DESCRIPTION: This is a doctoral seminar for PhD and ThM students, who will register Fall and Winter (PH833A and PH833B), and which is open in the Fall to a limited number of advanced MA and MDiv students (PH533). While the United States is one of the most religious of Western countries, those with the highest levels of education are most likely to be atheists or agnostics. This seminar will investigate intellectual sources of atheism in the modern Western world, in science, philosophy, and theology.

RELEVANCE FOR MINISTRY: This course should be useful for apologetic purposes, insofar as it acquaints students with the intellectual developments that have called religious belief into question.

COURSE FORMAT: The first session will be an introductory lecture. The remainder of the course will be devoted to discussion of assigned readings. The class will meet weekly for a three-hour session.

REQUIRED READING:

Buckley, Michael. Denying and Disclosing God. Yale, 2004.

Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man. Penguin Classics, 2004.

Freud, Sigmund. The Future of an Illusion. Norton, 1989.

Gaskin, J. C. A. Varieties of Unbelief. Macmillan, 1989.

Hume, David. Dialogues and Natural History of Religion. Oxford, 1998

_______. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Hackett, 1977.

Popkin, Richard. The History of Skepticism. Expanded and revised edition. Oxford, 2003

Schleiermacher, Friedrich. On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers. (in course reader).

Turner, James. Without God, Without Creed. Johns Hopkins, 1985.

Westphal, Merold. Suspicion and Faith. Eerdmans, 1993.

Course reader.