字幕表 動画を再生する
>> 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.