Index#: 03730
Will NOT Count Towards English MAJOR
Will NOT Count Towards English MINOR
Declining interest in religion has long been taken as one of the hallmarks of modernity, the result in particular of its skeptical, scientific spirit. The past three decades or so have seen an unexpected religious resurgence in the United States as well as many other places in the world. That in turn has prompted the emergence of a trend known as "The New Atheism" and a series of attacks on religious belief that has come to be called the “God Debate.” This course will examine this current controversy and seek to provide students with its larger intellectual background. As works intended primarily for popular audience, these attacks have been noteworthy for their daring, but also for their somewhat reductive account of religion. Some the most interesting responses have been defenses of religion from other non-religious thinkers. We will begin with the attacks, from such writers as Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris; and also examine contemporary responses, from such writers as Frans de Waal and Mohammad Hassan Khalil. For broader context we will also look at some classic discussions of religious faith and modern doubt, including those of Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud, and the more recent thinkers Jacques Derrida and Alain Badiou. We will also look small excerpts from the sacred texts of the world’s three great monotheisms, the Hebrew Bible, Christian New Testament, and the Qur’an. Questions to be considered will include: Can faith maintain itself in the face of scientific truth? Is “belief” in scientific truth itself entirely rational? Is faith rational? How should we understand the relation between belief in God or the lack of it and moral, social and political values? Can atheism and faith coexist? Are they actually as distinct as their adherents take them to be?
About Professor Scanlon
LAWRENCE SCANLON is the author of Narrative, Authority, and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition (1994), co-editor of John Lydgate: Poetry, Culture, and Lancastrian England (with James Simpson, 2005), and has published a number of essays on medieval literature. He is currently working on a theoretical investigation of the largely unacknowledged role Christianity has played in shaping 20th-century notions of gender and sexuality. Its tentative title is The Long Shadow of the Patriarchs: Sodomy and Incest in Medieval Writing and Postmodern Theory.