The Reason for God by Timothy Keller
Week 11: Chapter 9 — The Knowledge of God
Read Chapter 9 of The Reason for God by Timothy Keller.
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Keller argues that our deep, universal moral intuitions — the sense that some things are truly right and truly wrong regardless of cultural fashion — cannot be accounted for on naturalistic grounds and point powerfully toward a moral lawgiver. Examine your own moral convictions honestly as you work through these questions.
Discussion Questions
7 questions1.Keller opens by observing that virtually all people, in all cultures and times, have shared certain core moral intuitions: that gratuitous cruelty is wrong, that justice matters, that human dignity deserves respect. Where do you think these intuitions come from? What is the strongest naturalistic explanation you have encountered?
2.He uses the example of condemning the Holocaust: if morality is purely relative to culture or personal preference, on what basis can we say that what the Nazis did was genuinely, objectively wrong — and not merely something we happen to dislike? Walk through the implications of moral relativism taken seriously.
a.If all moral claims are just expressions of cultural preference, can you make a principled case for human rights?
b.Most people resist moral relativism when it is pressed to its logical conclusions. What does that resistance itself tell us?
3.Keller acknowledges that the evolutionary account of morality — that our moral intuitions evolved because they aided survival — is interesting as far as it goes. But he argues it does not vindicate those intuitions as actually true. If our sense of justice is just a survival mechanism, does it give us any reason to follow it when doing so is costly? How do you respond to that challenge?
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