Faith in Science, Reason in Revelation

Catalog description

We live simultaneously in an age of science and an era of great religious faith, when reason and revelation are often depicted as being in inherent and eternal tension. This course traces the history of the relationship of religion and science in Christendom and Islamdom from the Middle Ages to the present day. The course addresses the global challenges of understanding humanity (by paying close attention to how humans in two religious traditions have defined and narrated the relationship between rational and revealed thought) and seeking peace (by attending to how a nineteenth-century narrative of a timeless conflict between science and religion has distorted our understanding of the past and continues to undermine contemporary debates on their compatibility).