Students enrolled in my Philosophy of Religion course:
Which topics would you most prefer to cover in class in November/December? Suggesting a reading or two will be very helpful. I plan to conduct a poll in class on Tuesday next week and I'll to finalize the syllabus by Thursday.
8 comments:
"A Common Faith is a fascinating short work by John Dewey where he proposes a pragmatic approach to religion that is in marked contrast to William James."
Haven't read it; though it sounds interesting.
Since we've talked about god's attributes, we could discuss arguments for and against his actual existence. I've always enjoyed that.
I think it would be interesting to discuss the soul.
-Eastern religious views vs Western religious views
-platonic vs cartesian definitions
-what happens to the soul at death
and/or
soul dualism
I think exploring the concept of faith would be a good thing to do. The intersection of faith and reason seems to be a primary area of concern for the class, so I think it would be good to investigate if these two can actually intersect consistently. Perhaps many of the theorists that we've read would insist that their arguments are not based on faith but are strictly reasonable - in that case, it seems worthwhile to investigate what part faith plays in religion if so much can supposedly be derived through reason alone.
I would really like to do something concerning ing the soul as I said but you do seem to have that well worked in. I really would like to spend a good amount of time on faith, and more about peoples philosophy behind their faith and how it can contradict and also work with reason and science.
I would like to cover pantheism. In this view, God is considered to be the universe itself. This also goes into universal consciousness. I would love to cover some of Spinoza's views on the subject.
I don't want to cover God's existence. I agreed with the decision at the beginning of the semester not to cover it. And I rather not go over it anymore. I think arguments for the omni- god was sufficient.
I agree with everything written in Isaac Scott's comment. I too am a Spinoza lover, although I could see how it could be complicated to try to cover only a portion of Spinoza's philosophy. I would also be highly interested in discussing the relationship between psychology and religion.
I think the myth that deserves some attention is the idea that philosophy is, or ought to be, easy. Spinoza's pantheism is certainly worthy of attention; however, imagine a philosophy of physics course begun with a poll that limited the scope of the course to naive realism.
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