Lecture Listening Guides
by David Capes
Lecturer: Alister McGrath
Title: The Big Questions: Richard Dawkins versus C.S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life
Date: 02/04/2017
Prepared by John Beukema
- In answering the question “Is faith reasonable” how would Dawkins and Lewis respond?
- How would Dawkins describe faith?
- Why does McGrath reject Dawkin’s assertion that faith is superfluous when there is good supporting evidence?
- According to McGrath, why did Lewis become a Christian?
- What two reasons did Lewis give for his atheism earlier in life?
- Where does McGrath say Dawkins gets it right and where does he get it wrong?
- What are the three broad categories of human belief according to Isaiah Berlin?
- What are some ideas you cannot accept on the basis of Dawkin’s criteria?
- Why does McGrath say that the things that really matter to us have to be accepted by faith?
- What are Lewis’ main points about science?
- What was William Lane Craig’s main argument concerning the existence of the universe?
- Why would Lewis not agree with Dawkins that a “scientific explanation trumps everything?
- Frank Rhodes suggested two reasons for a boiling kettle. What are they and why do they matter?
- How do science and religion work together in that way?
- What is the point of life according to Dawkins?
- Where does this kind of scientific reductionism leave us according to McGrath?
- What are “ultimate questions” that science is unable to answer?
- What is the importance of the story that Christianity tells, according to Lewis?
- What is Peter Medawar indicating when he says “science has its limits”?
- What does Christianity supply that science cannot?
- McGrath says atheists need to face up to something. What is it?
- Where does McGrath believe atheism is going?
- What are the four criteria for interpreting evidence based on inductive processes?