Faculty of Arts
- PHIL 765 Science, Religion and Atheism
Department of Philosophy - 2012
Phil765: Science, Religion and Atheism
Time: Semester 1, Tuesdays 11 am to 1 pm and Thursdays 1pm – 2pm. (Note that though there are three hours timetabled only two of these will be use per week. At the first lecture we will discuss what times we will meet.)
Lecturer: Robert Nola, Room 329. Email: r.nola@auckland.ac.nz
For further information contact Robert Nola via the above email address.
Course Content
The course largely concerns atheism, what it might mean and what it entails. In general, the course will not consider arguments for and against the existence of God; this is left to other courses on the philosophy of religion. However one argument will be considered - Pascal’s Wager argument.
The course comes in at least two parts.
(I)The first part concerns issues such as: (i)Ought religion to be respected (and what this might mean)? (ii) What is toleration, when applied in the religious sphere, and ought believers and non-believers tolerate one another even though each might give the other no respect? (iii) What is meant by a secular society and secular reason?
(2) The second part of the course concerns some of the interrelations between science, religion and atheism, in particular whether the sciences and the overall conception of a scientific view of the world, support atheism and undermine religion. Topics that can be explored here include: (i) Atheism and scientific naturalism (which excludes any reference to supernatural entities and provides a dim view of any attempt to introduce pantheism). (ii) Freud’s (and Marx’s) attempt to explain away religious beliefs. (iii) The emergence of cognitive psychology and the theory of Darwinian evolution as a way of explaining religious belief. (In order to set up the evolutionary theory we will consider a little introductory decision theory and its first use by Pascal in the argument for religious believing known as “Pascal’s Wager”.) (iv) The rival explanatory frameworks that religion and science offer of religious belief and how one might decide between them.
(3) If there is time (and general agreement) we can consider age-old question asked in philosophy: ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ This question is said to be incapable of being answered by science while some answers are said to have theological implications because it is claimed that God maintains everything in existence. These issues explored in a paper by Adolph Grunbaum which we will discuss: ‘The Poverty of Theistic Cosmology’ (British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 55, 2004, pp561-614. This can be obtained from Robert Nola, and can be made available at the beginning of the class.)
Texts and use of CECIL:
Some papers will be provided on Cecil; there will be no coursebook.
There is much material on the issues addressed in the course. The list below is a small sample that can serve as useful background reading. Students will be expected to do their own literature searches of books and articles.
- Louise Anthony Philosophers Without Gods (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007)
- Scott Atran, In Gods We Trust, (New York, Oxford, 2002)
- Julian Baggini, Atheism (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003)
- Russell Blackford & Udo Schuklenk (ed) 50 Voices of Disbelief (Oxford, Wiley Blackwell, 2009)
- Pascal Boyer Religion Explained (New York, Basic Books 2001)
- Phil Dow, Galileo, Darwin, Hawking: The Interplay of Science, Reason and Religion (Cambridge UK, William B Eerdmans 2005)
- Richard Dawkins The God Delusion (Black Swan, 2007)
- Daniel Dennett Breaking the Spell (Penguin, London, 2007)
- Sigmund Freud ‘The Question of a Weltanshauung’, Lecture 35 of New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1933) (Penguin, 1973)
- Michael Martin (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Atheism (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007)
- Jack Smart and J. Haldane Atheism & Theism (Blackwell, Oxford, 2003 – 2nd edition)
Much more material than this is available.
Expectations of the Course:
In their work students will have to display, to a high level, the ability to use logic in their arguments and to use philosophical analysis at an advanced level when approaching the various theses that are to be examined in this course. They are also expected to provide well structured and well argued seminar papers and a final essay.
Attendance:
Students will be required to attend the two-hour lecture period and make a contribution through the preparation of seminar papers to be presented to the class.
Final grade for the course:
This will be through submitting an essay of about 5000-6000 words (for those doing the course for 15 points). The due date and more information about this requirement will be given in class. The due date of the essay is usually within a week or so after the end of lectures (lectures end on 1st June).
Prerequisites:
Apart from a BA there is no formal prerequisite. However the course will presuppose an understanding of reason and argument of the sort that is taught in undergraduate courses such as Phil 101 Introduction to Logic or Phil 105 Critical Thinking. Students who have not passed either of these courses are strongly advised to pass one of them in the Summer School.
TOPICS.
Here are a few of the topics mentioned above along with some associated reading (which can be obtained from Robert Nola or found on Cecil when the course begins)
(1) Decision Matrices and Pascal’s Wager.
See lecture powerpoints on Cecil plus
- Alan Hajek (with very good bibliography) on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - on line: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/
- Graham Oppy, chapter 5, Arguing About Gods - on Cecil
- There is much on the Pascalian wager elsewhere in books on philosophy of religion
We will consider only the later Freud of The Future of an Illusion and Civilization and its Discontents (and not Totem and Taboo). See also Sigmund Freud ‘The Question of a Weltanshauung’, Lecture 35 of New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1933) (Penguin, 1973).
- Extract from Alvin Plantinga Warranted Christian Belief - on Cecil.
- William Alston ‘Psychoanalytic Theory and Religious belief’ - on Cecil.
- Jonathan Lear ‘The Illusion of a Future’ – on Cecil.
- Adolph Grunbaum ‘Psychoanalysis and Theism’ – on Cecil.
(3) Evolutionary Psychology – Religious Belief as an Evolutionary By-Product
In this section we will consider those views in which there is an evolutionary story about the detection of agency in the world.
- Richard Dawkins p. 172ff, ‘The Roots of Religion’ Chapter 7 The God Delusion – on Cecil
- Scott Atran, Chapter 3 ‘God Creation …’ In Gods We Trust – on Cecil
- Pascal Boyer, Chapter 4 ‘Why Gods and Spirits?’ Religion Explained – on Cecil
- Justin Barrett, Chapter s 2& 3 of ‘Why Would Anyone Believe in God?’ – on Cecil
- Justin Barrett, ‘Is the Spell Really Broken?’ – on Cecil
- Justin Barrett, ‘Cognitive Science of Religion’ – on Cecil
- Justin Barrett & Jonathan Lanman ‘The Science fog Religious Beliefs’ – on Cecil
- Daniel Dennett, Chapters 4 & 5, Breaking the Spell
Error Management Theory and the Evolution of God Belief
- Dominic Johnson ‘The Error of God’ – on Cecil
- Martie Haselton and David Nettle, ‘The Paranoid Optimist’ – on Cecil
(4) Darwinian Evolution and Group Selection Theory
- Richard Dawkins p. 169ff, ‘The Roots of Religion’ Chapter 7 The God Delusion – on Cecil
- Daniel Dennett ‘The Invention of Team Spirit’ Breaking the Spell. – on Cecil
- David Sloan Wilson, Chapter 1 Darwin’s Cathedral – on Cecil
- David Sloan Wilson, ‘Why Richard Dawkins is Wrong about Religion’ – on Cecil.
- See also Scott Atran ‘Culture Without Mind’ Chapter 8 of In Gods we Trust
(5) Evolution and Memes
- Richard Dawkins p. 169ff, ‘The Roots of Religion’ Chapter 7 The God Delusion – on Cecil
- Pascal Boyer ‘Culture as Memes’ – on Cecil
- See also Scott Atran ‘The Trouble with Memes’ Chapter 9 of In Gods we Trust.
(6) Stephen J. Gould on ‘Overlapping Magisteria’
- Paper by Gould – on Cecil
(7) Religion is Owed no Respect
- Paper by Robert Nola – on Cecil
(8) Tolerance
- Paper by Robert Nola – on Cecil
- Tim Scanlon ‘Tolerance’ – on Cecil
- Bernard Williams ‘Tolerating the Intolerable’ – on Cecil
- Rainer Forst ‘Toleration’ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – on line: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/toleration/
(9) Secularism
- Robert Audi, Religious Commitment and Secular Reason (Cambridge UP, 2000)
