I can make the counter-argument that the believers "evidence" is seriously flawed if not actually non-existent and maybe they should fix that. 

However, in my opinion all that Keller's book comes down to is an intense desire to believe that a god exists (and that it's the god he prefers) bolstered by a long list of "ifs", weak assumptions and flat-out wrong "facts".  Just for starters, I would recommend the Rev. Keller study nature, and specifically the social life of various animals in the wild, much more closely before he goes around claiming nature is only red in tooth and claw.

I will say that there were things in the book that I appreciated.  Among them Keller's willingness to admit that:

1) the Xtian church is often its own worst enemy in appealing to non-believers, who are justified in viewing the church with suspicion and/or distaste;

2) Pharishees, those who rigidly obey the letter of religious law rather than embracing the spirit of religious teachings, are just as damned as those of us who do not believe at all, and;

3) God cannot be proven.  While he does claim that many clues make acceptance of god's existence inevitable (indeed, he makes the tired claim that we all know god does exists but are just being stubborn about admitting it) he does admit that there is no way to prove it and no argument for it is not rationally avoidable.  Small concession to logic tho this is, I do appreciate it.

The book is divided in two parts: The Leap of Doubt that deals with the most common objections to belief in god or acceptance of Xtianity as the only way to live decently, and The Reasons for Faith which is self-explanatory.

The common doubts that he's come across in his 20 years as pastor of Redeemer Presbytrian Church in Manhattan are the idea of only one true religion, god allowing suffering and sending people to Hell, the straightjacket of Xtian rules, the church's history of injustice, bible cannot be taken literally, and science disproving Xtianity.

I'm not going to go thru all of them because I don't want this review to be as long as the book, so this will be of necessity be a bunch of one-offs replying to very consdensed points.

About the rightness of Xtianity:  It is common to say that "fundamentalism" leads to violence, yet as we have seen, all of us have fundamental , unprovable faith-commitments that we think are superior to those of others.  The real question, then, is which fundamentals will lead their believers to be the most loving and receptive to those which whom they differ?  Which set of unavoidably exclusive beliefs will lead us to humble, peace-loving behavior?   Keller's answer is that only Xtianity does this, my response is that if it did, it would have done so by now.  Long before now in fact.  Two thousand years is a long running start.

About sending people to hell: Modern people inevitably think that hell works like this: God gives us time, but if we haven't made the right choices by the end of our lives, he casts our souls into hell for all eternity.  As the poor souls fall through space, they cry out for mercy, but God says "Too late!" You had your chance! Now you will suffer!"  This caricature misunderstands the very nature of evil.  The Biblical picture is that sin separates us from the presence of God, which is the source of all joy and indeed all love, wisdom, or good things of any sort.  Since we were originally created for God's immediate presence, only before his face will we thrive, flourish, and achieve our highest potential.  If we were to lose his presence totally, that would be hell -- the loss of our capability for giving or receiving love or joy.  It should be mentioned here that Keller is totally a saved thru grace as opposed to works type.  Do whatever you like to follow the correct path, you'll never know until you're dead if you made it into heaven.  Even if I could accept the absurdity of this cult-leader god (and everything about Keller's description of god is boilerplate for cult-leader tactics), I could see this concept of grace running believers mad out of sheer uncertainty.

About science disproving god: re miracles, The Bible tells us that God did not originally make the world to have disease, hunger and death in it.  So therefore Jesus was not performing miracles by multiplying loaves and fishes or raising the dead, he was just temporarily returning the world to its natural, perfect state.  Question: did god then intend for there to never be more than two of any kind of creature, including humans, in the world?  Lack of death automatically means lack of reproduction.

About literal interpretation of the bible.  Here Keller brings up such things as the bible's stance on slavery and women.  He makes the claim, not unheard of among slavery apologists, that the slavery he's excusing was a kinder, gentler slavery than the kind we're thinking of.  Yeah, I'm sure the darkies in ancient Israel had no reason not to love and obey Massa.  As to the bible's teachings about women, he doesn't even try to defend that but claims one should not judge the bible's lesser teachings until one has accepted the greater teaching (the resurrection of Christ) after which it will all work out.  This one I actually understand -- if you can force your mind around something as wildly unbelievable as coming back from the dead and supernatural entities, then everything else becomes reasonable by comparison.

The second part of the book contains a list, and explanation, of clues to a scientifically unprovable god's existence.  This is where he claims that everyone already knows god exists and it's because of these clues which apply to everyone.  Also not going thru every one of them because my objection to them all is his claim of their universal applicability, but I will mention a few I found really out there:

The clue of the regularity of nature: To put it another way, science cannot prove the continued regularity of nature, it can only take it on faith.  I don't think "faith" is the right word to apply to things that have a long, long track record, and can be tested and verified.

The clue of beauty:  . . . even though we as secular people believe that beauty and love are just biochemical responses, in the presense 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.  I have never, in my whole life, reacted to something beautiful by connecting it with life's meaning, truth, justice or love.  I see, or hear, something beautiful and I think, "that's beautiful" and that's it.

The clue of talking to oneself, which Keller believes we do because we instinctively know Someone is listening.  Again, have never felt anyone but me was listening to me talk to myself, even back in my trying-to-be-religious youth when I knew I was supposed to think god was listening because that's what everyone told me.

The clue of believing, just because: If we find arguments or clues to God's existence that seem compelling to us, well, maybe he's really there.  And maybe people want to believe and are willing to accept assumptions over reason.

I must have scribbled notes on nearly every page of this book, and finally got tired of it because I did feel like I was nit-picking but there were just so many things to contradict, and that were so easy to contradict!  It was really a little bit depressing that, in a book specifically addressed to skeptics, he was doing no more than preaching to the choir and didn't even realize it.

[OldGit]

Your comprehensive review saves me the trouble of looking at it!  Thanks: I'm too damn lazy to make an intellectual effort.

[En_Route]

[I was going to put this in the reading thread, but I think it's probably a better fit here.  Sorry for the length (and believe me, I could have easily made it twice as long).]

I think I may be falling prey to Einstein's description of madness: doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.  I keep reading these Xtian apologists books in the off chance that one of them will have a reasonable justification for the existence of a god, rather than being just a retread of the same old-same old.

Why do I, an atheist, do this?  Two reasons: 1) if the existence of a god, any kind of god, could be proven or even just reasonably justified, that would be the greatest discovery of all time, and 2) believer dismissals of continuing skepticism as nothing more than refusal to consider their evidence stings.  It probably shouldn't.  I shouldn't care who thinks me close-minded, but I do even when I can make the counter-argument that the believers "evidence" is seriously flawed if not actually non-existent and maybe they should fix that. 

However, in my opinion all that Keller's book comes down to is an intense desire to believe that a god exists (and that it's the god he prefers) bolstered by a long list of "ifs", weak assumptions and flat-out wrong "facts".  Just for starters, I would recommend the Rev. Keller study nature, and specifically the social life of various animals in the wild, much more closely before he goes around claiming nature is only red in tooth and claw.

I will say that there were things in the book that I appreciated.  Among them Keller's willingness to admit that:

1) the Xtian church is often its own worst enemy in appealing to non-believers, who are justified in viewing the church with suspicion and/or distaste;

2) Pharishees, those who rigidly obey the letter of religious law rather than embracing the spirit of religious teachings, are just as damned as those of us who do not believe at all, and;

3) God cannot be proven.  While he does claim that many clues make acceptance of god's existence inevitable (indeed, he makes the tired claim that we all know god does exists but are just being stubborn about admitting it) he does admit that there is no way to prove it and no argument for it is not rationally avoidable.  Small concession to logic tho this is, I do appreciate it.

The book is divided in two parts: The Leap of Doubt that deals with the most common objections to belief in god or acceptance of Xtianity as the only way to live decently, and The Reasons for Faith which is self-explanatory.

The common doubts that he's come across in his 20 years as pastor of Redeemer Presbytrian Church in Manhattan are the idea of only one true religion, god allowing suffering and sending people to Hell, the straightjacket of Xtian rules, the church's history of injustice, bible cannot be taken literally, and science disproving Xtianity.

I'm not going to go thru all of them because I don't want this review to be as long as the book, so this will be of necessity be a bunch of one-offs replying to very consdensed points.

About the rightness of Xtianity:  It is common to say that "fundamentalism" leads to violence, yet as we have seen, all of us have fundamental , unprovable faith-commitments that we think are superior to those of others.  The real question, then, is which fundamentals will lead their believers to be the most loving and receptive to those which whom they differ?  Which set of unavoidably exclusive beliefs will lead us to humble, peace-loving behavior?   Keller's answer is that only Xtianity does this, my response is that if it did, it would have done so by now.  Long before now in fact.  Two thousand years is a long running start.

About sending people to hell: Modern people inevitably think that hell works like this: God gives us time, but if we haven't made the right choices by the end of our lives, he casts our souls into hell for all eternity.  As the poor souls fall through space, they cry out for mercy, but God says "Too late!" You had your chance! Now you will suffer!"  This caricature misunderstands the very nature of evil.  The Biblical picture is that sin separates us from the presence of God, which is the source of all joy and indeed all love, wisdom, or good things of any sort.  Since we were originally created for God's immediate presence, only before his face will we thrive, flourish, and achieve our highest potential.  If we were to lose his presence totally, that would be hell -- the loss of our capability for giving or receiving love or joy.  It should be mentioned here that Keller is totally a saved thru grace as opposed to works type.  Do whatever you like to follow the correct path, you'll never know until you're dead if you made it into heaven.  Even if I could accept the absurdity of this cult-leader god (and everything about Keller's description of god is boilerplate for cult-leader tactics), I could see this concept of grace running believers mad out of sheer uncertainty.

About science disproving god: re miracles, The Bible tells us that God did not originally make the world to have disease, hunger and death in it.  So therefore Jesus was not performing miracles by multiplying loaves and fishes or raising the dead, he was just temporarily returning the world to its natural, perfect state.  Question: did god then intend for there to never be more than two of any kind of creature, including humans, in the world?  Lack of death automatically means lack of reproduction.

About literal interpretation of the bible.  Here Keller brings up such things as the bible's stance on slavery and women.  He makes the claim, not unheard of among slavery apologists, that the slavery he's excusing was a kinder, gentler slavery than the kind we're thinking of.  Yeah, I'm sure the darkies in ancient Israel had no reason not to love and obey Massa.  As to the bible's teachings about women, he doesn't even try to defend that but claims one should not judge the bible's lesser teachings until one has accepted the greater teaching (the resurrection of Christ) after which it will all work out.  This one I actually understand -- if you can force your mind around something as wildly unbelievable as coming back from the dead and supernatural entities, then everything else becomes reasonable by comparison.

The second part of the book contains a list, and explanation, of clues to a scientifically unprovable god's existence.  This is where he claims that everyone already knows god exists and it's because of these clues which apply to everyone.  Also not going thru every one of them because my objection to them all is his claim of their universal applicability, but I will mention a few I found really out there:

The clue of the regularity of nature: To put it another way, science cannot prove the continued regularity of nature, it can only take it on faith.  I don't think "faith" is the right word to apply to things that have a long, long track record, and can be tested and verified.

The clue of beauty:  . . . even though we as secular people believe that beauty and love are just biochemical responses, in the presense 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.  I have never, in my whole life, reacted to something beautiful by connecting it with life's meaning, truth, justice or love.  I see, or hear, something beautiful and I think, "that's beautiful" and that's it.

The clue of talking to oneself, which Keller believes we do because we instinctively know Someone is listening.  Again, have never felt anyone but me was listening to me talk to myself, even back in my trying-to-be-religious youth when I knew I was supposed to think god was listening because that's what everyone told me.

The clue of believing, just because: If we find arguments or clues to God's existence that seem compelling to us, well, maybe he's really there.  And maybe people want to believe and are willing to accept assumptions over reason.

I must have scribbled notes on nearly every page of this book, and finally got tired of it because I did feel like I was nit-picking but there were just so many things to contradict, and that were so easy to contradict!  It was really a little bit depressing that, in a book specifically addressed to skeptics, he was doing no more than preaching to the choir and didn't even realize it.

I admire your tenacity but the reality is that there are no convincing arguments in favour of any god, including the Christian one. Having said that, I enjoyed your review, which illustrates man's endless capacity for self-delusion and sophistry.

[Crow]

It was really a little bit depressing that, in a book specifically addressed to skeptics, he was doing no more than preaching to the choir and didn't even realize it.

Well if the book written/inspired by his god failed to convert you what chance does he have. I think this is a large problem with all those types of books and is why I don't read them. I find the best thing for myself to try and understand the religious is to listen to a person of religion who focuses on atheism in a secular environment, then listen to them in a religious environment and you will find their views couldn't differ more wildly. Though the difference between the two seems to mainly come from Christianity and Judaism where there is a culture of being apologists.

[Ali]

Well if the book written/inspired by his god failed to convert you what chance does he have.

Haha, good point.

[Sandra Craft]

Your comprehensive review saves me the trouble of looking at it!  Thanks: I'm too damn lazy to make an intellectual effort.

I live to serve.

I admire your tenacity but the reality is that there are no convincing arguments in favour of any god, including the Christian one. Having said that, I enjoyed your review, which illustrates man's endless capacity for self-delusion and sophistry.

The way I look at it, somebody may come up with something, some day.  I don't think it's likely but if they do, I want to hear about it. 

One of the things that amused me about this book were the various slamming reviews from other conservative Xtians -- apparently Keller wasn't towing the line quite enough.

Well if the book written/inspired by his god failed to convert you what chance does he have.

Haha, good point.

Not only did his big book fail to convert me, it actually de-converted me.  Still, just in case I missed something or someone has thought of a perspective I haven't heard or thought of yet, I keep checking back in.  Exercise in frustration tho it is.

Part of the frustration with Keller is that he seemed to writing for people like the following, an example he used in the Clues chapter:

In his [John Updike] short story "Pigeon Feathers" a young teenager says to his mother, "Don't you see, if when we die there's nothing, all your sun and fields and what not are all, ah, horror?  It's just an ocean of horror."  Later, in the presence of the beauty of pigeon feathers, of their texture and color, he is overwhelmed by a certainty that there is a God behind the world who will allow him to live for eternity.

He has about 4 more examples like this scattered thru his book, from both fiction and reality, and seems to think that this is a common attitude among those "struggling" with disbelief. 

Whenever I read something like this the first thought that goes thru my mind is "and you wonder why you're not invited to more parties".  To me, these people are desperately neurotic and in serious need of a dial down for their melodrama, and that's just for starters.

They certainly aren't any kind of norm for any group this side of therapy, which could go far to explain Keller's massive disconnect from his intended audience.

[xSilverPhinx]

However, in my opinion all that Keller's book comes down to is an intense desire to believe that a god exists (and that it's the god he prefers) bolstered by a long list of "ifs", weak assumptions and flat-out wrong "facts".  Just for starters, I would recommend the Rev. Keller study nature, and specifically the social life of various animals in the wild, much more closely before he goes around claiming nature is only red in tooth and claw.

It takes a special kind of person to talk about something he or she knows nothing about with such conviction...

They certainly aren't any kind of norm for any group this side of therapy, which could go far to explain Keller's massive disconnect from his intended audience.

Did you get the impression that he was disconnected and wholly unfamiliar with his intended skeptical audience or he simply thought that he wasn't bringing out the same old arguments we've all heard a million times? Some seem to genuinely think that if the skeptic just could see how they've reasoned through this one, they would convert, because hey, they're religious based on those arguments.

[Sandra Craft]

Did you get the impression that he was disconnected and wholly unfamiliar with his intended skeptical audience or he simply thought that he wasn't bringing out the same old arguments we've all heard a million times? Some seem to genuinely think that if the skeptic just could see how they've reasoned through this one, they would convert, because hey, they're religious based on those arguments.

A bit of both.  I believe he thinks he knows and understands skeptics but, judging by the examples he used, he doesn't.  He has a large number of preconceived notions he hasn't identified yet.  In the case of the old arguments, I believe he thinks he was explaining them in a new, better way that would make the doubtful finally see the light.  Judging by the reader comments on Amazon.com, he and the choir think his swiss cheese arguments are air-tight.  Not that surprising since, as you rightly point out, they're religious based on those arguments.

[Sandra Craft]

Did you get the impression that he was disconnected and wholly unfamiliar with his intended skeptical audience or he simply thought that he wasn't bringing out the same old arguments we've all heard a million times? Some seem to genuinely think that if the skeptic just could see how they've reasoned through this one, they would convert, because hey, they're religious based on those arguments.

A bit of both.  I believe he thinks he knows and understands skeptics but, judging by the examples he used, he doesn't.  I don't mean to sound hyper-critical or dismissive of him because he's obviously a very intelligent man, but he has a large number of preconceived notions he hasn't identified yet.  

In the case of the old arguments, I believe he thinks he was explaining them in a new, better way that would make the doubtful finally see the light.  Judging by the reader comments on Amazon.com, he and the choir think his questionable arguments are air-tight.  Not that surprising since, as you rightly point out, they're religious based on those arguments.

[Sweetdeath]

The clue of talking to oneself, which Keller believes we do because we instinctively know Someone is listening.  Again, have never felt anyone but me was listening to me talk to myself, even back in my trying-to-be-religious youth when I knew I was supposed to think god was listening because that's what everyone told me.

I do this all the time with the actual seriousness in only speaking to myself and no one else!!

i'm just crazy. at least i have the gusto to admit it.