LFU:online

Familiarity with historical and contemporary criticism of religion and religious beliefs, the ability to think critically and articulate one’s own opinion on this topic.

Few topics are more controversial than religion – whether the controversy concerns which religion to adopt, or whether religion in general is bad or dangerous. We will explore a wide variety of criticisms of religion, with the aim of making up our own minds on these questions. We’ll start with criticism of general religious truth-claims: is the monothistic concept of God impossible? Does horrendous evil make it impossible for such a God to exist? How solid are the traditional arguments for God’s existence? Then we’ll investigate psychological and political criticisms: Is religion just a psychological crutch or an „opium for the masses“? Is God just a projection of brains that have evolved to believe? Are traditional religious worldviews inherently racist or sexist? Third, we‘ll explore the idea that religion is the ultimate conspiracy theory, fostering fundamentalism and polarlization.

Weekly discussions of important texts.

Short essays. 

Will be given at the beginning of the semester. 

None.

This course will be offered online next summer semester.