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.