STANDARD COMPETENCIES:

 

 1. Analyze and explain various arguments for the existence of God.

 2. Explain the rationale for various conceptions of ultimate reality.

 3. Analyze critically the role of religious experience.

 4. Evaluate positions regarding the truth claims of the world’s religions.

 5. Describe pragmatic, reason-based, and faith-based justifications for belief.

 6. Explain the Problem of Evil and responses to it.

 7. Identify various positions on the afterlife and analyze corresponding arguments.

 8. Evaluate the relationship between religion and morality.

 9. Argue effectively for personal positions adopted on issues in Philosophy of Religion.

 10. Critically analyze and evaluate primary philosophical sources.

 11. Utilize college level written communication skills in the articulation of Philosophy of Religion thought and analysis.

 12. Demonstrate college level competency in the reading and comprehension of primary and secondary sources.

 

 TOPICAL OUTLINE:

 

 I.     Idea of God.

          A.      Attributes of the traditional Western idea of God.

          B.      Attributes of non-western ideas of God.

          C.      Religious alternatives to theism

          D.      Religious Language

 

  II.     Varieties of Religious Experience.

          A.      Mysticism

          B.      Non-mystical religious experiences

 

  III.    Arguments for God`s Existence.

          A.    Rational / Empirical arguments

          B.     Ontological arguments

          C.      Cosmological arguments

          D.      Teleological arguments

          E.       Arguments from moral experience

          F.       Arguments from religious experience

 

  IV.     The Problem of Evil

          A.      The argument from evil

          B.      Theistic responses to the argument from evil

                  1.      The free-will defense

                  2.      Theodicies

                  3.      A limited God

          C.      Non-Western responses

 

  V.      Faith and Reason.

          A.      The ethics of belief (Clifford, James, Pascal)

          B.      Fideism (Kierkegaard)

          C.      Miracles

 

  VI.     Religion and Human Life

          A.      Western and eastern perspectives

                  1.      Conceptions of self-identity and soul.

                  2.      Divine foreknowledge, predestination, and free-will

          B.      Religion and the meaningful life.

                  1.      Freud, Marx, Nietzsche

          C.      Accounting for the many religions (exclusivism, inclusivism, pluralism)

 

  VII.    Religion and Ethics.

          A.      Religious and secular ethics.

          B.      Ethics and reason

 

 -