Is Religion Invalidated Because of Cultural Conditioning?

Obviously I have decided to continue commenting on some of the more popular "arguments" against religion, taking my cue from Timothy Keller's book, The Reason For God. You would profit much more from reading it yourself if you are able to do so. But I enjoy passing along things I read so hopefully these little entries will be helpful in some way.

I put quotations around the word "arguments" because I want to begin with a point about arguing. When a person "argues" he is giving a reason for or against something. Either way he is arguing for something. If he is arguing against something, he is consequently arguing for an alternative. That alternative is "truth" for him. This is important to me because when I hear people arguing against absolute truth, I also hear them arguing for their own absolute truth. So in the end, what they condemn me for...they are gulity of themselves.

The next popular claim against the validity of there being a right religion is, "Religious belief is too culturally and historically conditioned to be 'truth'." This simply means that we are what we are because of our environment and our connections. I was born in America so it was highly likely I would be a Christian. Had I been born in Iraq I may have well been a Muslim. Because these factors exist, it is argued that there cannot be real truth. The thrust of the argument is that we really can't make a fair judgment on truth because we have not walked in others' shoes who live in environments that believe in a wholly other truth.

So lets put this claim up against itself. The claim is that religious claims to the truth are too culturally conditioned to be a true truth. This claim being made is a claim to truth. It is a claim to an alternative to religions...but it is a religion itself. It is a truth claim. And more than that, it is VERY culturally conditioned. Here is an example:

"If you were born in Iraq you would probably be a Muslim and not a Christian" Suppose for the sake of argument that I was born in Iraq to Muslim parents. It is certainly true I would have been heavily influenced with claims that would have instilled different beliefs. Because of this, it is asserted Christianity is therefore not reliable, it is just what I was taught to believe. But here is the problem for the one arguing this with me. If he would have been born in Iraq, he too would probably be a Muslim. So according to his own argument, his truth claim is not reliable. think hard about what I just wrote. I know it is confusing, but in a nutshell, these claims are self-refuting. They refute themselves. They cannot stand up to their own standards.

Just because it is true that some places influence us with different worldviews, it does not therefore necessitate that there can be no real truth.