Courses

Under the direction of a supervisor, students not doing a thesis research and write a major paper of approximately 10-15,000 words in length.

This course surveys and engages central philosophical issues relevant to assessing normative religious pluralism.

This course examines some of the most influential views of human nature advanced by philosophers and scientists in the history of Western civilization, and explores the implications of these views for ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics. The ideas of Plato and Aristotle, as well as ideas that Christianity has drawn from these ancient Greek philosophers are examined before exploring views advanced in modernity and postmodernity.

This course surveys and engages philosophical issues connected to technology, and the human manipulation and transformation of nature. For example, is the human good essentially tied to technological development? Should technological advancement be allowed to constrain or even determine social, political and moral decisions? Is technology an essentially neutral means to ends otherwise determined or do technological means bring with them their own ends? What are the differences between the natural and the artificial? Has technology taken the place formerly held by religion or spirituality?

Since philosophy's roots in ancient Greece, philosophers have traditionally utilized critical analysis and the tools of reason and logic in pursuing answers to philosophical questions. However, the analytic focus of contemporary philosophy has been shaped most significantly by the philosophical tradition launched by Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moor, and Gottlob Frege at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Explores the foundations of religious belief and faith, particularly the issue of the rationality of religion. The role of methodology is examined, including the value of deductive, inductive, and abductive reasoning; also the question whether the method applicable to religious belief is unique to it. The work of recent philosophical theologians and their critics is examined and evaluated.

This course examines the triumph of secular naturalism in academic/educated culture, and proposes rational grounds for advancing historic Christian theism. Trinitarian faith is viewed here as having the structure of theories that postulate the existence of unobservable objects. These theories adopt a unique method of defining the entities or beings postulated to exist; this method is shown to be compatible with historic theism. Moreover, the Resurrection of Jesus is identified as the central tenet for which evidence additional to that found Holy Scripture is needed in our secular context. The Shroud of Turin and contemporary visions of Jesus are shown to offer such evidence. While no objection is registered to allowing science to explore any features of the Universe, Christian theism is presented as supplementing such scientific knowledge.