Final review sheet for HIS3460

I list below terms and subjects with which you should be familiar.  Some may come from your reading.

Physical science and religion in the nineteenth century

The nebular hypothesis

Its implications for religion

Lord Rosse's telescope and its impact on the debate

The effect of the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Classical mechanics

            Maxwell's theory and its implication for models

            Scientific materialism

                Feuerbach's conception of religion

                The unholy trinity: Vogt, Moleschott, Büchner

Radical German theology: Herrmann

                Coherence theory of truth

                The separation of science and religion

Darwin

    His upbringing in relationship to religion

    His changing relationship to Christianity

    His personal religious position

    The Origin and its challenge to religion (natural selection)

    The post-Darwinian controversies

Scopes trial

Historical background to the trial

Background of major protagonists

Proceedings and outcome

Subsequent portraits

Creationism, evolution, and natural selection

Turn of the century evangelicals and evolution

Flood geology

The 1960s as turning point

Court cases and changing strategy

Intelligent design

The fundamental argument

Irreducible complexity

Relation to evolution

Quantum theory and religion

What is quantum theory and why did it emerge

What are the implications of quantum theory for knowledge of nature

Quantum theory's impact on religious questions

What is the anthropic principle?

Relation to contemporary cosmology

Wertheim's critique of theoretical physics

            As religion

            As gendered

Science and atheism

What arguments suggest science implies atheism

Relationship between religion and the environmental crisis

Historical roots of postmodernism

How does Nietzsche depict Western humankind's search for meaning

What is Rorty's anti-essentialism