Today is the last day of classes for the fall semester of 2014. Today is the day for reviews, discussing paper plans (and in one class, surprisingly enough, answering questions from students who wanted to know a bit more about my personal background.) A week from today, I will administer finals in two classes andContinue reading “A Teaching Self-Evaluation”
Tag Archives: philosophy of religion
Polygamy And Joseph Smith’s Convenient Revelations
In Under The Banner Of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, Jon Krakauer cites Fawn Brodie‘s No Man Knows My History, her classic biography of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism: Monogamy seemed to him–as it has seemed to many men who have not ceased to love their wives, but who have grown weary ofContinue reading “Polygamy And Joseph Smith’s Convenient Revelations”
Tillich On Symbols, Religion, And Myths
This week, I’ve been teaching and discussing excerpts from Paul Tillich‘s Dynamics of Faith in my philosophy of religion class. (In particular, we’ve tackled _The Meaning of Symbol_, _Religious Symbols_, and _Symbols and Myths_, all excerpted in From Religion To Tolstoy and Camus, Walter Kaufmann, ed.) I suggested to my students before we started our conversationContinue reading “Tillich On Symbols, Religion, And Myths”
No Atheists In Foxholes? Plenty of Atheists In Cancer Wards
In writing about Brittany Maynard, the twenty-nine year old cancer patient who has scheduled herself for a physician-assisted suicide on November 1, Ross Douthat asks: Why, in a society where individualism seems to be carrying the day, is the right that Maynard intends to exercise still confined to just a handful of states? Why hasContinue reading “No Atheists In Foxholes? Plenty of Atheists In Cancer Wards”
Fiction On Philosophy Reading Lists
Last week, over at the NewAPPS (Arts, Politics, Philosophy, Science) blog, where I’ve started blogging as part of a group of academic philosophers, I posted the following: In my post yesterday, I had written of how discussion centering on a classic philosophical debate could be sparked by a reading of fiction. (The upper-tier core classContinue reading “Fiction On Philosophy Reading Lists”
Nevil Shute’s _On The Beach_ And Normative Epistemology
The first reading in my Philosophical Issues in Literature class this semester–which focuses on the post-apocalyptic novel–is Nevil Shute‘s On The Beach. I expected, more often than not, moral, ethical, and political issues to be picked up on in classroom discussions; I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the very first class meeting–on Monday–honed inContinue reading “Nevil Shute’s _On The Beach_ And Normative Epistemology”
Back To Teaching – I
On Wednesday, I return to teaching after a one-year hiatus (on sabbatical). Here are the–admittedly skimpy and sketchy–course descriptions of the three classes I will be teaching this coming fall semester. I am looking forward to them. I’m sure my enthusiasm will soon be tempered by encountering my university’s mind-numbing bureaucracy (and the dubious pleasuresContinue reading “Back To Teaching – I”
No Atheists in Foxholes, My Ass
Here is vignette #7 from Ernest Hemingway‘s In Our Time: While the bombardment was knocking the trench to pieces at Fossalta, he lay very flat and sweated and prayed oh jesus christ get me out of here. Dear jesus please get me out . Christ please please please christ. If you’ll only keep me from gettingContinue reading “No Atheists in Foxholes, My Ass”
Lessius and the Fear Theory of Atheism
The ‘fear theory’ of the origin of religion is sometimes traced back to Democritus and Lucretius; it may be found too, in David Hume‘s Natural History of Religion. In its most general form, mankind conjured up God and the gods when made aware of its fragility in the face of nature’s capriciousness and power, itsContinue reading “Lessius and the Fear Theory of Atheism”
Fish on Eagleton on Religion
Stanley Fish reviews Terry Eagleton‘s Reason, Faith and Revolution in The New York Times and approvingly quotes him contra the excesses of Christopher Hitchens: [T]he fact that religion and theology cannot provide a technology for explaining how the material world works should not be held against them, either, for that is not what they do. When Christopher Hitchens declares thatContinue reading “Fish on Eagleton on Religion”
Samir Chopra 