TH 365 Religion and Science
This course is intended to help students understand and critically reflect on the differences between religion and science as well as the possibilities for a fruitful dialogue between them. Ian Barbour’s well-known categories (conflict, independence, dialogue, integration) will be used to examine the relationship between religion and science. A major part of the course studies the history of the relationship between religion and science and tries to show that recent conflicts between them are often based on false assumptions about what religious beliefs do and do not entail. The church’s condemnation of Galileo and the relationship between the theory of evolution and the religious idea of creation are among the specific issues that the course will study.