Skeptics and Believers: Religious Debate in the Western Intellectual Tradition (Adult Sunday School Class, Autumn Quarter 2011)

This class is listening to lectures by Tyler Roberts of Grinnell College that are recorded on DVDs published by the The Great Courses, The Teaching Company. The following is a list of lectures 21 through 36 with short descriptions. (See Spring Quarter for list of lectures 1 through 24) The Lecture numbers with asterisk and date are the lectures that we plan to listen to in class. Written transcripts are available for all lectures. Just click on the links located next to lecture titles to access the written text of that particular lecture.

20. Nietzsche and the Genealogy of Morals (MAY 22) 
LINK TO TEXT
Friedrich Nietzsche was a critic of both religion and modernity. In examining his On the Genealogy of Morals, you see the clearest expression of his view that the modern period is a culmination of the nihilistic "slave morality" at the heart of Judaism and Christianity.

21. Nietzsche—Religion and the Ascetic Ideal 
LINK TO TEXT
Continuing Nietzsche's Genealogy, you explore his presentation of a process by which "bad conscience" uses religion to increase feelings of guilt, ultimately culminating in Christianity and its "ascetic ideal," of which modern ideals of science and this-worldliness are but the latest stages of development.

22. Freud—Religion as Neurosis LINK TO TEXT
Following along the "unmasking" trail blazed by Feuerbach, Sigmund Freud sought to expose religion from a psychological perspective. Here, you see faith presented as a "universal obsessional neurosis" born out of the Oedipal complex, with God as a wish fulfillment of the loving father able to forgive our hatred of him.

23.* Barth and the End of Liberal Theology (SEPTEMBER 11)  
LINK TO TEXT
Shaken by the brutality of World War I, Karl Barth published Epistle to the Romans, launching 20th-century religious thought and rejecting the liberalism of the 19th century. He argued that the task of the religious thinker is one of "confession," acknowledging and reflecting on God's saving message.

24. *Theology and Suspicion (SEPTEMBER 18)  LINK TO TEXT
Prior to Barth, those suspicious of religion saw it, in varying degrees, as a product of "false-consciousness." Learn in this lecture how Barth and subsequent thinkers like Paul Ricoeur began to integrate this into their analysis, acknowledging how religion can foster illusions and false, mystifying comforts, even as they affirmed the richness, value, and realism of genuine religious faith.

25.* Protestant Theology after Barth (SEPTEMBER 25) 
 LINK TO TEXT
Examine the spectrum of Protestant theology after Barth, from the "correlational theology" that sought to reconcile human experience with Christian revelation to the evangelical ideas of the mid-20th century, which saw revelation as offering "fixed truths" and "moral absolutes" for all times.

26. 20th-Century Catholicism  LINK TO TEXT
In this sweeping examination, you learn that much of the Catholic theology of the 20th century was dedicated to overcoming the antimodernism instituted at the First Vatican Council in 1869—culminating in 1962's Vatican II—in spite of antimodernist views that continue to hold substantial power.

27. Modern Jewish Philosophy  LINK TO TEXT
Focus on the work of Martin Buber—who believed that so-called "I-You" relationships fostered contact with the divine—and that of Franz Rosenzweig, whose "New Thinking" focused on the revelatory encounter with God's love, through which one is released into "the flow of life."

28.* Post-Holocaust Theology (OCTOBER 2)  LINK TO TEXT
With traditional monotheism holding that God is both omnipotent and benevolent, the problem of "theodicy"—explaining the existence of evil and the suffering of the innocent—has always been problematic. You explore the theological responses to what is perhaps history's most agonizing example.

29.* Liberation Theology (OCTOBER 9)  LINK TO TEXT
Explore how Christian theologians and clergy developed "liberation theology" in response to poverty, colonialism, and an underdeveloped third world. Learn how their work has also influenced feminist and black theologies in Europe and the United States since the 1960s and has influenced a number of different religious traditions.

30.* Secular and Postmodern Theologies (OCTOBER 16) 
 LINK TO TEXT
Increasing secularization has also challenged religious thought in recent decades, as you discover in this bracing look at the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the impact of philosophers such as Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Jacques Derrida on the work of contemporary thinkers like Mark C. Taylor and Gianni Vattimo.

31.* Postmodernism and Tradition (OCTOBER 23) 
 LINK TO TEXT
For many, postmodernism offers a way to recover traditional elements of religion. Explore the ways in which this opportunity has been seized by different thinkers, including philosophers Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Luc Marion, and theologians who use a "narrative" approach to understand God's revelation as the primary shaping force of life.

32. Fundamentalism and Islamism  LINK TO TEXT
This lecture focuses on two examples of the contemporary resurgence of fundamentalist religion around the world— Christianity in the United States and Islam in the Middle East—exploring the history of each and the way each manifests itself in the modern world.

33.* New Atheisms (OCTOBER 30)  LINK TO TEXT
With the rise of the Christian Right and militant Islam has come a corresponding and vocal rise in various kinds of atheisms, many warning us of the irrationality and violence inherent in religion. You hear two of those voices as you examine the work of Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett.

34.* Religion and Rationality (NOVEMBER 6)  LINK TO TEXT
Gain important context for understanding that part of the debate that holds faith irrational by definition by exploring the variety of ways in which philosophers of religion approach this often-divisive relationship between religion and rationality.

35.* Pluralisms—Religious and Secular (NOVEMBER 13)
  LINK TO TEXT
Enjoy a look at how some of today's most creative religious thinkers have approached one of their discipline's most provocative questions: How do you incorporate issues like pluralism, diversity, and tolerance when the religions you are studying contain claims of exclusive salvation or of being God's choice?

36.* Faith, Suspicion, and Modernity (NOVEMBER 20) 
 LINK TO TEXT
In concluding the course, you address the unavoidable point that the religious life does involve making claims about the nature of reality. Explore what those claims might be and the directions in which reasonable common ground between skepticism and belief might lie.

Note:
No lecture has been assigned to November 27.  If class meets, a past lecture that was skipped will be selected.