THE CASE FOR EXTERNAL GUIDANCE

Two broad explanations present themselves. The first sees humans as incomplete beings adrift in an all-embracing cosmos—a puzzle for which the universe offers no answer. The second contends that an answer exists, or at least that one might reasonably expect it to exist. Empirical science cannot settle which of these is true; its methods, by design, are bounded. Yet reason leans towards the latter. If the universe displays a breath-taking order—laws for stars and seasons, instinct for birds and beasts—it is implausible that the one creature tasked with moral choice should be denied any corresponding guidance. The pattern of provision elsewhere suggests provision here as well. External hints abound: just as needs are met throughout nature, so too the deepest human need—to live rightly and meaningfully—ought not to go unanswered. Religion therefore presents itself as external guidance—revelation from the Divine. In the nineteenth century, religion was often dismissed as a social construct or a psychological illusion. Increasingly, however, modern enquiry has revisited that dismissal, finding that religion’s claims about meaning, morality, community, and human flourishing illuminate questions that remain otherwise unresolved. Far from being a relic of credulity, religion supplies a horizon wider than individual perspective and a criterion more stable than shifting consensus. Taken together, these observations point in a single direction. Human liberty without trustworthy guidance becomes confusion. Human intellect without a larger light becomes partial. Human conscience without a sure anchor becomes weary. If we are to live wisely, the evidence of our condition—our grandeur and our fragility—suggests that we require a word from beyond ourselves: a reference point that can ground action and fix its limits, a compass that does not spin with the fashion of the age. Revelation claims to be that compass. And if the universe is as ordered as we find it to be, it is at least reasonable to expect that such a compass has indeed been given. 