Schedule

Tuesday & Thursday, 12:30-1:20 in DeBartolo 141 + Friday discussion sections.

Topic

Some work in the philosophy of religion is concerned with arguments for particular religious theses; other work in the philosophy of religion is concerned with understanding what such theses mean, and trying to see whether they are coherent. In this course we'll do some of the first, but more of the second. We'll discuss the some of the doctrines asserted in the Nicene Creed, including: the attributes of God; the Trinity; the Incarnation; the Atonement; original sin; and the possibility of life after death. The focus will be on traditional Catholic expositions of these doctrines; but this focus won't be exclusive.
      Our strategy throughout the course will be to construct the best arguments possible for the falsity of various Christian doctrines, and then ask whether and how one might respond to those arguments.    

Texts

All readings will be made available in PDF form via links from the syllabus.

Assignments

There will be a midterm and non-cumulative final exam, along with three 1500 word papers and, perhaps, a few in-class quizzes thrown in for good measure.

Grading

The midterm exam and (non-cumulative) final exam will each be worth 35% of the final grade; short take home assignments will, collectively, be worth 10%. The remaining 20% of the final grade will be given on the basis of class attendance and participation.

Each assignment is required, in the sense that failure to complete one or more assignments is sufficient to fail the course.

Notre Dame has no official way of indexing numerical grades to letter grades. This is the system that will be used in this course:

A	94+
A-	90-93
B+	87-89
B	83-86
B-	80-82
C+	77-79
C	73-76
C-	70-72
D	60-69
F	59-

Honor code

In all of their assignments, students are responsible for compliance with the University’s honor code, information about which is available here. You should acquaint yourself with the policies and penalties described there.

Sometimes, it can be hard to know what, exactly, the honor code implies with respect to different disciplines. For this reason, the philosophy department has prepared a document explaining, using examples, what the honor code requires of students when writing a philosophy paper. I strongly recommend that you read this document, which is available here. It is possible to violate the honor code without intending to do so; the best way to avoid this is to carefully read through the philosophy department's guidelines.

If you are in doubt about what the honor code requires of you in a particular case, please ask me.