God and Nature: Between Scientific and Religious Traditions
Zanial Abidin

X100
Spring 2002

The discussions about "Science and religion" have had a very long
history, yet are still marked by many misleading stereotypes, as
indicated by popular and simplistic images like "war" or "conflict".
Has religion always been in conflict with Science?  What lessons can
we learn from episodes in the history of science and religion, such as
the Inquisition of Galileo?  What about today's seemingly unending
intellectual (and sometimes also political and legal) battles in
issues like evolution versus creationism?  Is there a better way to
understand it?  In general, does being a scientist excludes the
possibility of being religious at the same time?  Can religious
beliefs (or atheism for that matter) be "grounded" on scientific
theories?  The course will address these kind of questions.

This course is a broad survey of various contemporary approaches to a
variety of science-and-religion issues.  It is divided into three
units.  First, the historical background of the issues, covering the
period from the Middle Ages until early modern science.  The thoughts
of major scientists such as Galileo, Boyle, and Newton, will be
introduced through selections of their own writings.  In the second
unit, there will be discussions of some contemporary scientific
theories (in physics, cosmology, and biology) and various religious
responses to them.  In the last unit we will briefly review some
defining features of science and religion in general, doing some
excursion to recent philosophy of science and discuss its
theological/metaphysical implications.  While science-and-religion
discussions are most extensively conducted in the Western, Christian
world, whenever possible this course will also review responses of
other religious traditions too, especially Islam, in which the debate
about this is very lively and has some interesting contrasts and
parallels with the one in Christian tradition.  As in the last
semester, there will be guest lecturers, at least one in each unit.

Assignments for the course will include writing weekly summary of the
readings, quizzes, and several writing assignments.  No familiarity
with any of the religious as well as scientific issues addressed is
presumed.  For additional information contact zabdin@indiana.edu