>> SON: Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for coming out to Authors at Google. My name is
Eugene Son. And before we begin, I’d like to extend a special thank you to everyone
who made this possible. A lot of work goes into setting this up so I really appreciate
that. It is my pleasure to bring to Google Dr. Tim Keller. For those of you who don’t
know his background, he was raised in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania; educated at Bucknell
University, attended Gordon-Conwell and Westminster Theological Seminary. In 1989, Dr. Keller
founded Redeemer Presbyterian Church located in Manhattan. Today, he’s got a congregation
of over 5,000 people. He has also helped start over a hundred other churches worldwide. Last
night, Dr. Keller was at UC Berkeley promoting his new book, The Reason for God: Belief in
an Age of Skepticism. And he addresses a wide audience whether they’d be agnostics, atheists,
believers in mind, and he tackles some really difficult issues such as: Why is there suffering
in this world? How can a loving god send people to hell? How can there be one right religion
while all the others are wrong?” So with that being said, I think we’re going to
have a great conversation. We’re going to be having a Q and A session afterwards. Please
use the mike to my left and we’ll be taking questions from there. And without further
ado, I’d like to introduce Dr. Tim Keller. >> KELLER: Thank you. I’m going to stay
here. Thank you. Though I have not--thank you, Eugene. I don’t have any idea why any
of you would know anything about my background. Eugene said, if--for those of you who don’t
know my background, I think that had to be all of you. I mean, why would anybody know
it? Even my children don’t really know it. So I want to talk to you about the reason--the
reasoning behind belief in God, or the reasoning the leads to belief in God. I am not--I can’t
possibly cover it in say 25, 30 minutes. My conscience is clear because there is the book.
In other words, what I say to you here is going to be sketchy. If anything I say really
engages you, I won’t be--I won’t feel guilty because I can always say, read the
rest of it in the book. I certainly can’t really give good answers to this question
in a talk, but I think I--I think I addressed it a lot better in the book were I had a little
bit more time. But the question is: What is the reasoning that leads to belief in God?
And I'd like to deal with that in the three headings: Why the reasons for God are important,
how the reasons for God work, and what the reasons for God are. Okay? First, why the
reasons for God are important; why should you even be here? In fact I don’t know why
you’re here, but I’ll tell you why you ought to be here, okay? If you have a kind
of sound, firm skepticism, and you really don’t believe in God, you really need to
know this, what I’m about to tell you, and here’s the reason why: When I was your age--I’m
looking out there--when I was your age, which is a long time ago, everybody knew that the
more technologically advanced the society got, the less religious they'd get. That’s
what everybody thought they knew. And the more economically developed, the more educated
people got, the more religion was going to sort of thin out and the idea of a god and
truth and miracles was going to sort of die out. Not--hardly anybody believes that anymore
because, really, that’s not what's happening. Instead, robust, orthodox faith in God has
gotten stronger in the world. It has gotten stronger in America. Secular thought has also
increased, so we have a more polarized society now. But, you know, last week, the Pew Foundation
took out, sent out its latest survey of the religious life of people in America and now
evangelical Pentecostals is largest single category, bigger than mainline Protestants,
bigger than Catholics. That would never--I can’t imagine that 30 years ago. Meanwhile,
in the rest of the world, to keep some things in mind, Africa had gone from 9% to 55% Christian
in the last hundred years. Korea went from about 1% to 40% Christian in the hundred years
while Korea was getting more technologically advanced. The same thing has basically happened
for China. There are more Christians in China now than there are on America, and this has
been happening even as science has advanced. So the old idea that somehow orthodox religion
is sort of going to go away, no. It isn’t. It’s going to be here, which means the only
way we’re going to get along is we got to be able to get sympathetically into one other's
shoes. So if you don’t believe in God, you need to--you need to try to understand why
anybody does or we're not going to be able to work in a pluralistic society. You know,
the new atheist books, Mr. Dawkins, Mr. Hitchens and company, when they say religion is bad
in those books, that’s not a new thesis. A lot of people have been saying that for
a long time. What is kind of new about the books is they don’t just say religion is
bad, they say respect for religion is bad. And if you counsel one section of your population
to belittle and disdain and do nothing, you know, shows no respect for the beliefs of
this group of people, beliefs that give them great joy and meaning in life. If you counsel
one group of people to despise and do nothing to try to understand this group of people,
that is a recipe for social disaster if anybody actually takes the advice. Now, if you are
a believer in God, you need to know the reasons for God, and here’s the reasons why. Doubt.
You’ve got doubts. Don’t tell me you don’t. I know you may come from a church that says,
oh, no, doubt, we don't doubt, we believe. Well, if you don’t deal with your own doubts
and say, okay, in light of this doubt, why do I believe? You know, why do I believe Christianity?
Why do I believe in God, or whatever? If you don’t let your doubts drive you to ask those
questions, your faith will never get strong. Doubts, dealing with doubts honestly is the
best possible way to develop a faith that can last in the face of anything. So you need
to look at the reasoning for God if you’re a believer in God. You need to look at the
reasoning for God if you’re not a believer in God. And, actually, if you--but most of
the people that I know in this country, at least, really are kind of ambivalent. They--your
relationship with belief in God is a really weird one. Sometimes, you do; sometimes, you
don’t. Sometimes, you do more; sometimes, you do less. And you particularly need to
hear this. Second point, how do the reasons for God work? Important. There are three basic
kinds of reasons that all people who believe believe and for which all people who disbelieve
disbelieve. If you disbelieve in God or you believe in God, it’s because of all three
of these kinds of reasons. The first kind are intellectual reasons. In other words,
you read the arguments for the existence of God or you read the objections to God or Christianity,
we'll say--and I’m speaking as a Christian. That’s why whenever I go into a particular
religion, I'm always going to think of Christianity here. And if you think the arguments are compelling,
you believe. If you think the arguments don’t--aren’t compelling, you don’t believe. So there’s
the intellectual; you might call reasoning proper. Secondly, though, you have personal
reasons. Nobody believes in God or disbelieves strictly for intellectual rational reasons.
There’s always personal reasons. And here’s what’s interesting. Some people have horrible
bad experiences, tragedies and difficulties, and disappointments. And some people interpret
that as meaning I really need God in my life, I need something to help me get through this.
And other people have the very same experiences and they interpret this meaning, I don’t
need a god who lets stuff like this happen. Other people get very successful. For example,
they come to work for Google and they’re happy, and, like, the toilet seats are heated.
How would I know that? And--somebody told me; I didn’t believe them. So you’re happy;
things are doing well in life. So some people interpret success in life this way: They say,
this means I don’t really need God. And other people interpret success in life as
saying, you know, I’m happy--I’m successful and I’m still empty. So there’s always
interpreted experience, interpreted personal experiences, a set of reasons why some people
believe in God or not, intellectual reasons why some people believe in God or not; and,
lastly, there’s social reasons. Now, there’s a whole field of--the whole discipline called
the sociology of knowledge. And the sociology of knowledge says that basically you tend
to find plausible, most plausible, the beliefs of people that you want to be--you want them
to like you, or the people that you need and people that you're dependent on, people who
are in the community you’re in or want to be part of--their beliefs tend to be more
plausible than the beliefs of people who are in communities you don’t like or aren’t
interested in and don’t want to be part of. So, to a great degree, you believe what
you believe because of the social support, and I think most of us have to be honest about
this. If you once believed in God and kind of lost your belief, to some degree, that
happened because a lot of the people that you wanted to like you were also being skeptical
and sophisticated and making jokes about it. Or if you move from belief, or pardon me,
non-belief to robust belief in God, very often, it’s because you’ve found a circle of
people that you really like and admire and you can identify with and you’d like to
be liked, and they believed. But what you can’t do is reduce belief or non-belief
to just one of those three, and people always do it. It’s always all three. I'm going
to show you what I mean. Very often, secular, non-believing people, non-believing in god,
will say to me, "Yet, Christian minister, you think you got the truth, you think Christianity
is the truth. If you were born in Madagascar, you wouldn’t even be a Christian." Okay.
So I sat down and I said, "What is this? What is the point of this?" And here’s what he’s
saying: He’s saying, "My understanding of God is based on rationality. I’ve thought
it out. But your belief is socially and culturally constructed, totally. You’re only a Christian
because you were raised here, okay, not Madagascar." But, see, what’s the comeback? The comeback
is--here’s a person that says, "I’m a secular person who believes that religion
is, you know, all religions are relative, and you’re this Christian. If you were born
in Madagascar, you wouldn’t be a Christian." And the comeback is, yet, if you were born
in Madagascar, you wouldn’t be a secular relativist. Does that mean that your position
is all socially constructed? "Oh, no, no." Yes and no. To some degree, the reason he
doesn’t believe is because his belief was somewhat, somehow socially supported but it’s
not totally. It’s also reason. It’s all three. It’s absolutely wrong. It’s disdainful.
It’s almost exploitative to say, "My position is based only on reasoning and your position
is based on, you know, cultural and personal issues." That’s not true. And by the way,
if you’re a Christian, you must never think that it’s all a matter of reason. If you’re
a Christian, you believe that the human being, we as human beings are made in the image of
God, all of us, not just our reason, our emotion, you know, our social aspect, our emotional
aspect, our intellectual aspect. We’re all in the image of God, and all those things
have to play a role on belief. Now, lastly, but this, you know, the main event. What are
the reasons for God? And I would say that there’s a lot of ways of stacking this,
but I would like to suggest to you that, by and large, reasoning ends with belief in God,
moves up a ladder, and I’m going to suggest three rungs. Now, I’m not saying that everybody
actually who comes to believe in God moves along the ladder in exactly these ways. But
I would say there’s a lot of ways of stacking all of the things that happen. Here’s how
I’m going to do it. I think, at least, it's a way of making sense of it. The first rung
of the ladder is you come to see that disbelief in God takes as much faith as belief in God.
That’s the first rung. It takes as much faith to disbelieve in God as to believe.
That’s the first rung. The second rung is it takes more of a leap of faith, when you
come to see, it takes more of a leap of faith in the dark to disbelieve in God than to believe
in God. And the third rung of the ladder is you come to realize that whereas you can reason
to a point of probability, it takes personal commitment to get to certainty. And if you
move up those three rungs, you believe in God. Let me show how that works. The first
rung--and, by the way, there’s a lot in here so that’s why I feel like if anything
I’m saying intrigues you at all, I suggest get the book. And I’m really saying that
not as an author who's trying to sell books but as a minister who’s trying to get a
message across. You can believe that or not. You can be cynical or not. And I hope I mean
right. I mean, I hope that’s really what I--I hope that’s my motive. I think it is.
So if you can possibly get the book because I have a feeling what I’m going to say in
the next 15 minutes is too short. Do so. Now, the first rung is this: It takes more--it
takes as much faith, excuse me, to believe, to disbelieve in God as to believe. How do
I back that up? Well, here’s how: All of the arguments that purport to prove there
is no god fall flat. See, all the arguments that you’ve ever heard that say, "There
can’t be a god or even Christianity can’t be true," if any of those stood up, they need
to be say, "Christianity can’t be true. God can’t be real." But if none of them
stand up, if there’s no way to prove there is no God, and therefore, there is a god,
then to believe that there’s no God is an act of faith. Are you following me? Let me
show you some of the arguments. Here are the arguments that are usually brought up. They
say, "This is why there really couldn’t be a god." The first one, the main one, is
the argument from evil and suffering. And that argument goes like this: Look at all
the senseless, pointless evil in the world. Okay? See it? Now, given that senseless, pointless
evil, there may be a god who’s good but not powerful enough to stop it, or there may
be a god who is all powerful enough but not good enough to want to stop it. But given
evil and suffering in the world, all that pointless, senseless evil and suffering, there
can’t be an all-good and all-powerful god or he would stop it; and, therefore, the all-good,
all-powerful traditional god in the Bible can’t exist. David Hume, Discourses on Natural
Religion, 18th century. It doesn’t work. There’s a guy named William Osteen who is
one of the leading philosophers today from Syracuse University who recently wrote: The
effort to demonstrate that evil disproves God is now acknowledge on almost all sides
in philosophy as completely bankrupt. Now, here’s what he means by this. And I shudder
to say this to you because if any of you actually are going through some real suffering, it’s
not a philosophical issue for you; it’s a personal issue. But I would just hope that
you don’t see this as cold comfort. For many people, it’s philosophical; and people
say, "How could you believe in a god with all these senseless, pointless evil?" Here’s
what the philosophers have been saying for the last 20 years. This is the reason why
there hasn’t been a major philosophical work trying to disprove the existence of God
on the basis of evil and suffering since 1982. Because as William Osteen says, in the philosophical
world, it’s just not washing, and here’s why: When you say there can’t be a god because
of all the senseless, pointless evil out there, here’s the question: How do you know it’s
senseless? How do you know there’s no good reason for it? The only answer is, "Well,
I can’t think of any good reason." Oh, okay. So here’s your premise. Because I can’t
think of any good reason why God would allow evil and suffering to continue, therefore,
there can’t be any. No, why would that be? And that’s the reason why if you’ve got
a god big and powerful enough to be mad at for evil and suffering, and at the very same
moment, you’ve got a god big and powerful enough to have reasons for allowing it to
continue that you can’t think of. You can’t have it both ways. And that’s the reason
why in the philosophical circles, the argument that says, "We can disprove God with evil
and suffering has fallen flat." And, by the way, if there’s anybody saying, "It’s
not a philosophical thing for me; it’s a personal thing--I have this horrible stuff
in my life and that’s the reason why I can’t believe in God"; but I told you a minute ago,
there are plenty of people who had everything and had every bit as much suffering as you,
and they’ve let that turn them toward God. So personal suffering, experiences of suffering,
the philosophical question of suffering doesn’t disprove the existence of God. It doesn’t
work. Okay. Well, what about this? This is what I would call the Hitchens’ argument
against the reality of God. I know he was here at one point, right? And this argument
goes like this: If there really was a god, how could his believers have done so much
evil in the history of the world? If there really is a god, why is it that so much of
the violence and oppression and injustice in history, why is it have been perpetrated
by the people who believe in God, in the name of God? See, that’s the argument. But here’s
the problem with that argument. It’s a pretty big one. There must be something in the human
heart that is so prone to violence and oppression that it can actually twist any world view,
any philosophy, any state of belief which regard to God into violence. So, for example,
Buddhism and Shinto, out of that soil grew the Japanese militarism of the World War II,
out of Christian soil grows everything from the Crusades in the 11th and 12th century
down to today, people shooting abortion doctors. Out of Islam comes global terrorism. But out
of atheism--is that the third time I've done that or the second time? It’s going to be
on the Internet. Look at atheism, look at Stalin, look at Cambodia,
look at the Khmer Rouge. There’s a guy named Milosz, who’s the Polish--famous Polish
poet, and he has a fascinating little essay called, “The Discreet Charms of Nihilism.”
Now, there’s a title for you, The Discreet Charms of Nihilism. And, in it, he pointed
something out. He says, “If you believe there’s a god, it’s fairly easy to twist
that belief into violence because you can say, 'I have the truth, you don’t. I’m
a better person, you are an inferior kind of person.' But, he says--he says, “If you
don’t believe in God,” he says, “I’ve seen that be a warrant for violence. I’ve
seen that be fruitful soil or I’ve seen that twisted.” You know why? He says, “If
you’re an atheist and you can say if I can get away with something in this life, I get
away with it.” If I can kill this people over here and I can get away with it, there
is no Judgment Day, there is no punishment in the after life." He said that, “I’ve
seen that.” Now, you know what that means? I don’t want as a Christian, just because
some people have twisted Christianity into a warrant for violence, I don’t want to
say to you, if you’re an Atheist, well, look at what Czeslaw Milosz says. Look at
what he says. He says, “He has seen atheism twisted into violence.” So what--you can
twist anything into violence, non-belief and belief. And you know what this means, it’s
a tie. It’s not--it does not disapprove God; it doesn’t just prove Atheism. I’m
not going to say, “Oh, atheism is stupid, look at that, look at Stalin"; I don’t want
you to say, look at Christianity, it's stupid, look at the Crusades.” Let’s just admit
it’s a tie. And let's admit it doesn’t really argue against or for God. It certainly
doesn’t disprove God. Let me give you a third--yeah, I have for third--a third argument
against the existence of God. Well, no, I’ll give you--I'll give this one. A third argument
is not that you can’t--there can’t be a god. There’s an argument I would call
you can’t know there’s a god. There’s a lot of folks who would say, look, I don’t
know if there’s a god or not, but nobody can know, nobody can know. Lesslie Newbigin
has a great passage in one of his books--he's a British scholar--in which he says here’s
how agnostics likes to argue, they--they use the illustration of the elephant and the blind
man. Have you heard that illustration? Here are six blind men. They come upon an elephant.
And everyone grabs the elephant at a different place. And one blind man is holding on to
the trunk and says, “Oh, elephants are kind of long and flexible.” And another guy has
hold of the leg and says, “That’s not true at all. Elephants are kind of thick and
stiff and stumpy.” And the illustration goes that every one of the blind men thinks
they kind of know the whole elephant, but every one on the blind men basically only,
in a sense, can sense part of the truth and nobody can sense the whole truth. And so,
that’s like the religions of the world. Every religion has a little bit of wisdom,
but the fact is nobody has the truth. Nobody can see the whole picture. Nobody can say,
“I know God truly.” And Lesslie Newbigin has a great spot where he talks about--he
says it like this, he says, this is a quote, “In the famous story of the blind men and
the elephant, so often quoted in the interest of religious agnosticism, the real point of
the story is constantly overlooked. The story is told from the point of view of someone
who is not blind, but can see what the blind men are unable to grasp; that is the full
reality of the elephant. And only the one who sees the whole elephant can know that
all the blind men are blind.” Do you see what he’s saying? The only way you could
know that all the blind men only sense part of the elephant is if you think you’re not
blind. You'd only tell the story from the standpoint of someone who is not blind. And
so, he comes back and he says, “What this means then is that there is an appearance
of humility and a protestation that the truth is much greater than anyone of us can grasp.
But if this is used to invalidate all claims to discern the truth, it is in fact an arrogant
claim with the kind of knowledge which is superior that you have just said, no religion
has," you follow that? To say, I don’t know which religion is true is an act of humility.
To say, none of the religions have the truth. No one can be sure there's a god is actually
to assume you have the kind of knowledge, you just said no other person, no other religion
has; how dare you? See, it’s a kind of arrogant thing to say nobody can know the truth because
it’s a universal truth claim. Nobody can make universal truth claims. That is a universal
truth claim. Nobody can see the whole truth. You couldn’t know that unless you think
you see the whole truth. And, therefore, you’re doing the very thing you say religious people
shouldn’t say. So does that disprove god now? Does that even prove that you can’t
know God? Of course not, you undermine yourself. But, lastly, the main thing I’ve seen people
say is say, look, there can’t be a god and here’s what they say. Until you prove there’s
a god, until you show me rational, empirical proof, I don’t have to believe in God. And,
therefore, until you prove there’s a god, there is no god. Well, here’s a problem,
that’s a big leap for faith. You say, what do you mean it's a big leap of faith? Sure,
if you have a creator god, here’s a god who created the universe, what makes you so
sure that this god who is not inside the universe, I mean, he’s not on a being inside the universe,
wholly inside; he's not like an island in the Pacific. There’s no particular reason
why you should believe in some island in the Pacific unless somebody proves it to you;
or a chemical compound, there's no reason to believe this chemical compound exists unless
somebody proves it to you. But why should you assume that God would actually be someone
or something so inside the world that He could be provable? It may be right, and you may
be wrong. But you have to admit it, it's a leap of faith. You're actually assuming something
about the nature of God in order to say He doesn’t exist. C.S. Lewis writes an interesting
article in 1961. Some of you might know that the Russians were the first country to send
somebody into space, Yuri Gagarin. And he came back and a few months later, the premier
of Russia--Soviet Union Khrushchev was giving a speech and talking about atheism and he
actually said, “We sent somebody to heaven, and he came back and he said he didn’t see
God anywhere.” And C.S. Lewis wrote an article that said interestingly enough, he said, “If
there is a god who created the world and created us, you couldn’t--well, you don't relate
to God the way a person in a first storey relates to a man in the second storey. Rather,
you would relate to God the way Hamlet relates to Shakespeare.” See, if Hamlet wants to
prove there's a Shakespeare, he’s not going to be able to do that in a lab nor is he going
to be able to find Shakespeare by going up into the top of the, you know, the stage,
you know. The only reason he knows anything about Shakespeare is that Shakespeare writes
something about himself into the play. And what would mean is if there is a creator god,
you probably--there should be evidence, but the idea that you can’t believe in Him until
someone proves Him is actually an assumption of faith leap about the existence of the nature
of God before you even are willing to admit, you know, that He’s there. And besides that,
you can’t prove anything hardly, you know that. Did you take Philosophy 101? I can’t
prove to you that I’m not a butterfly dreaming I’m a man. And there are not--there are
no non-circular arguments for the proposition that your memories work. The world might have
been here just five months or minutes ago, it could have come into existence five minutes
ago and your memories think as far as back to that, how can you prove otherwise? So the
philosophers know that you can’t prove anything. And guess what? You can’t prove any of your
moral convictions. Human beings are valuable. You know, people have rights. You can’t
prove that. Nope. That’s not self-evident. It maybe is to all your friends, but it’s
not self-evident to all the people in the world. It's not something you can prove. You
can only prove anything and yet you live your life on the basis of that. So why should you
say to God, if you’re there, you prove yourself to me or you have no response--I have no responsibility
to you. That may be true; it may not be true but it’s a leap of faith. Now, here’s
where we've come, this is not only the first rung of the ladder and you say, oh, my gosh.
Well, like I said, I’m pointing you to the book. So I can’t give you everything that
I’d like to give you, but here’s where we are. If you can’t prove that there is
no God, that means there may be a god and if you in this room, any of you are living
as if there is no God, you need to admit that that’s a risk, that that’s an act of faith,
that you’re taking your life into your hands, right? And it's as much an act of faith a
personal commitment an act of faith as a person who gives him or herself to God. Now, if you
don’t even see that, then you’re not on the first rung of belief--of reasoning toward
belief in God. If you do see that even for the first time, you’ve hit rung one. Rung
two, now, rung two, I’m going to be brief about. And the reason I’m going to be brief
about is because it actually takes more time to demonstrate than rung one. Rung two is
this: It takes more of a leap of faith to disbelieve in God than to believe in God,
because God makes more sense of the things you see out there in the world than if there
is no God. Let me give you only two examples, only two. One of them is this. Okay. One of
them is the fine-tuning of the universe and one of them is human rights, okay? Fine-tuning
of the universe, you probably heard about this. There’s a man named Francis Collins
who's a real scientist; I’m not. And he does a good job of talking about this and
the--the fine-tuning of the universe is the fact that the fundamental regularities and
constants of physics, the speed of light, gravitational constants, strength and weakness
of nuclear forces, all those things have to be calibrated within a, you know, a millionth
of a millionth of a millionth of a degree and they all have to agree for organic life
to have grown and, therefore, it looks like this world is perfectly chosen for our human
life. So what--the argument goes like this. The argument is: What are the chances of this
happening by accident? Very, very--one in a trillion that we just happen to be, so maybe
this is an evidence for the existence God. Now, a guy like Richard Dawkins, very rightly
says, that is not proof and here’s the reason it’s not proof. He says, "What if at the
Big Bang, there were a million parallel universes, a billion, a trillion, you know, infinite
number of parallel universe all created at once, and we just happen to be in the one.
Okay, so what? Maybe it was a one in a trillionth chance but here it is, we’re here. That
doesn’t prove God and he’s right. Except there’s--Alvin Plantinga is a Christian
philosopher at Notre Dame that has a little bit of a comeback that’s kind of funny.
He says imagine yourself at a poker game, and you’re sitting around at the poker game,
and one man, the man who’s dealing deals himself 20 straight hands of four aces, 20
straight hands. Okay, now, on the last time, he deals himself, four aces. Everybody gets
up. And you’re just ready to pound him and here’s what he says, "Look," he says. "I
know it looks suspicious, but what if there’s an infinite succession of universes so that
for any possible distribution of possible poker hands, there is a universe in which
the possibility is realized. We just happen to find ourselves in one where I always deal
myself four aces without cheating. Couldn’t that be the case? You can’t prove that I’m
cheating." And the answer is you're probably going to slug him anyway because you would
say, of course, you can’t prove it but what are the chances? It’s not like, you know,
nobody lives their life like that. In other words, though the fine-tuning of the universe
does not prove the existence of God, if there is a god, it makes sense. If there’s not
a god, it’s a long shot. It doesn’t prove the existence of God. All it proves is if
there is a god, what you see there makes more sense. Let me give you only one other example,
only one, human Rights. I'll give you a good example of this. Alan Dershowitz in his book
Shouting Fire has a chapter on where the human rights come from, and he says there’s basically
four possibilities. Now human rights is the belief that human beings are so worthwhile
that regardless of age, regardless of ethnicity, regardless of gender, regardless of social
status, regardless of how much wealth you have, every human being is of great worth
and has certain rights that can’t be exploited or trampled upon. Now, the question comes:
Why should we believe that? The first possibility, Alan Dershowitz says, is that we believe that
God created human beings and therefore they’re sacred. They’re made in the image of God,
et cetera. And Alan said--Alan Dershowitz says but a lot of us don’t believe in God
so we don’t want to go there. Fine. Point two. The second possibility is maybe we--we
find this in nature. If we look out in nature, if we just look out nature, do we just see
that somehow human beings, individuals are valuable? "No," he says, because all you see
out there is the strong eating the weak. That's how every one of you got here--called evolution.
Annie Dillard who wrote Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and won a Pulitzer Prize for it some
years ago was living by a creek bed in Virginia, and she wanted to get close to nature but
the more she saw how nature was red and tooth and claw, and the strong are eating the weak--she
saw a water bug stinging a toad or a frog and then suck out its brain and she saw this
and she began to realize, "Wait a minute. Everything about nature contradicts everything
I feel about what is right and wrong." And she says, "Evolution loves death more than
it loves you and me or anyone. I had thought to live by the side of the creek in order
to shape my life to its free flow, but I seem to have reached the point where I must draw
the line. I must part ways with the only world I know. Look, Cock Robin may die the most
gruesome of slow deaths and nature is no less pleased. The sun comes up, the creek rolls
on, the survivors still sing, but I cannot feel that way about your death nor you about
mine or either of us about the robins. We value the individual supremely. Nature values
the individual not a wit. It looks as if I might have to reject this creek life unless
I want to be utterly brutalized. Either this world, nature, is a monster or I am a freak
because I believe that the strong should not eat the weak but everything in nature says
it should. Either this world is my mother, my mother is a monster, or I myself is a freak.
Let’s consider the former possibility, the world is a monster. There’s not a people
in the world that behaves as bad as praying mantises. But wait, you say, there’s no
right or wrong in nature. Right and wrong is a human concept. Precisely, we are model
creatures in a universe that is running on chance and death careening blindly from nowhere
to nowhere which somehow produced wonderful us. This world runs on chance and death and
power, but I cherish life and the rights of the weak versus the strong. So I crawled by
chance out of a sea of amino acids through evolution and now I twirl around and shake
my fist at that sea and I cry, 'Shame!' We little blobs of soft tissue crawling around
on this one planet skin are right and the whole universe is wrong. The world is a monster.
Oh, maybe not, let’s consider the alternative. Nature is fine. We are freaks. The frog that
the giant water bug sucked had a rush of feeling for about a second before its brain turned
to broth. I however have been sapped by very strong feelings about the incident almost
daily for years. All right, then, it’s our emotions and values that already amiss. We
are freaks. The world is fine. Let us all go have lobotomies to restore us to a natural
state. We can leave the library, then go back to creek, lobotomize, and live on its banks
as untroubled as any muskrat or reed--you first." Here’s what she's saying, "How could
you look at nature and say there’s something wrong with it?" See, to believe in human rights
is to say everything else in nature is wrong, everything, because that’s how you got here.
The strong eats the weak and now you’re saying, "No, it’s wrong." Why would it be
wrong? Unless you believe in God or a supernatural standard by which to judge, how can you judge
that nature is unnatural? Where did you get your idea by which you could say nature--so
you can’t go to nature. No, it’s not, it’s not natural. The third possibility
is, okay, we formed human rights ourselves. Legislative majorities create human rights.
They’re not discovered. They’re not there. Yeah, you’re right. Morality is something
we create. So we create it. We as a body of a legislative majority, we decide that human
rights makes society work better and therefore it’s more practical to believe in human
rights so we create human rights. And Dershowitz says that will never work. You know why? What
we’re really saying is genocide is only wrong because we say it is. And therefore
if 51 percent want to vote to take away the rights of 49 percent and destroy them, nobody
can say, how dare you? Because you say genocide is only wrong because we say so; now, most
of us don’t say it’s wrong. He says the whole value of rights, he says a lawyer, he
says, the value of rights, is to say to the majority, you have to honor the rights of
my client. Human rights are there. They’re discovered. They can’t be created. Oh, okay,
now, wait, they don’t come from nature, we don’t create them, they're there. He
says I don’t believe in God; so why do I believe in human rights? And you know what
he says in the end? They’re just there. We don’t know where they come from, we don’t
know why they're there, they probably shouldn’t be there; but they’re there. Now, what is
he saying? Am I telling you that human rights proves there is a god, no. All I’m trying
to say is this: If there is a god, human rights makes sense. If there is no god, human rights
don’t make much sense. They don’t make as much sense. You don’t even know where
they came from. What is this to say? Only that belief in God makes more sense of life
than non-belief, right? Dershowitz is basically saying that. I’ve been planning as just
to--and I could give you a long list. So here's my question; I can’t prove God to you. I
can only show you thing after thing after thing, issue after issue after issue, if there
is a god, it makes sense that that’s there. If there is a god, the idea of justice and
injustice and genocide being wrong makes sense. If there is no god, you're really just taking
a leap in the dark to say I don’t know why it’s wrong, I just feel it’s wrong. It’s
a bigger leap in the dark to believe in human rights if you don’t believe in God than
if you do. It’s a bigger leap in the dark to say, somehow, love is significant, human
beings are valuable if there is no god than if there is. So why are you doing it? Why
is it so hard to believe in God? Probably, personal and social reasons, and maybe some
intellectual reasons. Now, this is the last because I do want to take 15 minutes of questions.
I just said that once you get through the second rung, you're only to the place of probability.
God is more likely to exist. And you say is that as far as you can take me? Well, yes,
in a way. I better put this down. I’m sorry. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t be
certain. If I was falling off the cliff and I saw a branch taking out of the side of the
cliff, let’s just say that branch is strong enough to hold me up. Now, I’m about to
fall. If I don’t grab that branch, I’m dead. If I look at that branch and I say,
“Oh, I don’t know if it’s going to save me,” but if I grab it, I’m saved. If I
look at the branch and I say, “I know that branch can save me,” but I don’t grab
it, I’m dead. You see, weak faith in a strong object is infinitely better than strong faith
in a weak object because it’s the object of your faith, not the strength of your faith
that saves you. And if you get to the place where you think God probably is there, now,
it’s time to make a personal commitment. You know what, if you, one of you want to
come work for me, I could do all kinds of rational background checks and everything
to try to figure out that you're probably the right person for the job. But until I
commit to you, until I bite, until I invest in you, until I actually hire you, which is
always a risk, I can’t know. But if I personally commit to you, in a year or so, I can know
perfectly well, same thing with Jesus, same thing with God. At a certain point, you come
to probability and then you have to commit. Do you remember how--and here’s a great
thing about Christianity, mind if I put in a plug for my own religion? I’ve been talking
about God in general but I’m a minister; can I do that? You know, it’s my job. Remember
how I said C.S. Lewis said that if there is a god, the only way you’d know about him
is since he's like Shakespeare, he would have to write some information about himself into
the play? You know, you can go beyond that if you’re an author. Any of you ever see
the Peter Wimsey novels or ever see the--they were put on BBC? Dorothy Sayers was one of
the first women to ever graduate from Oxford and she was a detective novelist and she wrote
a series of novels. Peter Wimsey was this aristocratic detective and he solved mysteries.
And halfway through the series, a woman shows up named Harriett Vane. And Harriet Vane was
one of the first women who ever graduated from Oxford and she was a writer of detective
novels and she falls in love with Peter Wimsey and marries him. Do you know who Harriet Vane
is? See, what happened was Dorothy Sayers fell in love with Peter Wimsey. She created
him, she created the whole world that he was in and she also saw he was horribly lonely,
and she wanted to get into that world and save him. And guess what? She did. She wrote
herself in and she married him and they lived happily ever after. Now, you know what the
gospel is, every other religion says God is up here and you have believe in him but only
in Christianity, he says, God wrote himself into the play. It’s really moving to say,
oh, Dorothy Sayers put herself into the world she created and she fell in love with her
key character and that’s exactly what God has done, that’s what the gospel is. And,
therefore, if personal commitment is the key to certainty, Christianity has a leg up because
you’ve got a watertight, not a watertight argument, you a watertight person, Jesus Christ,
against him in the end, I don’t think there can be a good argument. Now, what I’m going
to do is walk over here, without knocking anything over and then everybody who wants
to ask me questions for the next 15, 20 minutes or so, just come up there and, oh, I’m sorry,
I'll move this a little bit. Am I still in the line? Okay, thank you. So thank you for
listening. Can this hold me up? I’m a big guy. Okay. Hi.
>> Hi. I want to thank you very much for being here today. It’s a fascinating talk. I actually
have a hundred questions and it would not be fair for me to ask them so that means I
have to go get my hands in the book. >> KELLER: So you’re just going to give
me, what, 50? >> I’m just going to give you one. The argument
from evil and suffering is interesting to me because you say, well, maybe God is permitting
it and we just can’t understand why. >> KELLER: Right.
>> Well, that may be true but it seems to me that if that’s true, then I don’t understand
how you can come to any conclusions about what God would do or wouldn’t do based on
his properties. If God is all good and all powerful and still lets babies burn to death
in fires... >> KELLER: Uh-hmm.
>> Then, maybe he's all good and all powerful and chooses not to save us or chooses not
to love us or one specific thing you said is that, for atheists, they're making a leap
of faith, they’re taking--they’re risking something. They’re taking their life in
their hands. Well, that’s not just based on a belief in God but a belief in how atheists
should act if there’s a god, the consequences for atheists. If he’s going to let babies
burn in fires, then maybe he’s going to let atheists prosper, go to heaven and be
healthy. >> KELLER: But, see, so by--it sounds like
you are assuming then that if babies burn in fires--actually, what you’re doing is
you’re trying to go back and say, there can’t be any way that a loving God could
let a baby burn in fire. >> No, I'm not saying that. I’m saying if
we conclude that a loving, omnipotent God can let babies burn in fire, then we could
conclude that he can let any horrible thing happen or any good thing happen and therefore
assuming, for instance, that atheists are going to have to pay in some way, that’s
the assumption about hat God will do. But we already know that we can’t understand
why God does things and therefore we can't understand what he would do and what he wouldn’t
do in any situation. >> KELLER: The difference between--listen,
when the Bible says, thou shall not kill, we shouldn’t be sitting around saying, well,
what we don’t know what God's will is. There it is. When it comes to guessing why he let
certain things happen, that is a completely different category and you really shouldn’t
put the two together. Say, for example, how do you know that the baby, if the person grew
up would have become an evil person and this is his way of just getting the baby out and
staying in heaven forever. You don’t know that.
>> And how do you know that the atheist wouldn’t be a better person, a particular atheist wouldn’t
be a better person for being an atheist and God wishes him to be an atheist for it?
>> KELLER: Why don’t you say--I just said, there’s a difference between what the word--what
the Bible says. So the Bible would say... >> You’ve made an enormous leap.
>> KELLER: Well, yeah, because I didn’t get there. I just talked about God.
>> Faith in God. >> KELLER: Yes, you’re right. You’re right.
You’re right. That’s another talk. >> Okay.
>> KELLER: So you’re perfectly right in saying, until you, until you, Tim Keller,
until you can show me that I need to take the Bible seriously, it’s tough for me to
completely swallow what you just said about evil and suffering. Okay. So I have to go
there, and I won’t partly because, unless you...
>> No. >> KELLER: No, we just don’t have enough
time. But, you see, the point is, there’s nothing, for example, in the Bible about why
God would let somebody die or child die. There’s a lot of stuff in the Bible saying you have
responsibility to respond to me; I’m your creator. So that’s--however, you’re absolutely
right about the fact that I didn’t establish that so I can’t leverage it. But, good point.
Come on. >> Hi, could it be that the derivation of
basic human rights comes from our ability to see perspective and take the role of another
person and, maybe, that is just a good evolutionary strategy?
>> KELLER: Right. What you’re saying is, then, human rights just helps you pass your
genetic code on. It’s basically a form of selfishness. In other words, you're saying
that, that--the trouble with saying that everything comes from evolution, that my--that the feeling
that it’s wrong to exploit somebody basically helps me pass my genetic material on, if that’s
all you want to say human rights is, I would say then, why can’t I get away with it?
In other words, I guess I would say, that doesn’t tell me that human rights are really
there. What that tells me is why I feel that they’re there. See, I think Dershowitz--see,
Dershowitz actually deals with that a little bit. He says, if you say the reason--so many
of us, and most people don’t believe in human rights, okay? But the reason so many
of us here believe in human rights is because it’s our next stage of evolution and we
feel that they’re there. But that only tells me why I feel that they’re not--that they
are there. So I wouldn’t say your argument goes far enough. Okay? Thanks. I think I did
a lot better with him than you so. You have a very good point, anyway. I understand what
you’re saying and I hope I’m not making a short rift of these big deals but I don’t
have too much time. Yes, go ahead. >> Dr. Keller, first, I wanted to thank you
for joining us today. One of the many interesting points...
>> KELLER: Who’s that? >> This is Cornelius.
>> KELLER: Cornelius? >> Yeah.
>> KELLER: Cool. >> One of the many interesting points you
made had to do with the increasing prevalence of orthodox religions in our society. And
I was wondering, I read an essay by an economist named Lawrence Anacone. He talks about why
strict churches are strong, you know, basically, that he feels that the social advantages of
a strict church become increasingly, you know, desirable as the society becomes more wealthy
and educated. I was wondering if you had any comments on that.
>> KELLER: That sounds a little bit like--no, I don’t know. I haven’t read that. It
sounds a little bit like a sociologist named Dean Kelley back in the early ‘70s. He wrote
a book called “Why Conservative Churches Are Growing?” He said the same thing. And,
you know, as a Christian believer, I would say that can only be partly right, but I could
say that, to some degree, you’ll find those kinds of churches are pretty attractive when
the society is very mobile, and there’s like no community. And it kind of creates--it’s
automatic community in a place where no one knows anyone. But the fact is that Christianity
grows all over the place. I mean, the--you know, Christianity grew explosively in China,
in the rural areas, in the last 50 years where there was no mobility, there was tremendous
community and, yet, it’s the same kind of crunchy, robust, orthodox, conservative religion
that's grown there as it’s growing in our exurbs right now. So if somebody wants to
say, one of the reasons why people go to those churches is it creates community as the world’s
becoming, as their societies are becoming more--there’s more detachment and people
feel there’s no community, I agree. But you can’t reduce the growth of Christianity
to that, that’s all. And thank you for bringing Cornelius up. You’re welcome. He's a sweetheart.
Hi. >> Hi, I have a comment and a question.
>> KELLER: Sure. >> My comment is, I think you’ve misunderstood
the anthropic principle which characterizes there’s a multitude of universes and we
just happen to be in one with fine-tuned constants. >> KELLER: Okay.
>> The problem is that fine-tuned constants are required for our existence. And the poker
game analogy falls down because 20 hands of four aces in a row are not a requirement to
have an observer there to witness the cards being dealt. An equivalent to the poker game
analogy would be to say, well, we discovered this nebula in a distant galaxy that happens
to make the exact shape of the Ten Commandments written in ancient Hebrew. If you showed me
such a nebula, I would be immediately convinced that Christianity or Judaism, at least, was
true. But the existence of that nebula does not predicate my existence and that’s why
that would convince me so... >> KELLER: Yeah. Listen, I’m not completely
convinced about what you just said and I think some of it is subjective. If most--mainly
I said, and what you said, we'll probably leave it at that. I mean, it was--I thought,
I mean I read Dawkins pretty closely, and I thought Dawkins said that we would be in
the only universe that actually is the right universe for our existence.
>> Right, because we can’t exist in the other universes.
>> KELLER: But he’s still saying--right--but he’s still saying that--yes, I see what
you mean, that we just happen to be in this universe and would have to be...
>> Well, it’s not so much that we happen to be. It's that the universe that allows
for observers has observers and so... >> KELLER: Well, you would say, it just happens
that there's one universe that grows human life though. You would agree with that?
>> That’s true. >> KELLER: Well, that’s the point of the
poker game. >> It still is different; but I'll be running
my question because we could argue about it forever.
>> KELLER: Okay. >> My question is: If God is the only basis
for human rights, then why is it that, at least, in many parts of the world, we’ve
seen a trend toward increasing secularism and increasing human rights at the same time?
>> KELLER: Well, there’s--read Nicholas Wolterstorff’s new book, “Justice, Rights
and Wrong.” It’s brand new. It’s a hard book. He’s a philosopher from Yale. It’s
Princeton University Press and he says that there’s both an enlightenment basis for
human rights and a Christian one. >> Right.
>> KELLER: And he would say, one of the reasons why--the enlightenment view of human rights
is the individual is the main unit. Individual rights--the individual happiness is more important
than the community whereas the classic, most cultures, is that community is more important
than the individual. The idea of human rights according to Wolterstorff grew out of Christian
roots but it also can grow out of enlightenment roots. But it’s pretty tough to see it growing
out of some other religions. So it’s in there...
>> Okay. But if it grows out of enlightenment roots then...
>> KELLER: As well as--yes. >> As well as Christian but if both lead to
human rights, then we don’t need Christianity or...
>> KELLER: Oh, no, listen--I was never--wait, oh wait. I’m glad you said this because
I want to make this clear. I’m not saying you got to believe in God to be moral or to
have human rights. I would say it’s a bigger leap. All I’m trying to say is it makes
more sense of the thing you believe in which is human rights, that there be a god than
not. That’s all I’m trying to say. So that--then you’re sort of confronting--I’m
kind of trying to confront you to say, well, what’s the big problem with God if so many
of the things you believe in fit in with, well, belief in God. That’s all. But you’re
absolutely right. Certainly, I don't want anybody to think ever you got to believe in
God in order to be a champion of human rights. And, actually, history will show you that
it was basically Christians and the agnostics that together came up with the idea of the
United States Constitution in which church and state was separate and a big emphasis
on the individual rights. It was a confluence of those two groups so we’re able to get
together and agree that we wanted America the way it is. Great question. I hope I did
them justice. Yes? >> I have a hundred of questions as well.
But, first, I want to tell you something that you may not know. I’ve been to many talks
in this room and I’ve never seen it half as full. Once I saw it almost half as full
and that was when Violet Blue, the sex blogger, came to talk about sex.
>> KELLER: You know, I think I am really flattered. Well,
you know, I’m an agnostic about this really. >> Okay. So, the second question, I’m not
sure it's a question, but the second question, you talked about this literary example where
the writer writes herself into the story. I wonder if you’re familiar with the work
of Dave Sim who he has this kind of graphic novel series called the Cerebus. And a lot
of things… >> KELLER: I’ve heard of him.
>> So a lot of things about that comic book, a lot of people would find morally reprehensible
but it’s a lot of--it's very interesting in a lot of ways and he has a whole series
where he has a conversation as himself as the author talking to his main characters.
I find that very interesting. >> KELLER: You know, Tolkien, J. R. R. Tolkien
who was a devout Catholic really felt that the reason, a big reason why artists do need--he
called it subcreation. The reason why artists have this, this almost compulsion to create
is because it’s part--it's part of where we came from which is from God, who is a creator
god. And so, then he created all different worlds and people in them as it were and even
putting yourself into them, there are--there’s a kind of pragmatic mind that thinks that’s
all really weird. But from a Christian point of view, it’s exactly what God is all about.
So it’s a good thing. So thank you for your kind words. And you know what? Can I take
another couple? I remember I was going to cut this off at 2:25 but I’ll cut it off
at 2:30. God, Lord. Okay. Whoever, whoever, whoever is pulling the strings. Yes, go ahead.
>> Hello. So I have another question about the human rights.
>> KELLER: All right. I’m sorry. Go ahead. >> Okay. That’s all right. So you made a
point where human rights doesn’t really--isn’t really observed in nature and stuff like that.
>> KELLER: Right. >> So, you know, I was a little confused about
that because the example you gave talked about like, you know, an animal of one species attacking
an animal of another species, right, where as human--human rights, you’re talking about
humans, right, so like the same species. And, you know, there are multiple animals that
they watch out for others of the same species so it’s…
>> KELLER: But now, by the way, probably, I don’t know what I’m talking about here,
so... There are certainly plenty of places where the weak animal in the pack, if they’re
going to slow down the pack down, they just kill it or they just leave it behind in a
way the humans would never do because they realize it would--see, because--well, see,
the point is they would keep--that one being, that one weak one is jeopardizing the life
of the entire pack. So you would figure evolution would favor people who let the weak die because
that’s the way that the pack is going to survive. They do what? They have to leave
it behind otherwise everybody dies. >> People under stress of immediate death
do that a lot. >> KELLER: Yeah, and I would say it’s because
evolution has probably put that into us. >> Right.
>> KELLER: Right. And that’s the reason. So I don’t know that it would be fair to
say that--no, I really think Annie Dillard's book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, is really pretty,
pretty amazing. And I think she would--she would not just say it’s the water bug killing
the frog. >> Okay.
>> KELLER: Okay. Good. Okay. Yes, one more. >> Hi, there. First of all, I’m honored
to be the last question and thank you very much for coming. It completely grew. I’ve
worked here for two and a half years and I’ve never seen the room this full.
>> KELLER: Well, you know, me and Violet. >> So…
>> KELLER: Yeah, we know how to draw a crowd so...
>> So your last--my argument against religion is sort of emotional so it’s not fair to
ask you to respond to it. >> KELLER: Go ahead. Yeah, sure.
>> But I would like you to comment on it because I heard it repeated amongst my colleagues
several times. >> KELLER: Sure. Sure. Yeah.
>> To me, it feels kind of arbitrary to choose between so many different religions. For example,
I have no problem with the argument that there is a god or there isn’t a god. I personally
don’t feel either way. I just kind of don’t care about the question because it doesn’t
seem to affect me. And when people say there’s a god, I don’t have a problem with it. What
I do have a problem with is when people say, “Oh, by the way, God wrote a book and this
book that he wrote, even though it contradicts with all the other books, is correct to the
exclusion of others.” And I know that I’ve heard a lot of Christians say that, well,
Christianity kind of has a leg up on the other religions because in this religion, God actually
came down and told us that, you know, he exists, right?
>> KELLER: Yeah. I kind of alluded to it, you know.
>> Surprisingly enough, there is another religion where this is true as well. I’m actually
God. And if you don’t kneel down before me and worship me, you’re going to go to
hell. And, also, my hell is actually worse than the Christian hell. It’s a lot worse.
There’s maggots and snakes, and in-laws and everything. So, and, obviously, you probably
aren’t going to worship me which is unfortunate because I kind of need the money. But why
not? >> KELLER: Well, the right answer is you probably
could have me back to talk about Christianity because I realized that it’s just natural
for, you know, the first questioner there, you know, obviously, showed me that--you know,
I was sneaking certain Christian presupposition into some of my statements without being able
to--without justifying them because nobody really is a generic believer in God. I mean,
you’re almost always--there are all these different human traditions. There’s Christianity,
Islam, eastern, western have really somewhat different views of God and I’m coming from
a Christian point of view and I definitely have slipped a few things in there that I
didn’t work, I didn’t justify. And if you want to be back and just do a half hour
on that, I could. However, my snarky answer, I mean, after all, this is Google and let’s
do it this way. My snarky answer is if you were--if you died on the cross after living
a life in which everybody is amazed at the quality of it and then, afterwards, hundreds
of people see you, you know, with a nail prints in 500 at a time, repeatedly over 40 days,
well, that’s different, then people might start to say, you know, people who didn’t
believe are believing. They come and they see you, they put the nail--their fingers
to the nail prints. That’s a different situation and that’s really what you have with Christianity.
>> That did actually happen to me in Antarctica. You probably didn’t hear about it. I can’t
provide you any rational evidence for it, but it did happen.
>> KELLER: But Christian would never say that. They would say, “Here’s the eye witness
accounts. Here’s the 500 people.” 1st Corinthians 15, Paul wrote, this is 15 years
after Jesus' death and resurrection, he says, “There’s still--500 people saw Jesus at
once, one of his appearances.” And he says, “Most of them are still alive. Go ahead
and talk to them.” But you’re not doing that. So what you’re saying is I can’t
give you any witnesses. Paul says, I don’t want you to believe in Christianity unless
you go and talk to these people. They're there. And you’re not able to provide the same
kind of warrant. >> My friend, Brian, over there saw it happened.
He could probably tell you about it. >> KELLER: At best, I would say well done
and, with that, I'll close. Well done. Thank you for the questions.