Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

An examination of philosophical questions related to religious belief and practice. Topics may include: the existence and nature of God, the problem of evil, and the epistemology of religious belief. May be repeated for credit. Students with credit for PHIL 240 may not take this course for further credit. Students who have taken PHIL 302 in Summer 2019, PHIL 331 in Spring 2017 or Summer 2021, under the same topic may not take this course for further credit.

COURSE DETAILS:

Selected Topics: Western Philosophical Theology

For a significant portion of the history of philosophy, theological and philosophical questions were so deeply intertwined as to be more or less inseparable. The aim of this course is to consider the major philosophical questions about God in both their western historical context and as they are treated in contemporary contexts. We will begin with the problem of evil: how is the existence of natural and human-caused evil compatible with the existence of a perfectly good God? We’ll then consider the classical arguments for the existence of god, including the cosmological argument, the teleological argument and, most importantly, the ontological argument. We will then turn our attention to the divine attributes, especially including omnipotence, foreknowledge and freedom and we will pay special attention to the question whether the attributes traditionally ascribed to God are consistent with our basic understanding of the world and the things that populate it. In closing the course, we will consider two further topics: the historical debate over God’s causal role in the ordinary course of nature and the epistemology of religious belief.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING:

REQUIRED READING NOTES: