Byung Kyu Park's Personal Website

As I’ve said before, I began reading “Reason for God”, as a part of NCB winter break book club thing.

Well, I’m finally done with the book (as of last week), and I can make … general comments about the book—which is great because that’s all I have the time for at the moment.

So the book is broken into two parts. In the first part, Rev. Keller breaks down secularist arguments by arguing, (1) moral relativism (which is essentially the basis of secularism) is internally inconsistent: relativism doesn’t provide enough ground for the tenets of relativism itself, (2) doubt applies to everything; both to the Christian faith and non-believing atheism.

In the second part, Keller tries to provide the argument for Christianity—why it might be true (given the arguments given in first part, we concede that it’s not possible to prove a belief beyond all doubt—or perhaps even reasonable doubt), and why one might want it to be true.

To be blunt, I find the first part far more convincing than the second part. As I read Rev. Keller’s argument for Christianity, as a natural skeptic (but you all know that I put my skepticism to rest on certain aspects), I keep finding myself in the Devil’s advocate’s position, arguing counter-points and alternate plausible explanations that does not involve God or Jesus Christ (like a good lawyer or mathematician, I don’t have to believe in arguments that I advance; if I couldn’t do that, I would have to give up pretending to be a sophist). In contrast, I found myself mostly agreeing with Rev. Keller in the first half; it’s far much easier to agree that skeptical points of views he offered in the first half are reasonable than to agree that the options Rev. Keller is left with in the second half are indeed the only choices left for a reasonable person.

But through both the first and the second part, here’s one argument Rev. Keller makes for Christianity (that I’ve also seen Pastor Allan make, I think last week) that I do find compelling. Christian Bible, especially New Testament, is a true account, at least to the best knowledge of authors and as well as it has been transmitted to us (as verified by agreements between a number of papyri and archeological evidences), and here’s the reason why: the accounts in the gospels are so embarrassing (e.g. Peter denying Jesus three times) and so counter-productive (e.g. women, who didn’t count for much at the time, being the first witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection) that one wouldn’t make up things like that as propaganda. In fact, the only reason one would even tell such a story is because it is true and one feels obliged to tell the truth.

I found the very last chapter a little … too mysterious for me, but other than that, the book provides plenty of food for thought. In the end, there’s no guarantee that it will convince a non-believer—or even a seeker—or that it will not derail a supposed Christian, but one would be better off for having read this book than not.

I finished reading Mrs. Palin’s Going Rogue: An American Life. It’s a good memoir / political treatise, and I am very glad that she got to tell her side of the story—it was so frustrating with the “mainstream” media bashing her with tips from “anonymous sources” and not getting answers from McCain-Palin campaign, but with this book, I see that for every one of the frivolous complaints (about her wardrobe and her children traveling with her) there is a very good explanation.

But this is a good book not only for getting her story out, but also for explaining her political and policy views and her expertise—especially in energy policy, which will only become more important as time goes on. I suppose if you are reading the book just to get her positions on various issues, you’ll get frustrated because of all the narrative in the way, but then, if you are so interested you can probably find other sources. On the other hand, for the ordinary Americans who identify more with Mrs. Palin on the personal level and not just her political views, this book takes a very good approach to sell her positions, surrounded and explained by her narrative.

As for liberals who attack her for “settling scores”, well. I guess bias is a liberal characteristic and we can’t really … blame them for being so bigoted all the time, but read with an open mind. There is only one person Mrs. Palin is settling score with, i.e. Steve Schmidt, a.k.a. “headquarters”, and given all the nasty things Schmidt said about her, can you blame Mrs. Palin? At least she’s saying it out in the open, with her reputation on the line. Schmidt didn’t even give her the chance to face her accuser by making all those leaks anonymously.

In any case, this book is much heavier on her narrative (independent of the McCain campaign) and her political views than her settling score, and that should be evident to any fair-minded reader. If you hear or read anyone claiming that Mrs. Palin is settling score with this book, well, consider the possibility that they are simply repeating the leftist party line. The evidence may be more convincing than you suspect now.

The College Life group at New Church Berkeley wanted to do something to keep in touch over the winter break, so we are reading the book, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism by Tim Keller.

I’m just through the first chapter, and well, it’s an interesting read (I’ll have more to say once I’m done reading). At the moment, I guess I have a few points on which I think I disagree with Rev. Keller: the point of view that says every religion is equally right, that they represent different parts of the Truth (coupled with the elephant and blind men analogy) does not need to be coming from a position of arrogance (i.e. that you somehow know that Truth is bigger than any of these religions). It can be a simple logically consistent position that begins from a simple assumption: “Every religion is correct to the extent of what they claim.” Given the contradictions and disagreements between these religions, the only way this assumption can be true is if there are significant areas where these religions … do not overlap as far as Truth is concerned.

Of course, how one arrives at that assumption (is it out of charity and assumption of goodness of religions? or is it as to arrive at the conclusion which diminishes every religion equally?) is a different question, but direct assumption of a view at greater truth is not … required.

Anyways. Aside from this, I guess there are some areas where I don’t feel quite comfortable (“social justice”; when it means anything other than voluntary private charity, it’s a great tool for ambitious statists), but I’ll have more to say after I’m done.