COURSE DESCRIPTION

Religious Studies 101W

"Introducing Religious Studies"

**TANDEM** with PHIL 110W

Does life have a meaning that survives death? Does God exist? And why does any of this matter for how you live your life or think about your world? These questions are by no means easy to address. Some people spend their whole lifetime searching for the answers. You will meet some of them. Why should you, a first year college student, care about the subject of religion? In a society which measures us largely by our abilities and accomplishments, religion and religious questions frequently get pushed to the margins and dismissed as impractical or boring (at the least) or as positively dangerous or delusional (at the most). Religious fanatics crowd the headlines and the electronic media, while elsewhere many sincere searchers ask very anguishing questions about where God is and what God is in a world which all too often tramples on the good and rewards the wicked. Why should you bother studying religion and why study it now? In reality, there are few occasions in your life when so much changes at one time as when you begin college. You get a new address, new friends, new ideas, and oftentimes new goals and perspectives--all while being on your own in ways you probably have never been before. And whether you think of it in these terms or not, it is the case that the questions you will inevitably be asking about your own life and world are the same questions that virtually every religion also addresses to the individual: who am I? where am I going? and how do I get there? Studying religious texts and positions in college, then, allows you to listen and learn at the very time of your life when these questions become especially compelling by becoming your own. So, we shall study religion by asking these questions and examining various religious themes which exhibit answers to them (faith, human nature, goodness, evil, revelation, and salvation). Along the way, you'll acquire skills in reading and interpreting texts, and in speaking and writing about what you have read. Because this course is taught as a tandem with Philosophy 110, a related aim is to reflect upon the intersections of those who have traveled the path of religion to answer the above questions and those who have traveled the path of philosophy. Do these paths ever meet? If they do, are there angry exchanges or a friendly embrace at the crossroads? And if they don't, is religious faith inevitably irrational? "Theology" literally means discourse about God. To do theology well, then, means being able to communicate your thoughts well. In short, to think theologically, you have to learn how to write. And that's why this is a W course designed to develop and polish those basic skills of written communication essential both to a successful collegiate career and to an informed and literate lifestyle.

This is the tandem from the Fall Semester of 1995