This course will introduce you to the often acrimonious relationship between religion and the sciences. We will examine the fundamental insights and claims of both religion and science, and I hope to move you beyond the sharp prejudices many people bring to a consideration of religion and science to a more reasoned understanding of each alone and in relation to the other.

Summer 2005 Syllabus

Course Reader Table of Contents

Announcements: The take-home midterm is due no later than the last day of class, but may be turned in as soon as you complete it.  I'll post it here very soon.  The copy packet of course readings is available at CopyPro, at the corner of Atherton and Palo Verde.

     Guide to the short research paper

     Tips on using Google.com more effectively for research

Class Notes and Handouts: I'll be posting class notes and all class handouts as we go along...

     Wach's Descriptive Definition of Religion

     Evelyn Underhill on Mysticism

     More about Mysticism

    Scientific Method

     Thomas Kuhn on paradigms in science

    Barbour's Critical Realism

    Five Fallacies of Theory Testing

    Mario Bunge on Pseudoscience and Parapsychology

    Wegener

    Secularization

    Durkheim

    Weber

    Four Ways of Relating Science and Religion
 

  to Religion and Science on the Web:
 

John Scopes reflects on the Scopes Trial with a link to a great Scopes Trial webpage

Important Court Cases in the United States Concerning Evolution from 1927 to the Present
 

Current media reports:

            Cosmology in the news

            Science and religion

            Cosmic origins

            Stephen Hawking's Universe

            Superstrings

            Creation Science

For parapsychology, try the Koestler Parapsychology Unit of the University of Edinburgh,

                                    the Rhine Research Center, Duke University,

                                    the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Program, Princeton University,

                                    and Charles Tart's web site, which includes the research paper on Miss Z mentioned in class.

                                    Also take a look at the site of the International Association for Near Death Studies.
 

For pseudoscience try this great pseudoscience site.  It's approach is every bit as skeptical as Radner & Radner's, and it has some nice links.
 

The Weekly World News has become notorious as a purveyor of pseudoscience.
 

For the creation/evolution debate, try the Creation/Evolution Reference Database. And also read Pope John Paul II's statement on evolution and visit this neat site on the Scopes trail.