What is a "naked essay"?

OK, perhaps the expression is a bit alarming but it is not so bad. I offered this course every couple of years and each year I would be alarmed at the attitude students (non-Christian and more alarmingly Christian) towards plagiarism. Some would simply claim that taking words directly from a source was OK as long as you referenced it so it didn't look like you were hiding something! So last year I gave up trying to keep Christian students in the fourth year of their degree at a Christian University from actively plagiarizing their sources.

The result was the naked essay. You will have the better part of two months to read sources on your topic and think about the concepts and how different sources deal with the same concepts. You will write an annotated bibliography that lists your sources and gives a short paragraph or quote from each source. Then, on a Friday afternoon you and your classmates will go into the computer lab with nothing ("naked" you might say). I will give you your annotated bibliography and you will have three hours to write your essay on one of the computers. The computers will be set up to automatically save to a disk every five minutes so you will not lose what you have written. When you are done you will simply submit the disk and your annotated bibliography and that will be your essay.

Yes, it is still possible to cheat and plagiarize but only if you are an evil genius and evil geniuses can't be stopped from being evil anyway. This will take all forms of unintentional academic dishonesty, improper documentation and plagiarism off the table for most students.

Yes, it also means that students that can touch type will have an advantage in the number of words that they can type in three hours. But the final mark is not linked to the number of words but the quality of the thought. Students that type more slowly will just have to write better. The average word count last year was over 1500. And let's face it most student actually write their essays while sleep deprived the night before it is due anyway. I am just sort of formalizing the last minute push.

A Holiday Quote

This quote was sent to me by a student and I was struck by the faith and assurance that it demonstrates. My holiday wish is that you might be blessed and know this kind of personal confidence. Take care all. I will see you in the new year.

"Nothing in life is more wonderful than faith-- the one great moving force which we can neither weigh in the balance nor test in the crucible...
mysterious, indefinable, known only by its effects, faith pours out an unfailing stream of energy while abating neither jot nor tittle of its potency" -- Sir William Osler, 1910

Carl Sagan: Polymath

LINK TO ONLINE SAGAN MEMORIAL

LINK TO CARL SAGAN WIKIPEDIA PAGE

"The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by 'God,' one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity." Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan died ten years ago, December 20, 1996. I can remember it clearly and I can remember the sense of loss. Carl was a scientist, he was not a great scientist but he was a great communicator. His "great" scientific achievements are listed to include things like the initial investigations on the nature of the atmosphere of Venus, the idea of a nuclear winter and his exobiology theories including SETI.

The reality though is that the new science knowledge he was able to create simply established him as a trustworthy representative for science to modern society. We did not know that we needed Carl Sagan until he came along and showed the world the value of having a trustworthy, knowledgeable bridge between the world of science and the world of the everyday person.

He aspired to be a polymath and in that he came as close to it as we have had in the public domain. It was not that he understood, it was that he could explain both content and significance to those that did not understand.

Yes, he was an atheist. Yes, I have had conversations with a fellow evangelical that actually met Carl Sagan and was treated very poorly (even rudely) when Carl realized that he was speaking with a conservative Christian. Yes, I believe that Carl is now aware that he lived his life in spiritual darkness and indeed spent his life turning away from the light. Yes, I believe that he now regrets that more than anything else. For all that however I would also note that I have more Carl Sagan books on my bookshelf than any other author. I would note that it was not the scholar in Carl's writing that attracted me but the love and joy of discovery and knowledge. He was an evangelical for scientific modernity. He believed.

And that love, that joy, that hope, transformed his writings into something that transcends the mundane communication of facts. That is why, even though the scientific content of what he wrote may be dated, what he wrote still has value.

If you are inclined to read something by Carl I would recommend that you read Cosmos, Pale Blue Dot and Demon Haunted World for they show the spectrum of his thought over his entire career as a science communicator. He really believed and he really cared that others could and should know what he knew. He has not been replaced.

RS 3853 Reading Journals

I am getting questions from students about the nature of the reading journal that will be kept this semester in RS 3853. I reserve the right to make small changes to what follows as I finalize the syllabus but this is pretty much what the journal will look like this semester.

I have decided to change the nature of the reading journal this year. It will, however, still be worth 20% of the final mark.

As before, the journal will essentially be a letter that you write to yourself about the weekly reading with the intent that the journal will be a resource that you will use in the final exam. You should focus on writing in your journal the essential thoughts (both the author and yours) from your weekly reading. Later in the course you will be expected to include a reflection section that describes how the reading related to other course readings.

For this semester, the reading journal will be submitted every week at the beginning of each lecture. The reading journal will be kept by me and you will submit weekly chapters. The weekly journal chapters that you submit will be printed and I will insert them into your journal which I will give you in the final exam.

You may use up to two pages maximum for any selected reading but each reading must be on separate pages.

Each reading should start on a new page with an appropriate bibliographic reference to the source at the beginning. The journal must not contain more than 10% direct quotation and it is subject to the rules concerning plagiarism and academic dishonesty.

You are to format the pages with 2 cm margins on all sides using arial, 10 point font single spaced (but double spaced until you have two pages). The text is limited to black, bold and underlined type (no colour, no highlighter). You are welcome to insert one table or diagram per page of your journal.

In short, if you want to get ahead of the game, your Christmas readings
1. Water Bible and Science made easy,
2. Elder Critical Thinking and
3. Poole Science and Belief

would constitute three sources and you would be allowed to write up to six pages (2 pages each max).

If I were writing a journal selection on them I would make sure that I had the chapter titles with a paragraph on each chapter with perhaps the odd direct quote which captures the authors thinking. That would be it.

Take care.

Christmas Cartoon: Science and Belief

LINK to cartoon
(if you click on the cartoon itself it should expand for better viewing)

RS 3853 The Other Books

The texts described in the previous post are designed to show the wide range of topics that fall under Faith and Science, define some basic vocabulary and provide at least a simple framework for discussion. They are in fact to prepare us for the three major texts of this course. Your reading commitment to this course will be about 60 pages of university level text per week. For an average student that means a commitment of 3 - 5 hours of actual reading / thinking prior to the weekly class.



Brooke is the primary text describing the HISTORICAL interaction of Christianity with the Natural Sciences. We will not read all of it but five weeks of the semester will be devoted to it and the topics it discusses.



Polkinhorne is what we will be reading at the end of the course. It describes the CURRENT interactions of Faith and Science in THEOLOGICAL terms.



You will write your "naked essay" on Wilson. Before the mid-term break you will need to have read the text and have chosen a framework for analysis (historical, theological or scientific). The week after the break you will produce an annotated bibliography to support the naked essay and a couple weeks after that we will write the naked essay.

RS 3853 Some Christmas Reading

If you have some time over the Christmas break you can really get your head in the right place for the course if you read these short booklets before the beginning of classes in January. You can pick up the first two in the bookstore and since this is the second year in a row that this course has been offered you can probably find some used copies kicking around. I would note that the course journal will be significantly different from previous years so you should think to yourself "what content from this reading would be most useful to me on the final exam?" and write that out.


A) A short tract on conservative / fundamentalist Christianity and its relationship with the natural sciences

B) A very short tract on secular scientific thinking as a life philosophy



C) This short book was in fact written with the intelligent layperson in mind and was intended to serve as a discussion booklet to be used in an adult Sunday school class. The tone of this book, curious, fair and even-handed is exactly right. Poole has a first class mind (in a debate with atheist Richard Dawkins the comment was made by Dawkins himself that Poole was the only Christian to ever correctly state Dawkin's philosophy). The booklet is mostly figures / photographs and because it is careful to define its terms and positions can be used as a primary reference when it comes to all matters of this course. This book is not available from the bookstore but I have a personal written permission to make a class set of copies for discussion and you can pick up a copy from me in my office.

RS 3853 Course Blog

The intention of this blog is to allow for the communication of materials to the class via the internet in addition to the course webpage.