Keller: The Reason for God (Part I)
Posted by Reformed Reader on December 3, 2008
So far, the reviews have been dead on: this book is remarkable (Timothy Keller, The Reason for God [New York: Dutton, 2008]). I’ll say more on it later. For now, enjoy this blurb from pages 23-27.
Keller responds to the ubiquitous atheist chorus: “If a good and powerful God exists, he would not allow pointless evil, but because there is much unjustifiable, pointless evil in the world, the traditional good and powerful God could not exist.”
Keller: “This reasoning is, of course, fallacious. Just because you can’t see or imagine a good reason why God might allow something to happen doesn’t mean there can’t be one. Again we see lurking within supposedly hard-nosed skepticism an enormous faith in one’s own cognitive faculties. If our minds can’t plumb the depths of the universe for good answers to suffering, well, then, there can’t be any! This is blind faith of a high order.” “Many assume that if there were good reasons for the existence of evil, they would be accessible to our minds…but why should that be the case?” Keller says, essentially, just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it is not there!
Keller follows C.S. Lewis and Alvin Plantinga and turns this atheistic chorus on its head. The problem of evil “is perhaps an even greater problem for nonbelievers” than it is for believers. “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 judgment.”
Stay tuned for more…in the mean time, get the book yourself if you haven’t already!
shane lems
sunnyside wa
Tim Keller on Atheism and Evil « Life Under the Blue Sky: The View From Below said
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presbyterian_keith said
I appreciated a lot of what Keller said. Much of what he said was very helpful in helping the Christian apologist understand the worldview of many of our neighbors. However, while many of his arguments were helpful and there were hints of debunking the skeptics worldview, I found his apologetical method lacking a proper presuppostional and Biblical Reformed worldview. I don’t recall which chapter it was in, but he even said he wasn’t concerned with convincing the skeptic about becoming a particular stripe of theist. He just wanted to prove that theism was the only proper option. But like I said I found much in this book appropriate and very helpful and we should be grateful for that.