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KHEC Curriculum Framework 1.3


The Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict at Arizona State University promotes interdisciplinary research and education on the dynamics of religion and conflict in order to advance knowledge, seek solutions, and inform policy. Committed to a model of scholarship that cuts across disciplines, the Center stimulates research by creating links between academia and policymakers, practitioners and religious leaders and by fostering cross-cultural exchanges. Faculty seminars, working groups, research teams, conferences, and publications are designed to facilitate innovative and interdisciplinary connections, conversations, and collaborations. Recent projects have included the following: Religions and the Secular; Religion and Violence; Religion and Science; Difficult Dialogues: Teaching about Religion; and Initiative in Religion -- Conflict and Peace Studies.

The Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture at Trinity College in Hartford, CT was established in 2005 to advance understanding of the role of secular values and the process of secularization in contemporary society and culture. The Institute conducts academic research, sponsors curriculum development, and presents public events. Courses are being developed on secularism and secularization at both undergraduate and graduate levels, including curricula, bibliographies and syllabi. Currently as well as within the past several years, courses have included: The Roots of the Secular Tradition in the West; The Secular Tradition and Foundations of the Natural Sciences; Secularism and the Enlightenment; Evolutionary Thought; Science, Nature and Religion; Introduction: The Roots of the Secular Tradition in the West; Secularism, and Skepticism, and Critiques of Religion.

1.3 and 1.4 --  Moments in Atheism
“Moments in Atheism” is a course developed by two professors at the University of Chicago [Shadi Bartsch (Classics) and Sean Carroll (Physics)]. It was taught in the 2004 Winter Quarter. The syllabus can be viewed at:
http://preposterousuniverse.com/teaching/moments04/
From the course description: “Atheism is as old as religion. As religion and its place in society have evolved throughout history, so have the standing of, and philosophical justification for, non-belief. This course will examine the intellectual and cultural history of atheism in Western thought from antiquity to the present. We will be concerned with the evolution of arguments for a non-religious worldview, as well as the attitude of society toward atheism and atheists.” 

The course outline includes the following topics:

  • ·   The Ancient World (Democritus, Sophists, Lucretius)  
  • ·   Faith and Reason (Tertullian, Augustine, Gibbon, Roger Bacon, Aquinas, Ockham)
  • ·   The Clockwork Universe (Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton)
  • ·   Enlightenment I (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Voltaire)
  • ·   Enlightenment II (Hume, Kant, d'Holbach, de La Mettrie, Paine)
  • ·   Evolution and the Argument from Design (Paley, Hume, Darwin, Huxley)
  • ·   Unmasking Religion (Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud)
  • ·   20th Century Explorations: Advocacy to Existentialism (Goldman, O'Hair, Russell, Dawkins, Camus)
  • ·   The Pointless Universe (Weinberg, Hawking, Rorty)

The list of readings include:

 

The syllabus also includes the following list of “isms”: [“This list is not meant to be prescriptive, nor is it philosophically precise. It is intended only as a guide to what most people might mean when they use these terms.”]

  • ·   Theism. Belief in the existence of a supernatural being (God or gods), not bound by the laws of nature. Sometimes used in a more restrictive sense to denote belief in a God who is active in the world, in contrast with deism or pantheism.
  • ·   Atheism. Belief that supernatural beings do not exist. Sometimes divided into positive atheism (“belief that God does not exist”) and negative atheism (“absence of belief that God does exist”). [Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, O’Hair.]
  • ·   Agnosticism. Belief that one cannot (or merely does not) know whether God exists. [Hume, Huxley, Russell.]
  • ·   Naturalism. Belief that the natural world can be fully understood in terms of material objects and mechanistic laws. Sometimes distinguished from materialism by allowing for the possibility of a supernatural world, but one which is strictly independent of the natural one; sometimes not.
  • ·   Materialism. (Also physicalism or mechanism.) Belief in only the natural world, operating according to physical laws. [Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, Hobbes, de la Mettrie, Diderot, d’Holbach.]
  • ·   Idealism. Belief that the primary reality is outside the natural world, or that only mental entities are real. Opposed to materialism. [Plato, Leibniz, Kant, Schopenhauer.]
  • ·   Deism. Belief that God exists and created the world but does not interfere with the world, which operates strictly according to natural laws. Deists are thus simultaneously theists and naturalists (as distinguished from materialists). [Newton, Voltaire, Paine, Rousseau.]
  • ·   Pantheism. Belief that God and nature are identical. [Stoics, Bruno, Spinoza.]
  • ·   Empiricism. Belief that experience is the source of knowledge. Opposite of rationalism. [F. Bacon, Locke, Hume.]
  • ·   Rationalism. Belief that knowledge is attained through pure reason or innate ideas. Opposite of empiricism. [Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz.]
  • ·   Fideism. Belief that faith (not reason) is the grounding for religion.
  • ·   Skepticism. Belief that certainty in knowledge is unattainable. (In an extreme form, belief that any knowledge is unattainable.) [Sextus Empiricus, Hume.]
  • ·   Humanism. Belief that humans are the source of value and meaning.