Timothy Keller – my last post on his book!

I’m finished with this book. The book is divided into two parts. So far all of my quotes have been from the first part that answers questions a skeptic might have. The second part he sets forth reasons to believe. The second half deals with this subject in such depth it has been hard to find quotes and excerpts that fit into this format of my blog. The following is about all I could find that was concise enough to fit this format. This will be my last blog post on this book. Again I highly recommend reading the whole book.

"To stay away from Christianity because part of the Bible’s teaching is offensive to you assumes that if there is a God he wouldn’t have any views that upset you. Does that belief make sense?"

One aspect that I have thought for many years that disproves evolution is how can we appreciate and enjoy the beauty? The Psalm says “the heavens declare the glory of God and the earth shows his handiwork”. Mr. Keller brings this up in his book.

Hi - I'm reading "The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism" by Timothy Keller and wanted to share this quote with you.

"If there is no God, and everything in this world is the product of (as Bertrand Russell famously put it) “an accidental collocation of atoms,” then there is no actual purpose for which we were made—we are accidents. If we are the product of accidental natural forces, then what we call “beauty” is nothing but a neurological hardwired response to particular data. You only find certain scenery to be beautiful because you had ancestors who knew you would find food there and they survived because of that neurological feature and now we have it too. In the same way, though music feels significant, that significance is an illusion. Love too must be seen in this light. If we are the result of blind natural forces, then what we call “love” is simply a biochemical response, inherited from ancestors who survived because this trait helped them survive."

"C. S. Lewis puts this vividly: You can’t, except in the lowest animal sense, be in love with a girl if you know (and keep on remembering) that all the beauties both of her person and of her character are a momentary and accidental pattern produced by the collision of atoms, and that your own response to them is only a sort of psychic phosphorescence arising from the behavior of your genes. You can’t go on getting very serious pleasure from music if you know and remember that its air of significance is a pure illusion, that you like it only because your nervous system is irrationally conditioned to like it.

another quote:

"Sometimes people approach me and say, “I really struggle with this aspect of Christian teaching. I like this part of Christian belief, but I don’t think I can accept that part.” I usually respond: “If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all he said; if he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.” That is how the first hearers felt who heard reports of the resurrection. They knew that if it was true it meant we can’t live our lives any way we want. It also meant we don’t have to be afraid of anything, not Roman swords, not cancer, nothing. If Jesus rose from the dead, it changes everything."

Later in the book:

"We have to recognize that virtually all of us begin our journey toward God because we want something from him. However, we must come to grips with the fact that we owe him our entire lives just because of what he has done for us already. He is our Creator, and for that fact alone we owe him everything. However, he is also our Redeemer, who rescued us at infinite cost to himself. Any heart that has come to its senses wants to surrender to Someone who not only is all-powerful but has proved that he will sacrifice anything for our good."