The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism by Timothy Keller (English) P

Description: The Reason for God by Timothy Keller Keller uses literature, philosophy, real-life conversations and reasoning, and even pop culture to explain how faith in a Christian God is a soundly rational belief, held by thoughtful people of intellectual integrity. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description Timothy Keller, the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, addresses the frequent doubts that sceptics and non-believers bring to religion. Using literature, philosophy, anthropology, pop culture, and intellectual reasoning, Keller explains how the belief in a Christian God is, in fact, a sound and rational one. To true believers he offers a solid platform on which to stand against the backlash toward religion spawned by the Age of Skepticism. And to skeptics, atheists, and agnostics he provides a challenging argument for pursuing the reason for God. Author Biography Timothy Keller was born and raised in Pennsylvania and educated at Bucknell University, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and Westminster Theological Seminary. His first pastorate was in Hopewell, Virginia. In 1989 he started Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City with his wife, Kathy, and their three sons. Today, Redeemer has nearly six thousand regular Sunday attendees and has helped to start more than three hundred new churches around the world. He is the author of The Songs of Jesus, Prayer, Encounters with Jesus, Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering, Every Good Endeavor, and The Meaning of Marriage, among others, including the perennial bestsellers The Reason for God and The Prodigal God. Review "It is easy to understand [Timothy Kellers] appeal." -The New York Times"In a flood of bestsellers by skeptics and atheists...Keller stands out as an effective counterpoint and defender of the faith. The Reason for God makes a tight, accessible case for reasoned religious belief." -The Washington Post "Its a provocative premise, in pursuit of which Keller...takes on nonbelievers from evolutionary biologists to the recent rash of atheist authors." -The Boston Globe "Reverend Tim Keller [is] a Manhattan institution, one of those open urban secrets, like your favorite dim sum place, with a following so ardent and so fast-growing that he has never thought to advertise." -New York magazine "An intellectually compelling case for God." -Publishers Weekly "I thank God for him." -Billy Graham Review Quote It is easy to understand [Timothy Keller Excerpt from Book THE REASON FOR GOD THE REASON FOR GOD CONTENTS Introduction PART 1: THE LEAP OF DOUBT ONE There Cant Be Just One True Religion TWO How Could a Good God Allow Suffering? THREE Christianity Is a Straitjacket FOUR The Church Is Responsible for So Much Injustice FIVE How Can a Loving God Send People to Hell? SIX Science Has Disproved Christianity SEVEN You Cant Take the Bible Literally [Intermission 115] PART 2: THE REASONS FOR FAITH EIGHT The Clues of God NINE The Knowledge of God TEN The Problem of Sin ELEVEN Religion and the Gospel TWELVE The (True) Story of the Cross THIRTEEN The Reality of the Resurrection FOURTEEN The Dance of God Epilogue: Where Do We Go from Here? Acknowledgments Notes Index About the Author INTRODUCTION I find your lack of faith--disturbing. --Darth Vader The Enemies Are Both Right There is a great gulf today between what is popularly known as liberalism and conservatism. Each side demands that you not only disagree with but disdain the other as (at best) crazy or (at worst) evil. This is particularly true when religion is the point at issue. Progressives cry out that fundamentalism is growing rapidly and nonbelief is stigmatized. They point out that politics has turned toward the right, supported by mega-churches and mobilized orthodox believers. Conservatives endlessly denounce what they see as an increasingly skeptical and relativistic society. Major universities, media companies, and elite institutions are heavily secular, they say, and they control the culture. Which is it? Is skepticism or faith on the ascendancy in the world today? The answer is Yes. The enemies are both right. Skepticism, fear, and anger toward traditional religion are growing in power and influence. But at the same time, robust, orthodox belief in the traditional faiths is growing as well. The non-churchgoing population in the United States and Europe is steadily increasing.1 The number of Americans answering "no religious preference" to poll questions has skyrocketed, having doubled or even tripled in the last decade.2 A century ago most U.S. universities shifted from a formally Christian foundation to an overtly secular one.3 As a result, those with traditional religious beliefs have little foothold in any of the institutions of cultural power. But even as more and more people identify themselves as having "no religious preference," certain churches with supposedly obsolete beliefs in an infallible Bible and miracles are growing in the United States and exploding in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Even in much of Europe, there is some growth in church attendance.4 And despite the secularism of most universities and colleges, religious faith is growing in some corners of academia. It is estimated that 10 to 25 percent of all the teachers and professors of philosophy in the country are orthodox Christians, up from less than 1 percent just thirty years ago.5 Prominent academic Stanley Fish may have had an eye on that trend when he reported, "When Jacques Derrida died [in November 2004] I was called by a reporter who wanted to know what would succeed high theory and the triumvirate of race, gender, and class as the center of intellectual energy in the academy. I answered like a shot: religion."6 In short, the world is polarizing over religion. It is getting both more religious and less religious at the same time. There was once a confident belief that secular European countries were the harbingers for the rest of the world. Religion, it was thought, would thin out from its more robust, supernaturalist forms or die out altogether. But the theory that technological advancement brings inevitable secularization is now being scrapped or radically rethought.7 Even Europe may not face a secular future, with Christianity growing modestly and Islam growing exponentially. The Two Camps I speak from an unusual vantage point on this two-edged phenomenon. I was raised in a mainline Lutheran church in eastern Pennsylvania. When I reached my teens in the early 1960s, the time came for me to attend confirmation class, a two-year course that covered Christian beliefs, practices, and history. Its aim was to bring young people into a fuller understanding of the faith, so they could publicly commit to it. My teacher for the first year was a retired minister. He was quite traditional and conservative, speaking often of the danger of hell and the need for great faith. In the second year of the course, however, the instructor was a new, young cleric just out of seminary. He was a social activist and was filled with deep doubts about traditional Christian doctrine. It was almost like being instructed in two different religions. In the first year, we stood before a holy, just God whose wrath could only be turned aside at great effort and cost. In the second year, we heard of a spirit of love in the universe, who mainly required that we work for human rights and the liberation of the oppressed. The main question I wanted to ask our instructors was, "Which one of you is lying?" But fourteen-year-olds are not so bold, and I just kept my mouth shut. My family later found its way to a more conservative church in a small Methodist denomination. For several years this strengthened what could be called the "Hellfire Layer" of my religious formation, although the pastor and people there were personally as gentle as could be. Then I went off to one of those fine, liberal, smaller universities in the Northeast, which quickly began to throw water on the hellfire in my imagination. The history and philosophy departments were socially radicalized and were heavily influenced by the neo-Marxist critical theory of the Frankfurt School. In 1968, this was heady stuff. The social activism was particularly attractive, and the critique of American bourgeoisie society was compelling, but its philosophical underpinnings were confusing to me. I seemed to see two camps before me, and there was something radically wrong with both of them. The people most passionate about social justice were moral relativists, while the morally upright didnt seem to care about the oppression going on all over the world. I was emotionally drawn to the former path--what young person wouldnt be? Liberate the oppressed and sleep with who you wanted! But I kept asking the question, "If morality is relative, why isnt social justice as well?" This seemed to be a blatant inconsistency in my professors and their followers. Yet now I saw the stark contradiction in the traditional churches. How could I turn back to the kind of orthodox Christianity that supported segregation in the South and apartheid in South Africa? Christianity began to seem very unreal to me, though I was unable to discern a viable alternative way of life and thought. I didnt know it at the time, but this spiritual "unreality" stemmed from three barriers that lay across my path. During my college years, these three barriers eroded and my faith became vital and life-affecting. The first barrier was an intellectual one. I was confronted with a host of tough questions about Christianity: "What about other religions? What about evil and suffering? How could a loving God judge and punish? Why believe anything at all?" I began to read books and arguments on both sides of these issues and slowly but surely, Christianity began to make more and more sense. The rest of this book lays out why I still think so. The second barrier was an interior, personal one. As a child, the plausibility of a faith can rest on the authority of others, but when we reach adulthood there is a need for personal, firsthand experience as well. While I had "said my prayers" for years, and while I sometimes had that inspirational, aesthetic sense of wonder at the sight of a sea or mountain, I had never experienced Gods presence personally. This required not so much knowledge of techniques for prayer, but a process in which I came to grips with my own needs, flaws, and problems. It was painful, and was, as is typical, triggered by disappointments and failures. It would take another, different kind of book to go into them. But it needs to be said that faith-journeys are never simply intellectual exercises. The third barrier was a social one. I desperately needed to find a "third camp," a group of Christians who had a concern for justice in the world but who grounded it in the nature of God rather than in their own subjective feelings. When I found that "band of brothers"--and sisters ( just as important!)--things began to change for me. These three barriers did not come down quickly or in any set order. Rather they were intertwined and dependent on one another. I did not work through them in any methodical way. Its only in hindsight that I see how the three factors worked together. Because I was always looking for that third camp, I became interested in shaping and initiating new Christian communities. That meant the ministry, so I entered it just a few years after college. The View from Manhattan In the late 1980s, my wife, Kathy, and I moved to Manhattan with our three young sons to begin a new church for a largely non-churchgoing population. During the research phase I was told by almost everyone that it was a fools errand. Church meant moderate or conservative; the city was liberal and edgy. Church meant families; New York City was filled with young singles and "nontraditional" househ Details ISBN1594483493 Short Title REASON FOR GOD Language English ISBN-10 1594483493 ISBN-13 9781594483493 Media Book Format Paperback DEWEY 239 Year 2009 Series Riverhead Pages 352 Birth 1950 Subtitle Belief in an Age of Skepticism DOI 10.1604/9781594483493 Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2009-08-04 NZ Release Date 2009-08-04 US Release Date 2009-08-04 UK Release Date 1900-01-01 Author Timothy Keller Publisher Penguin Putnam Inc Publication Date 2009-08-04 Imprint Riverhead Books,U.S. Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:21714274;

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