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Book: Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical
Quotes of Book: Making Sense of God: An
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  1. Timothy J. Keller _ Making Sense of God: An

    Charles Taylor explains why modern people are far more likely to lose their faith over suffering than those in times past. He says it is because, culturally, our belief and confidence in the powers of our own intellect have changed. Ancient people did not assume that the human mind had enough wisdom to sit in judgment on how an infinite God was disposing of things. It is only in modern times that we get "the certainty that we have all the elements we need to carry out a trial of God."24 Only when this background belief in the sufficiency of our own reason shifted did the presence of evil in the world seem to be an argument against the existence of God.
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  2. Timothy J. Keller _ Making Sense of God: An

    Death was not part of God's original design. We were not created to age, weaken, fade, and die. We were not created for love relationships that end in death. Death is an intrusion, a result of sin and our human race's turning away from God. Our sense even now that we were made to last, that we were made for love without parting, is a memory trace of our divine origins. We are trapped in a world of death, a world for which we were not designed.
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  3. Timothy J. Keller _ Making Sense of God: An

    To insist that death is nothing to be frightened of is simply another illusion muffling the obscenity of death. We live in denial of it, but like all repressed facts, it keeps disturbing us, haunting us, and quietly {or not so quietly} draining our hope.
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  4. Timothy J. Keller _ Making Sense of God: An

    Habermas writes: "The ideals of freedom . . . of conscience, human rights and democracy {are} the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. . . . To this day there is no alternative to it."17 None of this denies that science and reason are sources of enormous and irreplaceable good for human society. The point is rather that science alone cannot serve as a guide for human society.18 This was well summarized in a speech that was written for but never delivered at the Scopes "monkey trial": "Science is a magnificent material force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. . . . Science does not {and cannot} teach brotherly love."19 Secular, scientific reason is a great good, but if taken as the sole basis for human life, it will be discovered that there are too many things we need that it is missing.
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  5. Timothy J. Keller _ Making Sense of God: An

    One of the world's most prominent philosophers, Jürgen Habermas, was for decades a defender of the Enlightenment view that only secular reason should be used in the public square.9 Habermas has recently startled the philosophical establishment, however, with a changed and more positive attitude toward religious faith. He now believes that secular reason alone cannot account for what he calls "the substance of the human." He argues that science cannot provide the means by which to judge whether its technological inventions are good or bad for human beings. To do that, we must know what a good human person is, and science cannot adjudicate morality or define such a thing.10 Social sciences may be able to tell us what human life is but not what it ought to be.11 The dream of nineteenth-century humanists had been that the decline of religion would lead to less warfare and conflict. Instead the twentieth century has been marked by even greater violence, performed by states that were ostensibly nonreligious and operating on the basis of scientific rationality. Habermas tells those who are still confident that "philosophical reason . . . is capable of determining what is true and false" to simply look at the "catastrophes of the twentieth century-religious fascist and communist states, operating on the basis of practical reason-to see that this confidence is misplaced."12 Terrible deeds have been done in the name of religion, but secularism has not proven to be an improvement.
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  6. Timothy J. Keller _ Making Sense of God: An

    If human rights and equality exist "just because we say so," then activists are not able to persuade, only to coerce. They can force cultures to adopt Western, individualistic ideas of rights and equality by using money, political power, or even military force. But, the charge goes, all this is just the latest stage in the West's inveterate bent to domination and colonialism. Western nations are now doing what they've always done, but disingenuously now, under the banner of "human rights.
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  7. Timothy J. Keller _ Making Sense of God: An

    Haidt, for example, believes that Buddha and the Greeks "took things too far."7 He argues that modern research shows some external circumstances do correlate with increased satisfaction. In particular, love relationships are important, and therefore the advice of emotional detachment may actually undermine happiness.
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  8. Timothy J. Keller _ Making Sense of God: An

    Haidt summarizes, "The author of Ecclesiastes wasn't just battling the fear of meaninglessness; he was battling the disappointment of success. . . . Nothing brought satisfaction."2 This is an abiding human problem, and there is plenty of modern empirical research that backs it up. Studies find a very weak correlation between wealth and contentment, and the more prosperous a society grows, the more common is depression.
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  9. Timothy J. Keller _ Making Sense of God: An

    Here, then, is the message. Don't love anything less; instead learn to love God more, and you will love other things with far more satisfaction.
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  10. Timothy J. Keller _ Making Sense of God: An

    Of course, not even the strongest believers love God perfectly, nor does anyone get close to doing so. Yet to the degree you move toward loving him supremely, things begin to fall into order, into their proper places in your life. Instead of looking to the things of the world as the deepest source of your contentment, you can enjoy them for what they are. Money and career, for example, become just what they are supposed to be. Work becomes work, a great way to use your gifts and be useful to others. Money becomes just money, a great way to support your family. But these things are not your source of safety and contentment. He is.
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  11. Timothy J. Keller _ Making Sense of God: An

    We are irreducibly hope-based creatures.
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  12. Timothy J. Keller _ Making Sense of God: An

    Not only do your desires contradict, but they also are elusive. "What are the wants of the self?" Bellah asks. "For all its unmistakable presence and intensity on occasion, the experience of feeling good, like being in love, is so highly subjective that its distinguishing characteristics remain ineffable.
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