We will be exploring three main question areas:

	What distinguishes a religious point of view on life and the world from a naturalistic, secular one?
	Is there any reason to choose one over the other, or is it just a matter of taste?  How does one go about deciding between general points of view about life and the world?
	Where does science fit into this picture?  That is, could one be religious and still take science seriously?  Or does the success of science render religion obsolete?

Note that this approach will not produce a traditional “comparative religion” course in which the beliefs and practices associated with multiple religious traditions are compared and contrasted. (There are other courses at ISU that do that job.)

The course is not designed to bash religious ways of thinking, nor to promote them, but rather to create understanding of how these ways of thinking function, and to ask philosophical questions about the rationality of such ways of thinking. It will be up to the individual student to decide how to evaluate religious options for themselves.

This topic is both timely and extremely controversial. We will see why it is not possible to be neutral with regard to the claims being made by religion and by naturalistic secularism. However, we can try to be impartial – that is, to look at the facts as far as we can ascertain them, to seek genuine understanding, and to reach our own responsible conclusions.

This course is an Outer Core Course in the General Education Program Humanities category. That means a) the course falls generally within the so-called “humanities”, and b) it will additionally involve a substantial amount of writing and independent thinking. Prerequisites include ENG 101, COM 110, and a course from Middle Core Language and the Humanities category.  This course assumes some of the skills that should have been introduced in those courses – constructing strong written arguments for positions on controversial issues, and engaging in intelligent oral discussion.