Religion and "The New Atheism"

I have been teaching a while, but until last year, I had never taught a course that purported to have as its content 'the nature of religion.' Now, I have had a lot of religious instruction in the past, but the idea of teaching something theological did not appeal to me while teaching the anthropology of religion was equally uninteresting. Being a philosopher, I settled on teaching the course as a sort of introduction to an introduction to the philosophy of religion, if you see what I mean. This was fine for me—it was well trodden ground, at least—but the students who attended, while enjoying the course, would have referred something with more religious content. At the time, I took this to mean that they would have preferred to have some comparative religion tossed in. And while this too was true, it was not what they meant: they wanted something more critical—something that wasn't what they were being told day-in, day-out (or not being told at all, but simply being woven into the background of their daily lives). In a nutshell, students wanted to know something of what has been called (rather disparagingly in some corners) 'The New Atheism." [gallery] My calendar course description reads as follows:

Course examines the histories and worldviews of a number of religious traditions, as well as philosophical issues arising within and from these traditions. Some ancient and tribal traditions are studied, but the focus is on major, living world religions. Philosophical topics that may be addressed are the existence and nature of ultimate reality, live after death, pain and evil, faith and knowledge, and religious pluralism.

So, for fall, I have decided to take what I would have thought two years ago to be a bold and perhaps reckless interpretation: I am going to include a specific section on word religions (because the level of general knowledge about even the professed religion, let alone something like Zoroastrianism, is amazingly poor) and some standard conceptual investigation of religious topics such as the existence of God and what religious language actually means. I think that to correctly understand Harris (End Of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation) properly, one needs at least some philosophy to be able to negotiate some of the arguments. Dawkins (The God Delusion) appeals to the general persuasiveness of science, while Hitchens (God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything) tends to the kind of polemics that can really get a class going, but also spark some deeper reflection on the subject (whether you agree with Hitchens or not). I shall wrap the course up with Haught's little book (God And The New Atheism: A Critical Response To Dawkins, Harris And Hitchens): not because I think he gets the response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens right, but because the arguments presented are emblematic of the kinds of responses seen to this New Atheism. It should be able to arm students well in the sorts of public dialogues that they see around them these days. I am really quite excited about this course and think it will be particularly interesting and thought provoking.