Greetings. This is the course homepage for PHIL 4303,
Philosophy of Religion. I'll try to keep this page reasonably current
and include course reading assignments and handouts, announcements,
writing assignments, etc.
Midterm Exam:
The midterm for this course will be on
Tuesday, October 10th. Stay tuned for more details.
Study Questions
for the Midterm exam.
The bottom line on the paper assignment is that you are to write an essay of 6-8 pages in length (with a 12 point font and standard margins). Your paper should be a philosophical response to an article that you read outside of the standard course readings. You should spend approximately half of your paper laying out the argument or position that you will be responding to. Make sure that you are clear and charitable in your interpretation. The second half of your paper will be your philosophical interaction with the paper you've been discussing. You should offer a philosophical evaluation of its argument. Is it valid? Are the premises plausible? How could one or more of them be made dubious or shown to be false? What might the defender of the argument say to your criticisms? Are there plausible objections to the argument that you believe can be shown not to work? There are a lot of different ways these papers can go. The goal is to write a paper that fairly, clearly, and accurately presents the argument/position of the paper you’ve chosen, and that discusses that argument/position philosophically.
Below are two websites that each contains a great variety of papers on topics relevant to our course. My intention is that you write on a paper found on one of these sites. However, not all the papers on either site are appropriate. Some of them are about topics beyond the scope of the philosophy of religion (for instance, any paper on the reliability of the Bible would fall into this category). So here’s what I want you to do. Peruse the papers on one or both websites. Find an essay that you think is relevant to our course and that interests you, and send me the link to the paper. I’ll have a look at it and tell you if it’s all right to write on.
On the first site you will find papers that are critical of religion in general, and of theism in particular; the second website generally contains papers that are either neutral or favorably disposed toward religious claims. I mention this because it is easier to take on an article that argues for a conclusion that you think is false.
You must have an approved paper to write about by the Thanksgiving break. Since I might disallow a given paper as being appropriate, I strongly recommend that you not wait until the Monday before the break to look at the papers and email your request to me. You may send me the link to the paper you’d like to respond to anytime after you get this email. I ask only that you send me one request at a time; I’ll give you a thumbs up or thumbs down within 24 hours. If you later decide to change your topic that is fine so long as it is prior to the Thanksgiving break and you get your new topic cleared with me.
Your paper is due on the last day of class. Please turn in both a hard copy of your paper and a hard copy of the essay you are responding to.
One more thing: if you’d like to write on something other than an essay from one of these sites, I’m happy to hear you out. But if you write on something not found on these sites and you have not received permission from me to do this, your paper will not be accepted.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/arguments.html
http://www.apollos.ws/philosophy-of-religion-article/
Good luck!
Tom
Here are the reading assignments that I've assigned thus far. All readings and page numbers refer to our primary text, Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, fourth edition (Wadsworth), edited by Louis P. Pojman, except where otherwise noted.
The Cosmological Argument
I.A.5 The Kalam Cosmological Argument by William Lane Craig
I.A.7 A Critique of the Kalam Cosmological Argument by Paul Draper
I.A.4 An Examination of the Cosmological Argument by William
Rowe<>