TWO RESEARCH PARADIGMS, WITH OR WITHOUT „GOD HYPOTHESIS”: C.S. LEWIS AND RICHARD DAWKINS
TWO RESEARCH PARADIGMS, WITH OR WITHOUT „GOD HYPOTHESIS”: C.S. LEWIS AND RICHARD DAWKINS

Summary/Abstract: In this present paper we try to learn something about how to cope with analytical investigation of reality, by comparing the ideas of two iconic Oxford figures. On the one hand, the renowned atheist Richard Dawkins, and the Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, on the other. It is more than interesting to know how to great thinkers of the 20th century can raise and answer to questions of life, such as Reasoned belief, the so-called „God hypothesis” or concerning our place and purpose in this world. Both Dawkins and Lewis see intellectual reflection on the big questions as natural and significant. Both insist that their beliefs – atheism and Christianity respectively – demand and deserve intellectual seriousness and are capable of being developed into larger systems. Lewis’s apologetic approach generally takes the form of identifying a common human observation or experience, and then showing how it fits, naturally and plausibly, within a Christian way of looking at things. For Dawkins, there is no room for faith in science, precisely because the evidence compels us to draw certain valid conclusions. He proposes an absolute dichotomy between ‘blind faith’ and the ‘overwhelming scientific evidence. Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator, God, almost certainly does not exist, and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. An inevitable conclusion is that both Dawkins and Lewis are men of faith, in that both hold committed positions that cannot be proved right, but which they clearly regard as justified and reasonable. We must learn to live with a degree of rational uncertainty about our deepest beliefs and values.

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