Reasons For God?
So we have looked at a few critiques Keller has for reasons against God, but as my friend Billy pointed out on Facebook, none of these are reasons for God. So, what reasons does Keller offer for belief in God? It must first be noted that Keller doesn't consider these ideas, quite old ones, "proofs" for God. One cannot prove God's existence. One can only offer reasons for believing in God's existence. In this case, Keller says that belief in God makes sense of a few facts of life.
1. Belief in God makes sense of the universe and its fine-tuning for life. The probability figures for life on this planet arising by chance are astronomically low. Billions and billions to one. Just the right combination of nitrogen and oxygen; just the right axis tilt; just the right distance to the sun; just the right atmospheric conditions... All such scientific findings are best explained by the presence of a creator. All of the big atheists take on this argument by saying that there could have been billions and billions of failed universes before this one came about. That's true. The odds are low, but, by definition, that does not mean impossible. So, Keller offers a story (originally Alvin Plantinga's). Suppose you are playing poker and your opponent, who is dealing, keeps turning aces for himself over and over again. Twenty straight times. You accuse him of cheating. He says, "The chances of me turning up aces are billions to one. But for every game of poker there is that chance that it will happen. Given all the universes that could exist where this doesn't happen, there's a chance it will happen in this universe." You can either accept his story or punch him in the nose. The absurdity of the story makes Keller's point: This finely tuned universe is no proof of God, but nobody lives other parts of their lives against such odds.
2. Belief in God makes sense of morality. We have senses of right and wrong that make no sense without an appeal to something beyond culture. One can believe certain practices are wrong and work against them, but unless there is a standard to which such practices are not conforming, then there is no reason to work for what one considers right. Of course, many people live with morals regardless of their strict adherence to religious teaching, but this only strengthens the argument that belief in a creator God whose image is borne in these people makes sense of this situation. Does it prove God's existence? No, but it does make it seem more understanable. Put to another level, what sense does love make in an enlightened culture that knows all processes that have brought humans to this level of development are simply a combination of chance and survival mechanisms? One now sits above these mechanisms and so all emotion is only chance and survival. Can one offer a story that makes sense of love in terms of chance and survival mechanisms? Sure. Does this story capture the essence of love (both friendship and/or romantic) to being human as well as God? That's the question.
3. God gives explanation to the meaning of life. Victor Frankl's chronicles of his time in a Nazi war camp revealed three groups of people in the camps. The first were those who succombed to the enemy and cohorted with them. The second were simply those who gave up and died. The third were those who lived for something beyond themselves. Those in the first two groups were out-survived and out-numbered by those in the third. Frankl's work captures an element of real-life and how we live our lives. What's the meaning? What's the purpose? That there are those who live with meaning and purpose in life--and they are the majority--can best be made sense of with the existence of God. Does this prove God? No. God just makes sense in light of meaning and purpose. (Interestingly, Phyllis Tickle makes the point in "The Great Emergence" that when work became less necessary and people found themselves with much more free time on their hands that purpose decreased. The gap that filled in the void for many of these people? Church. And that wasn't always a good thing!)
So, what do you think of Keller's reasons for believing in God? Which is the most important for you? Which is the strongest/weakest? Why?
1. Belief in God makes sense of the universe and its fine-tuning for life. The probability figures for life on this planet arising by chance are astronomically low. Billions and billions to one. Just the right combination of nitrogen and oxygen; just the right axis tilt; just the right distance to the sun; just the right atmospheric conditions... All such scientific findings are best explained by the presence of a creator. All of the big atheists take on this argument by saying that there could have been billions and billions of failed universes before this one came about. That's true. The odds are low, but, by definition, that does not mean impossible. So, Keller offers a story (originally Alvin Plantinga's). Suppose you are playing poker and your opponent, who is dealing, keeps turning aces for himself over and over again. Twenty straight times. You accuse him of cheating. He says, "The chances of me turning up aces are billions to one. But for every game of poker there is that chance that it will happen. Given all the universes that could exist where this doesn't happen, there's a chance it will happen in this universe." You can either accept his story or punch him in the nose. The absurdity of the story makes Keller's point: This finely tuned universe is no proof of God, but nobody lives other parts of their lives against such odds.
2. Belief in God makes sense of morality. We have senses of right and wrong that make no sense without an appeal to something beyond culture. One can believe certain practices are wrong and work against them, but unless there is a standard to which such practices are not conforming, then there is no reason to work for what one considers right. Of course, many people live with morals regardless of their strict adherence to religious teaching, but this only strengthens the argument that belief in a creator God whose image is borne in these people makes sense of this situation. Does it prove God's existence? No, but it does make it seem more understanable. Put to another level, what sense does love make in an enlightened culture that knows all processes that have brought humans to this level of development are simply a combination of chance and survival mechanisms? One now sits above these mechanisms and so all emotion is only chance and survival. Can one offer a story that makes sense of love in terms of chance and survival mechanisms? Sure. Does this story capture the essence of love (both friendship and/or romantic) to being human as well as God? That's the question.
3. God gives explanation to the meaning of life. Victor Frankl's chronicles of his time in a Nazi war camp revealed three groups of people in the camps. The first were those who succombed to the enemy and cohorted with them. The second were simply those who gave up and died. The third were those who lived for something beyond themselves. Those in the first two groups were out-survived and out-numbered by those in the third. Frankl's work captures an element of real-life and how we live our lives. What's the meaning? What's the purpose? That there are those who live with meaning and purpose in life--and they are the majority--can best be made sense of with the existence of God. Does this prove God? No. God just makes sense in light of meaning and purpose. (Interestingly, Phyllis Tickle makes the point in "The Great Emergence" that when work became less necessary and people found themselves with much more free time on their hands that purpose decreased. The gap that filled in the void for many of these people? Church. And that wasn't always a good thing!)
So, what do you think of Keller's reasons for believing in God? Which is the most important for you? Which is the strongest/weakest? Why?
Labels: apologetics, The Reason for God, Tim Keller
posted by Aaron Perry at
11:29 AM
7 Comments:
I think 2 is the strongest. I've heard lots of supposedly strong explanations from an atheistic point of view, but they all seem pretty unreasonable to me.
I'm not sure #1 really accomplishes much until we know how 'special' this planet is. This stuff is in the news even today.
Are you referring to the billion earth in our galaxy hypothesis?
I was thinking about that. It seems to me that while this raises the frequency of the occurrence of life-sustaining planets, it does not lower the probability of them happening. It could be that their frequency actually increases the improbability of so many being in one galaxy. Of course, I'm not a statistician.
Well, some of the scientists involve don't seem to be statisticians either in the sense that they often just assume that there's thousands of other planets not only capable of life, but containing life. There must be some basic disagreement about how easy it is for life to form.
Have you seen the documentary 'the privileged planet' put out by some ID guys. I think it is pretty good.
I have to agree about argument #2.
I find it very hard to account for a universal moral law that seems to flow through every culture without agreeing to an objective morality that has origins beyond us. The question then being: where does this UML come from?
I will say that while these arguments give warrant for deistic God, there is a great deal of work that will have to be done to account for a theistic God, and still more for the theistic God of the evangelical tradition.
If a person is limiting him/herself to only what can be presently observed and/or reproduced, then a deistic God conclusion is about as far as one can get, I'd imagine. If, however, the person is open minded about historical probabilities and doesn't have an anti-supernatural presupposition, then classical Christianity has a strong argument.
In other words, if one refuses to use a lot of the necessary tools, plenty of jobs become basically impossible to perform.
Matthew, I'd agree with you about our use of tools. I think Plantinga demonstrates the same point wonderfully in "God and Other Minds." My point was more a word of caution that we as Christians not presume that because we have given warrant for believing in a being who created the universe that we have demonstrated that the God of the evangelical tradition is true. I was simply wanting to remind us that we have merely taken the first step in a long epistemological journey.
One of the strengths of the moral argument is that the length of this law, provided it is temporally and culturally universal, can be quite short. Perhaps all people everywhere only agree on *one* law--e.g., don't kill humans for sport. That law still needs explaining.
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