Natural Theologies: Where Religion and Science Interact

This course will concern itself with various recent forms of natural theology (and arguments in support of natural religion) that claim to provide evidence that confirms belief in the existence of God (and/or other transcendent realities). Such theologies almost always attempt to draw on the authority of the sciences for their claims and amount to full-scale challenges to modernist claims that science has disenchanted the world. The main objective of the course is to assess the cogency of the explicit claims that a more perceptive and comprehensive view of science can restore the pre-modern optimism in the belief in the existence of God and the value of religion.