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PETER KREEFT
Sal: You should, but what does that have to do with arguing?
Chris: The prize here is the truth about God and the meaning of our lives, whatever that truth
may be. That's what we're both committed to, isn't it?
Sal: Truth, yes.
Chris: And isn't that valuable, like a prize?
Sal: Yes, if we ever find it.
Chris: Shouldn't we try? Shouldn't we knock at the door?
Sal: What's the door?
Chris: Honest dialogue. Looking for reasons.
Sal: Reasons to believe?
Chris: Yes. Or not to believe.
Sal: I don't think it'll work. I don't think you can reason your way into religion.
Chris: Oh, neither do I. But you might reason your way to the place where you can believe like walking to the beach, and then swimming. Walking to the beach is like reason and
swimming is like faith. You have to go to the place where you can swim before you can swim.
And you have to go to the place where you can believe before you can believe.
Sal: You mean you have to prove it first by reason before you can believe it?
Chris: No, not at all. But I think it's your reason that's holding you back from believing. I think
your reason is asking some good questions that no one has ever answered for you.
Sal: That's true.
Chris: So if we can find the answers to those questions, we can at least make
faithpossible for you. Then it's up to you, of course.
Sal: I see. You agree, then, that religious faith is a matter of personal choice.
Chris: Of course.
Sal: But reason and logic isn't the way we usually make personal choices. Therefore it's not
the way to make the choice about religious faith.
Chris: That sounds like pretty good logic, Sal: Let's examine your argument. What do you
mean by a "personal choice"?
Sal: What's right for one person can be wrong for another.
Chris: I see. You mean things like getting married or not, or deciding on a career, or how to
spend money.
Sal: Right. There's no one right way for everybody.
Chris: But religion isn't like those things, Sal.
Sal: I thought you agreed it was a personal decision.
Chris: I did. But it claims to tell you something that's true for everybody. What's personal is
your response to it.
Sal: What do you mean, "true for everybody"? What religious things are true for everybody?
Chris: Things like God and Heaven - whether they're true or not doesn't depend on you, or
on your personal choice, any more than the sun does.
Sal: But if I believe it's true, then it's true for me, and if I don't then it isn't true for me.
Chris: Do you think that believing something makes it true?
Sal: True for me, yes.
Chris: But really true? Objectively true?
Sal: Well, what I mean to say is that nobody can prove whether there really is a God or not.
Chris: Oh, but that's a different question, whether anybody can prove it. Surely God might
exist without your proving it. Plenty of things exist that you can't prove, don't they?
Sal: Like what?
Chris: Like the fact that I'm thinking about the color yellow now. Or the fact that I honestly
care about you. Can you prove those things?
Sal: No.
Chris: Then things can be true without our proving them.
Sal: Yes.
Chris: So God might be true even if we couldn't prove him.
Sal: O.K., but we can't prove him. No one can settle religious questions. So I think it's a
waste of time to argue about them.
Chris: I see. And why do you think no one can settle religious questions?
Sal: I just think so, that's all.
Chris: You have no reasons to think that?
Sal: Sure I do.
Chris: I think you can guess what my next question is going to be.
Sal: You mean, what are my reasons?
Chris: Good guess.
Sal: Well, you can't prove God like you can prove other things, like galaxies and germs and
scientific stuff.
Chris: Common sense, experience, intuition, insight, reasoning, and trustable authority. We
use everything we have to look at all the evidence.
Sal: And how do you know which of those methods to use?
Chris: You use the method that fits your subject matter. You don't use the scientific method
to understand people you love, for instance, any more than you use love to understand math
or chemistry.
Sal: What do you use for God?
Chris: He's a person, so you use the method that fits persons: love and faith.
Sal: That's naive. Unscientific.
Chris: But it's right for persons. Look. Science is rightly critical and distrustful. It accepts
nothing until it's proved. Nature treated as guilty until proven innocent, so to speak. But
people are innocent until proven guilty. If we treated people the way science treats nature,
we'd never understand them. The only way to understand them is to trust them, not to
distrust them. And to love them.
Sal: Just shut your eyes and believe, eh?
Chris: No. Open your eyes and believe.
Sal: But "love is blind."
Chris: Not real love. Real love sees the other person's inside, like an X-ray.
Sal: But sometimes it makes mistakes. Sometimes you trust somebody and he lets you
down. Trust doesn't always pay.
Chris: But it's a chance worth taking, isn't it? To live without loving anyone, without trusting
anyone - that would be Hell, wouldn't it?
Sal: Yes.