ShelfLife

The blog entry this week is from Isaac Mann:

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In chapter eight Keller explains a number of “Clues” pointing to the existence of God. I find these ideas fascinating, and I often wonder who the first person was to think of these. Some of them are obvious; nature is all around me and seems to work… hmm…  

God apparently thinks they’re obvious too. Psalm 14:1 says, “the fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”  

Some of these clues are down right confusing though. One that the book doesn’t mention is called the ontological argument. It’s so complicated, in fact, that it’s been around for about a thousand years and philosophers are still debating it.  

For me one of the most interesting ideas in this chapter is that the Big Bang Theory is helpful for our particular view. I grew up in a pretty conservative Christian family, and I always had the impression that the Big Bang Theory was bad for a Christian view of the universe. It seemed to explain the universe without reference to God. It wasn’t until recently that I was watching a documentary on the Big Bang Theory, and I realized that it could actually be a clue for God’s existence.  

Apparently, many scientists used to think that the universe had no beginning. It just existed forever. Some people believed this because to think about a beginning for everything you have to admit that there’s something outside of nature… something “super” natural. Others probably just avoided the question since science (by definition) can’t explain what was before there was.  

Eventually scientists started to realize the universe is constantly expanding. If it’s expanding that means that it used to be smaller, much smaller. In fact, there must have been a time when it was infinitesimally tiny. What was there before that? Science can’t say. If you’re a scientist who likes that science has all the answers, that answer should terrify you. It begs the question “Why is there something instead of nothing?”  

So, it turns out the Big Bang Theory is a clue for the existence of God. Who’d a thought? That doesn’t mean I’m gonna completely buy into it. It is only a theory after all. But it is nice when man’s attempts to understand the universe accidentally lead to God clues.  

I guess we can’t prove that God does exist just like atheists can’t prove that he doesn’t. But we can make it pretty hard to act like atheism is the intellectual choice. You’ve got to try pretty hard to “reason” your way to denying that there’s a God.  

1. Does it bother you that we can’t prove the existence of God? Why or why not? 

2. What might be some reasons that God hasn’t given us real proof?  

3. We can’t get all the way to the Christian God from these clues. What do they show us about God? 

4. Have you ever used one of these clues in a discussion? How did it go?

Hope everyone is enjoying the book.  Just wanted to let you know that we will not have a blog entry on the “intermission”.  We will start this Wednesday (2/24) with an entry on chapter8.

The blog entry this week is from Jackie Tarnow:

When I have had conversations with certain friends who do not believe that they can trust the historical depiction of Jesus, usually I learn that they have never read the Bible and very rarely have actually spent time researching any evidence for which they base their conclusions. Of course, there are exceptions to this, but most of the people I have encountered usually just take bits and pieces of what they have heard in the media or in college classes and base their assumptions on the inaccuracy of the biblical Jesus without really taking much time to explore the facts.

In chapter seven of Tim Keller’s “The Reason For God,” entitled You Can’t Take the Bible Literally, one of the issues that he addresses is the historical accuracy of the Bible. He provides three reasons that people can trust the Bible historically, which are as follows: 1) The timing is far too early for the gospels to be legends; 2) The content is far too counterproductive for the gospels to be legends; and 3) The literary form of the gospels is too detailed to be legend.

In the beginning of this chapter, Keller discusses how Ann Rice, the well-known author of vampire stories, “returned to Christianity after doing extensive research about the historical Jesus, by reading the work of Jesus scholars at the most respected academic institutions.” She realized that there was little actual data to support the scholars’ conclusions of a non-divine Jesus – they simply did not make their case. On the other hand, Keller just begins to scratch the surface with respect to the evidence that exists demonstrating that the biblical accounts of Jesus’ life are historically accurate.

I know facts alone do not cause a person to believe the Gospel. Only God can open someone’s eyes and make them alive to spiritual truths, but it’s encouraging to me to know that there is evidence to support the historical accuracy of the bible if someone takes the time to research the facts. As Lee Strobel quoted from Dr. Craig Bloomberg in “A Case For Christ”, “But I’ll tell you this, there are plenty of stories of scholars in the New Testament field who have not been Christians, yet through their study of these very issues have come to faith in Christ. And there have been countless more scholars, already believers, whose faith has been made stronger, more solid, more grounded, because of the evidence….”

The blog entry for Chapter 6 is brought to us by David Peters:

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We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn’t know what it is. –Albert Einstein 

Chapter 6 of Mr. Keller’s The Reason for God is entitled “Science Has Disproved Christianity”. It is a short chapter in which Keller takes on the role of apologist for Christianity. Keller devotes much of the chapter to evolution. Since there is probably not a bigger topic in the current science vs. religion debate than evolution I will mainly talk about it.

In my opinion, those arguing for the side of religion have often made fools of themselves by seeking to throw out all aspects of the theory of evolution. For instance, to me, it is patently obvious that natural selection is a fact. The best way to see it is in rapidly reproducing organisms, say bacteria. Our hospitals are unfortunately a living testament to natural selection.  MRSA is the perfect example of how traits in a population will react to nature. Those bacteria that are susceptible to antibiotics tend to die; those that aren’t tend to live. So, due to the mechanism of natural selection, we now have a lot of nasty bugs in our hospitals that are causing many problems.

Evolution fails when used as an “All-encompassing Theory”. Keller writes, “When evolution is turned into an All-encompassing Theory explaining absolutely everything we believe, feel and do as the product of natural selection, then we are not in the arena of science, but of philosophy.” Sounds like a religion to me. Quick, someone tell Richard Dawkins.

I wish Keller had addressed what I believe is the ultimate failing of science: that it is human. Since science is the accumulation of the human knowledge of nature, it is therefore finite and wrong. That is why I love the quote by Einstein that preludes this entry. The great scientist, who used his talent to uncover the secrets of how God made the world, confesses how little he knows. It is arrogant to believe that we have it all figured out. Einstein wasn’t that arrogant. But, it seems, Richard Dawkins is.

I think we sometimes forget that while science attempts to describe nature, it isn’t nature. Think about it. Every generation always thinks they have nature figured out. With the false precision of mathematics and advanced scientific instruments it is easy to think we understand everything. But the universe used to end at the edge of our flat Earth.  Now, they say that not only is the universe infinite in size, it is expanding at the speed of light. Wow. And the smallest particle used to be the atom. Atom means “something that cannot be divided further”. It is an unfortunate name because the subatomic particles keep getting smaller and smaller!

All we have to do is look at the history of science and see how limited and false some of the theories were. Why do we think that our current science is immune to those limitations and falsehoods? Cognitive bias? Yes. Human arrogance? Yes.

I, for one, am happy that human knowledge, science, doesn’t stand still. What if medicine were still dominated by the theory of  humorism? Leaches, anyone? Gross!

And sometimes, I think scientists just miss the point. Isn’t the beauty of DNA, not the double helix structure for which it is famous, but that it allows me to see bits of my wife’s face when I look at our daughter?

This week’s blog entry is from Mike Netzer.  Enjoy!

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In chapter 5, Keller addresses the objection of “How Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?” 

Consider the implication of a loving God who is not just.  I believe Keller does a good job showing how this belief is not necessarily as logical as one might think. 

Imagine a God who created the world, gave the world’s inhabitants free will, and then revealed himself to these inhabitants as “loving”.  Now imagine there were no immediate or deferred consequences for disobedience.  Would this God still be considered “loving”? 

I believe that a critical building block to Keller’s argument is the idea that doing something other than what God has instructed (sin) is harmful to us.  For example, if you saw someone you cared about hurting themselves and didn’t try to help them, would that not be perceived as uncaring? So it is with God. A lack of help/correction would be more of an indictment against God as “unloving” than his judgment could ever be.  Why?  Because not helping someone who is harming themselves demonstrates indifference, the “final form of hate”, says Becky Pippert.  

In reading this chapter I was reminded of Jesus’ words concerning judgment found in the book of John.

John 3:16, everyone knows, but often overlooked is John 3:17, For God did not send the Son to Judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Jesus repeats in John 12:47 I did not come to judge the world, but to save it. 

What did Jesus save it from?  Man’s ultimate destination apart from God: Hell. 

There must be a consequence for rejecting God’s offer of relationship and eternal life in Him and that consequence must be eternal separation from Him.  Keller says that hell is simply “one’s freely chosen identity apart from God on a trajectory to infinity.” 

It is worth repeating that Jesus’ purpose, his mission, his driving force, was not to judge.  John 3:16 says for God so loved the world, not God was so frustrated with the world or God wanted to teach those evil humans a lesson.  See also 2 Peter 3:9 [The Lord] is patient toward you, not wanting anyone to perish, but for all to come to repentance.

Judgment is a necessary byproduct of Jesus’ saving work.  I feel like I fully believe, but only half-understand this truth.  (Maybe some enlightened commenter will shed additional light!)

Once a belief in God’s loving judgment has been established, the belief “vengeance is the Lord’s” (and only the Lord’s) serves as the backbone for a belief in non-violence.  To insist upon non-violence without reason is naive, and such a belief will never endure trial. A stance in non-violence must be rooted in the belief that God will judge the righteous and unrighteous. This makes a lot of sense to me. Without this belief, when wronged, you will either react violently and get caught up in a cycle of retaliation or fall into a bitter emotional state where you desire revenge, but lack the courage to act.  Only a belief that God will judge evil will allow you to patiently, peacefully endure suffering at the hands of another.

• How do you understand God’s justice and love to be interconnected?

• Are the wars the U.S. is currently involved in Biblically justifiable?

• What do you believe is the opposite of Keller’s definition of Hell as “one’s freely chosen identity apart from God on a trajectory to infinity”?