Transcript from Authors@Google: Tim Keller
Tim Keller Discusses his Book – Reason to Believe
Tim Keller is a model for gracious engagement with the secular mindset. The following transcript of the first 10 minutes of his talk on the Google Campus comes from the Authors@Google series. Listen carefully, and mark any instances of 'gracious engagement'. Add observations in the spaces provided.
Consider also what aspects of Keller's presentation make it so 'listenable' and attention-getting.
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Thankyou. I'm going to stay here. Thankyou. Though I have not – thank you Eugene. 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, for those of you who don't know, my background, I think that had to be all of you. <Laugh> I mean, why would anybody know it. Even my children don't really know it.
OBSERVATIONS?
So I want to talk to you about the reason – the reasoning behind… belief in God, or the reasoning that leads to belief in God. I am not – I can't (ah) possible 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.
OBSERVATIONS?(Body language?)
I certainly can't really give good answers to this question in a talk, but I think – I think I addressed it a lot better in the book where I had a little bit more time.
OBSERVATIONS? Epistemic Humility?
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, uh how the reasons for God work, and what the reasons for God are.
OBSERVATIONS? Structure, logic, suspense
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 be know this, what I'm about to tell you, and here's the reason why:
OBSERVATIONS?
When I was your age – hmm – looking out there – when I was your age, which is a long tie ago, everybody knew that, ah, 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 any more. 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 has gone from 9% to 55% Christian in the last hundred years. Korea went from about 1% to 40% Christian in a hundred years WHILE Korea was getting more technologically advanced. The same thing has basically happened for China. There's more Christians in China now than there are in America, and this has been happening even as science has advanced, so the whole idea that orthodox religion is going to go away, no, it's going to be here. So the only way we're going to get along is we got to be able to get sympathetically into one another'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.
OBSERVATIONS? Mindset attributed to the atheist listener? Cf current Australian Christian positioning
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 those 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, show 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. Um. Doubt.
OBSERVATIONS?
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 (sigh), ye… 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, ah doubts, dealing with doubts honestly is the best possible way to build a faith that can last in the face of anything. And 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 I know in this country, at least, are kind of ambivalent. They – your relationship with believe in God is really a weird one. Sometimes you do (chuckle); sometimes, you do more; sometimes you do less. And you particularly need to hear this.
1000 words 6:47
Approx 150 wpm.
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 either, 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. What you might call reasoning proper.
OBSERVATIONS? (Gracious positioning, identifying presuppositions)
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. (laugh)
How would I know that? And – somebody told me; I didn't believe them. So you're happy; things are going 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 successful and I'm still empty. So there's always interpreted experiences, 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 the 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 life you were also being skeptical and sophisticated and making jokes about it.
Or if you move from belief, 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 like, and they believed.
10:00
But what you can't do is reduce belief or non-belief to just one of those three, and people always do it. Let me 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?
OBSERVATIONS?
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