1.  Reason and revelation

Issues:

The problem with Aristotle

Reconciling Aristotle and Christianity: Roger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas          

Nicholas of Cusa's Learned Ignorance

William of Ockham

Sources:

Edward Grant, God and Reason in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

G. E. R. Lloyd, Aristotle: The Growth and Structure of His Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968).

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ockham/ (Secondary references included in bibliography.)

 

2.  Galileo and the church

            Issues:

The 1616 meeting

                        The 1624 meeting

                        Dealings between 1624 and 1632

                        The trial

            Sources:

Mario Biagioli, Galileo Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

Michael Sharratt, Galileo:Decisive Innovator (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1996).

William R. Shea and Mariano Artigas, Galileo in Rome: The Rise and Fall of a Troublesome Genius (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/galileo.html

 

 

3.   Newton and religion

            Issues:

                        Formative experiences of Newton's youth

                        Newton interpreting scripture and the crisis of 1675

                        Newton-Leibniz debate

                        The God of the Queries

            Sources:

                        Richard Westfall, Never at Rest

                        Gale Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator

                        H.S. Thayer, ed.  Newton's Philosophy of Nature

 

4.  The classical argument from design

            Issues:

In antiquity

In Newton         

David Hume's critique

                        William Paley's Natural Theology

            Sources:

                        John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Reflections

                        Newton's Philosophy of Nature: Selections from his Writings 

                        David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

                        William Paley, Natural Theology

5.  Darwin's religion

            Issues:

                        The religion of Darwin's family background

                        Darwin's decisions about the ministry

                        Annie death and Darwin's Christianity

                        Darwin's conception of God

 

            Sources:

                        Janet Browne, Charles Darwin: Voyaging

                        Janet Browne, Charles Darwin: The Power of Place

                        Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist

                        Neal Gillespie, Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation

 

  6.  Cosmology and religion

            Issues:

The cosmological argument

The anthropic principle

Big bang

Sources:

John Barrow et al, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988)

Nick Bostrom, Anthropic Bias (New York: Routledge, 2002)

Adair Butchins, The Numinous Legacy (Albatross Press, 2002)

 

7Scopes trial

Issues:

Why it happened

William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow

As portrayed in "Inherit the Wind"

            Recent portraits

            Sources:

Jeffrey Moran, The Scopes Trial (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002)

Michael Lienesch, In the Beginning (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007)

Edward Larson, Summer for the Gods (New York: Basic Books, 2006)

 

8. The rise of Creationism

            Issues:

Early evangelicals and evolution

            Whitcomb and Morris

                        Court cases

            Changing strategy

            Sources:

                        Ronald Numbers The Creationists (Cambridge University press, 2006)

John C. Whitcomb and Henry Morris, The Genesis Flood (Baker Publishing Group, 1979)

Edward Larson, Trial and Error (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002)

Langdon Gilkey, Creationism on Trial (University of Virginia Press, 1998).

 

9.  God (and religion) as the problem

            Issues:

            Science compatible with atheism

            Incompatibility of Darwinism and religion

            Flaws in the arguments for God's existence

            Why religion evolved

Sources:

Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 2006)

                        Sam Harris, The End of Faith (New York: Norton, 2005)

Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1996)

Victor J. Stenger, God the Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist (Prometheus Books, 2007)

 

10.  Intelligent design

            Issues:

Science compatible with belief in a purposeful universe

Irreducible complexity

IS ID science?

 

            Sources:

Rick Santorum and William Demski, Darwin's Nemesis ( Intervarsity press, 2006)

Michael Behe, Darwin's Black Box ( Free Press, 2006)

                        Owen Gingrich, God's Universe (Belknap Press, 2006)

Francis Collins, The Language of God (Free Press, 2007)