Timothy Keller

Timothy J. Keller is a preacher and Christian apologist. His theological views seem to be a mishmash of Calvinism, Presbyterianism, and various other Protestant beliefs. Keller holds many Conservative American Christian social views: he is homophobic, doesn't support gender equality or social justice, and doesn't support those fields of science which contradict his interpretations of his religion.

Sermon 2020-07-24

While discussing some of the more problematic aspects of the Christian religion, my uncle requested that I listen to this sermon. I said I would on the condition that he listen to audio of equal length. The sermon is about people praying about the doubts they have regarding Christianity. Since I'm a former Christian, I presume my uncle suggested I listen to it in hopes that the speaker's talk about doubt would cause me to realize that I could still be a Christian even with doubts.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/praying-our-doubts/id352660924?i=1000485580247

Below are my timestamped notes of the sermon:

• 00:23 - In the intro, we're asked to rate and review the podcast to help people hear and experience the power of God's word. Why would a god need someone to write a positive review of a podcast in order to disseminate his message? This reminds me of that wonderful Star Trek V: The Final Frontier quote, "What does God need with a starship?"
• 02:13 - The sermon opens with Psalm 73:1-26. In which the author says the life of a righteous man is very difficult, but, when he enters the kingdom of God, he will see that the wicked will be swept away by terrors because they are despised by God. It says that God himself placed the wicked people on a slippery place, essentially dooming them from the start. Keller probably views this a wonderful, but I find it utterly barbaric. Purposely setting someone up to fail and then sweeping them away when they do sounds like something you would expect from a cruel demon, not a loving caregiver.
• 03:30 - "The religious approach to feelings is to be very uncomfortable with them." I appreciate that he critiques his own beliefs so frankly.
• 04:40 - "The secular approach (which I find indefensible) is that your feelings is really who you are, not your beliefs or practices." I know a lot of entirely secular people, and I don't think I've ever heard any of them espouse this belief. To me, Keller is straw-manning.
• 06:10 - Keller explains that the Book of Psalms, when you read all of it, and not just what you find in greeting cards, is full of raw emotions like anger and fear, to the point where it disturbs people today. I appreciate that he points this out, because many of the Psalms are really horrifying. I think more Christians would have doubts if they took the time to read them.
• 06:30 - Keller says that the authors of the Pslams are "praying their feelings, they're processing their feelings in the presence of God." I don't know of any passages that actually make this claim, so this appears to just be Keller's personal opinion of the Psalms, however, he presents it as fact. This is very common among preachers, and Keller does this many more times throughout this sermon. I would be fine with it if he prefaced such statements with, "it is my opinion that..." but he simply asserts his opinion as fact. This is dishonest.
• 07:05 - "Doubt always masquerades as more intellectual than it is." I'm not trying to be funny here, but I seriously doubt that. It's also pretty insulting to everyone who actually does have intellectual reasons to doubt.
• 07:10 - "Doubt is a condition of the soul and heart." No, doubt is a condition of the brain. The heart is a muscle that pumps blood. Also, without a useful definition of a "soul" (which means different things to most people), this definition is very ambiguous.
• 09:17 - "What is doubt? It's a spiritual form of dizziness or vertigo that happens when your eye gives your brain something that it can't process and makes you put your foot in the wrong place." I think he's defining cognitive dissonance rather than doubt. And this is a quite different definition that he used earlier. He will continue to redefine both "doubt" and "faith" throughout his sermon.
• 11:45 - "The Pslams were not all written by David." In fact, probably none of them were, as biblical scholars now have a lot of evidence to distrust the traditional attributions. The Book of Psalms appears to be an aggregate of texts spanning several centuries from mostly anonymous authors. Some of them even appear to have been plagiarized from other cultures, and many show evidence of redaction.
• 13:50 - Keller describes Thomas as "hard-nosed" for saying he'll need to see the holes in Jesus's hand before he'll believe the person is really him. That's not hard-nosed, that is a perfectly reasonable demand. If someone claims a person was raised from the dead, no rational person would believe it based solely on another person's anecdote.
• 14:35 - Keller says Thomas's belief in Jesus is a "confession of faith." No, it's the exact opposite of faith. Thomas was wise not to have faith and to instead demand evidence. At 14:47, Keller says it's the "greatest expression of belief," again, no it isn't.
• 14:53 - Keller's quote of Francis Bacon's book which talks about doubt being a good thing is quite nice. I like what he says about it, though I disagree that it applies to Christianity.
• 16:26 - "The bible has an amazing balanced view of doubts." This made me chuckle.
• 20:35 - "There is enormous positive energy in doubt." I agree with that.
• 23:40 - Keller says faith is not opposed to reason, rather faith is "holding onto what you know to be true in spite of how things appear to your heart." To me, that statement is opposed to reason. If your senses tell you that you're on a high ledge, but you "know in your heart" that you are on solid ground, is it rational to take a step forward?
• 25:45 - "Faith is not holding onto something in spite of the evidence." That is essentially how you defined faith just a few seconds ago.
• 25:49 - "Faith is holding onto something in spite of the appearances." The way that something appears is a form of evidence. If a person appears to have dyed their hair blue, that is evidence they did dye their hair blue, and it would be rational to conclude as much.
• 26:20 - Keller suggests the problem of evil is solved by his god needing to use evil in order to fulfill his ultimate purpose. This only makes sense for a god which is not all-powerful. An all-powerful god would never have to resort to needing evil. I like that he admits this isn't a very comforting solution when it happens to you personally.
• 27:10 - Keller says the woman in C.S. Lewis's example needs "faith" in her friends. This isn't really the same definition he used earlier. It's very frustrating that he won't simply define the word "faith" in a meaningful manner, without fuzzy words like "soul," and just stick to it.
• 31:00 - Keller's inclusion of C.S. Lewis's story about the academics is insulting. He paints the academics as not being honest, but basing their intelligence on being popular and being afraid to be Christian, which is not an academic position. Most of the academics I know are very open and honest about their disbelief. They're not secretly Christians, but have thoughtful and cogent arguments about why aspects of Christianity seem false.
• 31:50 - He's saying it's dishonest, prideful, and controlling to have doubt because of the problem of evil and again trying to solve it with God needing evil. I see this as rather harmful.
• 33:30 - Keller says, it's not fair to doubt Christianity unless you go to church, sing, pray, and worship God. Would he also encourage his listeners to go to a Mosque and pray to and worship Allah before doubting Islam, or go to a temple and pray to and worship Ganesha before doubting Hindusim? Or the same for the thousands of other religions? Why does he give special treatment to Christianity?
• 34:00 - "You must worship God or you will never find him." That doesn't help assuage my doubt. I can demonstrate the existence of all sorts of things without having to worship them first. If Keller's god wants a relationship with me, why is he so elusive? Why does he demand I worship him before he makes himself known to me?
• 35:35 - Keller says you can't prove there is a god, but you can't prove there isn't a god either. This is a very tired argument.
• 35:38 - Keller makes another flawed argument saying disbelief in something is impossible, because, no matter what, you have to have faith in something. He is again using a different definition for "faith." We don't need to have faith in our senses, because they are generally reliable. But, even if he meant "belief," he would still be wrong. You can base your footing on axioms, things that are true because they logically have to be true, like the axiom of identity (a thing is what it is).
• 36:50 - "It would take enormous faith just to reject Jesus." No it wouldn't. The very scant evidence we have in favor of Jesus is extremely low-quality and sketchy. The Christian he's talking about concluded that, since it would be just as hard to believe Jesus as to disbelieve Jesus, I chose to believe him. If you're stuck halfway between belief and disbelief, a rational person doesn't flip a coin and then go all in, they wait for more evidence.
• 37:14 - He invokes Pascal's wager (you're better off believing in God because you have a lot to lose if you're wrong). This argument is flawed in so many ways. What if it's the Muslim god (or any thousands of others) who's real, now you're really screwed! Is believing in a god just because you're afraid of being wrong a good reason, and would that god be impressed by that? Can you simply choose to believe in something? Like, can you choose to believe the moon is green cheese and actually believe it?
• 38:10 - Keller says the problem of evil is a problem for people who believe in God, but it's an even bigger problem for people who don't. No, the problem of evil is only a problem for people who believe in an all-good, all-powerful god. If such a god doesn't exist, evil doesn't need an explanation.
• 38:27 - "Could there be such a thing as horrifying wickedness if there were no God?" Yes, of course, unless you define "evil" as being related to your god.
• 38:38 - "An atheistic view of the world has no place for genuine moral obligation." That's wrong; suffering is still suffering, even if it's entirely natural. Besides, objective secular morality exists.
• 38:50 - Keller invokes the moral argument for the existence of a god, which any first-year philosophy student can rip to shreds. If he first tried to define "morality," he would find all sorts of problems with this argument.
• 39:20 - Keller says that all other beliefs are worse than the Christian God. What an incredibly short-sighted statement. Has he considered every other possible belief system? Of course not. Then, why is he so certain that Christianity is the best?
• 41:13 - "Bottom line, I'm afraid of meeting God. A lot of my doubts are not intellectual." How very insulting.
• 43:35 - Keller suggests that Jesus, during his crucifixion, would have had the strongest possible doubt in God. This would only make sense if you either didn't believe Jesus is also God, or that you think Jesus was unaware of the fact that he is God. If Jesus is aware that he is God, he couldn't possibly doubt himself.

In summary, Timothy Keller's sermon is a series of logical fallacies. He uses several flawed arguments without attempting to fix them, he equivocates (changes the definition dishonestly) "doubt" and "faith" multiple times throughout the sermon, misquotes his own scripture, and says several bigoted remarks against non-Christians.

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