kernel #3

For those that have a questioning (or argumentative) family member concerning the existence of God and the rationality of Christian belief, let these be of service to you. Put on your thinking caps! (All quotes taken from Tim Keller's book, The Reason for God)

"All doubts, however skeptical and cynical they may seem, are really a set of alternative beliefs...the reason you doubt Christianity's Belief A is because you hold unprovable Belief B. Every doubt, therefore, is based on a leap of faith"

"the position that all major religions are equally valid and true is inconsistent. It asserts that doctrine is unimportant (who is God), but at the same time assumes doctrinal beliefs about the nature of God (beliefs that are at loggerheads with those of major faiths)...the insistence that doctrines do not matter is really a doctrine itself. It holds a specific view of God, which is touted as superior and more enlightened than the beliefs of most major religions"

"if you infer from the social conditionedness of all beliefs that 'no belief can be held as universally true for everyone' that itself is a comprehensive claim about everyone that is a product of social conditions- so it cannot be true on its own terms...the social conditionedness of belief is a fact, but it cannot be used to argue that all truth is completely relative or else the very argument refutes itself"

"you can't say 'all claims about religions are historically conditioned except the one I am making now"

"the statement 'all religious claims to have a better view of things are arrogant and wrong' is, on its own terms, arrogant and wrong. Many say that is is ethnocentric to claim that our religion is superior to others. Yet isn't that very statement ethnocentric?...rooted in Western traditions of self-criticism and individualism"

and lastly, "we are all exclusive in our beliefs about religion, but in different ways"

some rich stuff to chew on...