Why God Makes Sense in a World That Doesn't by Gavin Ortlund

Author:Gavin Ortlund
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: God (Christianity) | Apologetics, REL051000, REL067000, REL067030, Apologetics/Theology
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2021-09-21T00:00:00+00:00

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The Conflict of the World

Why Good and Evil Shape the Plot of Every Story You’ve Ever Heard

This chapter is about morality. It envisions moral struggle as the fundamental conflict of the world. Thus, if we are thinking of our world as a kind of story, good versus evil will be where the drama lies.

I will draw attention to two aspects of our moral experience: first, our intuitive sense of the objective reality of moral values and obligations1 (what we will call “conscience”); second, our longing for moral justice and moral hope (what we will call a “Happy Ending”). I propose that a worldview that allows for the supernatural provides both a more plausible and a more meaningful explanatory framework for these two aspects of moral experience. Specifically, such a worldview can (1) ground objective moral reality and (2) offer moral hope. By contrast, the story that naturalism tells is a dreadful tale in which moral drama is fundamentally illusory, for conscience is deceiving us and no Happy Ending is coming.

To this end, I will walk through a series of examples from philosophy, movies, and literature to describe the nature of morality as we encounter it. The recurring question will be, Which worldview can better account for this reality: a supernaturalistic one or a naturalistic one? Throughout, but particularly in conclusion, I begin to consider theism more concretely, in contrast to other supernaturalistic alternatives.

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