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

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 two 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.

The Epistemic Virtues of a Closed Mind: Effective Science Reporting in the Golden Age of the Con

A financial confidence game (or “con”) aims to separate you from your money. An epistemic con aims to influence social policy by recruiting you to spread doubt and falsehood about well-established claims. You can’t be conned if you close your wallet to financial cons and your mind to epistemic cons. Easier said than done. The epistemic con has two elements. First are magic bullet arguments, which purport to identify the crucial fact that proves some well-established hypothesis is false. Second are appeals to epistemic virtue: You should be fair, consider the evidence, think for yourself. The appeal to epistemic virtue opens your mind to the con; countless magic bullet arguments keep it open. As in most cons, you (the mark or victim) don’t understand the game. You think it’s to find the truth. But really, it’s to see how long the con artist can string you along as his unwitting shill (an accomplice who entices victims to the con). Strategic Reliabilism says that reasoning is rational to the extent it’s accurate, easy to use, and practical (it applies to significant problems). It recommends that we give close-minded deference to settled science, and thus avoid a large class of epistemic cons. Settled science consists of the general consensus of scientific experts. These experts are defined not by their personal characteristics but by their roles within the institutions of science. Close-minded deference is not blind faith or certainty. It is belief that does not waver in the face of objections from other (less reliable) sources. When the epistemic con is on, the journalist faces a dilemma. Report on magic bullet arguments and thereby open people’s minds to the con. Or don’t, and feed the con artist’s narrative that evidence is being suppressed. As always, the journalist’s best response is sunshine: Report on the story of the epistemic con. Show people how they work. The story of the epistemic con has, at its heart, a wicked reveal: Your reaction to the story is itself part of the story, and it tells you whether the true villain of the story lurks within you.

Fragments of Moral Theology in John Locke’s Notebooks

Согласно Локку, «закон морали» столь же важен для спасения, как «закон дел» и «закон веры», и предполагает неукоснительное исполнение всех моральных предписаний, возвещенных в Евангелии. Локк также считал неприемлемой «слепую веру» и противопоставлял ей веру ясную и понятную, рациональную и просвещенную, открыто и свободно исповедуемую любым человеком. В ответе на вопрос, как и в каком интеллектуальном контексте происходило становление моральной теологии Локка, свою роль могут сыграть не только основные теологические тексты философа, но и его записные книжки (1692–1698). According to Locke the Law of Morality is crucial for Salvation, in the same way as the Law of Works and the Law of Faith, requiring full observance of all moral precepts delivered in the Gospel. Locke also deemed unacceptable the so called “implicit” or blind faith, and contrasted it with the Faith plain and explicit, rational and enlightened, openly and freely professed by any believing person. The content of his notebooks (1692–1698), as well as Philosopher’s main theological works, may be of help in tracing how and in what intellectual context occurred the making-up of his Moral Theology.

Horrors of the Great Banal

The iPhone 62 has just been released. Political gridlock and the governmentally approved process of locking immigrant children in cages continue ad infinitum. Public schools resort to primarily remote learning as pandemic viruses ebb and flow. University students study post-postmodernism on campuses that remain on stolen Indigenous land. In this year of 2071, where humans remain desperately attached to “normalcy,” suffering continues beneath the fear that transformation would surely be devastating. Unknowns horrify privileged communities, eased only by the comfortability of a level of “bad” with which they are at least familiar. The world has settled into the Great Banal, an age of blind faith that tomorrow’s problems can be answered with solutions of yester-today. Written as an “e-seance” Zoom conversation among “ghost-scholars of the future,” we explore the horrors of a future in which the “normalities” of 2021 all persist. This is not a dystopian nightmare in which climate disasters wreak unparalleled havoc on vulnerable communities and new fascist regimes sink their claws into education, nor is it a utopic imagining of a society that has made great bounds toward social-ecological justice. In this seemingly absurd imaginary of no substantial change at all, we draw from (eco)critical, Indigenous, and feminist frameworks to ask: What might education look like in a world that has adamantly resisted radical transformation for fear of the worst, in exchange for all hopes of the best?

Bible translation and the centrality of the synagogue

This chapter analyzes Zunz’s Bible translation, situating it within the context of Zunz’s critique of the traditional Ashkenazic system of Jewish education that he experienced personally. Zunz’s assessment of Moses Mendelssohn and his vision for Jewish education that steers a middle path between the “sham Enlightenment“ of Jewish youth and the “blind faith” of older Jewish traditionalists are presented. The role of gender in Jewish education and the centrality of the synagogue in Zunz’s Bible translation project are explored. Zunz’s Bible translation is set in relation to that of his teacher, the Bible critic Wilhelm De Wette as a way of comparing liberal German Protestantism and liberal German Judaism in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. It is shown how Zunz uses Protestantism and Catholicism as exemplary categories aligning his vision of Judaism with Protestantism while rejecting forms of Judaism that he deems “Catholic.”

The autonomic nervous system in the era of Andrei Vesalius

Andreas Vesalius was a reformer not only in the field of anatomy, but also in the field of practical medicine. Vesalius was the first to decide to fight against blind faith in authority, he was the first to attack superstitions at their very core and was the inborn enemy of all charlatanism and its followers.