Science and Religion

Catalog description

This course offers an intensive examination of the complex relationship between religion, science, and philosophy in different traditions and historical periods. How did science and religion emerge as distinct ways of understanding the universe? Were the two always in conflict? What is the nature of this conflict - is it historical, cultural, conceptual, linguistic, or methodological? Are there ways to make them compatible? Do they constitute separate realms with clear-cut borders and jurisdictions? In pursuit of wellinformed answers to these questions, the specific topics of this course will typically include modern scientific conceptions of the natural world and human life (e.g., cosmology, the origin and value of life, evolution) and the contemporary impact of these conceptions on religious belief; ethical questions stemming from scientific methods and biotechnology (e.g., cloning and genetic engineering and the religious responses to such acts of "playing God"), and examples of contemporary scientific approaches to explaining religious experience (e.g., cognitive science, neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology). The instructor may use discretion in selecting representative texts by religious studies scholars, philosophers, scientists, and historians of science with a view to offering a diverse set of authoritative and sometimes controversial approaches to the subject.