Course Goals: This course will address three issues in the philosophy of religion, all of which have contemporary social or cultural urgency. The first issue concerns the argument from design for the existence of God, putting the current political debate over Intelligent Design and whether it may or should be taught in public school science classrooms in a scholarly context. We next turn to the problem of evil. How can one affirm that there is an all-knowing, all-powerful, and perfectly good or loving God in light of the extent and depth of suffering and wrong-doing in the world? This question is especially acute in light of the atrocities which occurred in the twentieth century and which are continuing into the twenty-first. Finally, we shall consider the problem of justifying religious beliefs, especially in light of the great diversity of belief and practice present in our pluralistic society. Our goal will be to understand and critically evaluate the arguments put forward in philosophical discussions of these issues.

Related Outcomes: This course is an extended exercise in philosophical dialectic. Students completing the course should have a further developed sense of what that dialectic involves and what is required to advance the dialectic. Basically, dialectic involves three parts: putting forward a core argument to support some thesis, criticizing the core argument to identify its weaknesses, and either responding to criticism or presenting a constructive alternative to the argument. We intend through the order in which we shall consider the readings in the course to illustrate how this dialectic may unfold not only within each of the three issues the course discusses but in the course overall.

Texts:

Louis P. Pojman and Michael Rea, Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology Fifth Edition (Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2008). $106.95 list price, $90.49 online from Wadsworth via i-Chapters Coursepack prepared especially for this course for this semester (University Readers) $37.13 (estimated)

The Pojman and Rea text is available both at the Hunter College Bookstore and at Shakespeare’s. To order the Coursepack, visit www.UniversityReaders.com. Click on “Students Buy Now” and follow the prompts. Doing so will not only let you order a hardcopy of the coursepack but to download a PDF file of the first 20% of the contents. Be sure to be able to save the download and have access to Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader software. For an overview of the order process, go to www.UniversityReaders.com/demo.