SLUH Junior Faith Course Part VI: Challenges to Faith

While these are good reviews, they are always in the process of change.

Sixth Part of Faith Course:
Challenges to Faith

Section Review and Test Preview

Content assigned: Section on Challenges to Faith in the Readings Book.

Videos:

John Kavanaugh, S.J. Advertising and the Formation of Cultural Values
The Merchants of Cool. The follow up program is The Persuaders, and it is available for viewing on the internet. Check out Look-Look web site.
If there is time: A Crisis of Faith from Four Season Productions

Be able to summarize the key ides of Nietzsche, Hobbes, Ignatius, Jesus, and your ideas on the meaning of life, what it means to be human, reason, and morality.
What is scientism? And how can it affect your faith/Faith?
Give Readings' three stages in the relationship between science and faith. Know and understand the terms: unreflective unity, reflective disunity, reflective unity. (Can this apply to you personally in any other area of your life?)
Be able to give another view of the relationship between Science and Religion in Stephen Jay Gould's NOMA (non-overlapping magisteria) from his book Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion and the Fullness of Life.
What are three limitations of the scientific method?
List and understand Zanzig's major negative societal values from the freshman text.
Be able to explain why Fr. Kavanaugh worries that advertising is shaping our cultural values, our images of what it means to a person, of what hapiness is all about.
Summarize the message of "The Merchants of Cool" about the meaning of life, about morality, about reason, about what it means to be human. Does it support what Kavanagu said twenty years ago?
Explain what is meant by "The Power of Dehumanization." Is this a reality in your life? Explain.

Key vocabulary: positive atheists, practical atheists, objective morality, relative morality, masses, will to power, Nietzsche's Superman, slave mentality. materialism, Hobbes' Leviathan, Ignatius' First Principle and Foundation, Ignatian indifference, AMDG, unreflective unity, reflective disunity, reflective unity, secular humanism.

Section web assignment

Choose one:

A media assignment Listen to a A History of Doubt or Moral Man and Immoral Society: The Public Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr from Speaking of Faith radio program and write a summary of it. Show which key ideas it illustrates, especially note if these ideas were mentioned in our Readings. Consider any of the programs listed below.
- A History of Doubt
  
  The Problem of Evil as a challenge to faith/Faith
- The Morality of Nature
- The Problem of Evil
- Where Was God?
  
  Culture as a challenge to faith/Faith:
- Moral Man and Immoral Society: The Public Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr
  
  Atheism as a challenge to faith/Faith:
- Beyond the Atheism-Religion Divide
  
  Consumerism as a challenge to faith/Faith:
- The Ethics of Eating
- The Gods of Business
- Money and Moral Balance
  
  Science as a challenge to faith/Faith:
- The Heart's Reason: Hinduism and Science.
- Einstein and the Mind of God: Einstein's God
- Quarks and Creation
- Science and Being
- Science and Hope
- Listening Generously: The Medicine of Rachel Naomi Remen
- The Biology of the Spirit
- A Return to Mystery: Religion, Fantasy and Entertainment
Read and do a summary of Stephen Jay Gould's Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life.
Listen to Segment 1: To the Best of Our Knowlege Interview with Richard Dawkins author of The God Delusion. Then write a response to Dawkins. What do you agree with? What do you disagree with? Also listen to the second segment.

Why not create your own web assignment? It just need to be in the area of "challenges to faith/Faith." It needs to be approved by the teacher. Is there some area of history/biography/philosophy/art that will explore atheism or scientism or dehumanization that you want to investigate more deeply? I'm always open to your suggestions on a an assignment that will help you really get into "challenges of faith/Faith."

Journal

Five parts, rubric grading: 1) One paragraph summary of the key idea summarizing the topic of the section. 2) List and explain two of the most important ideas you want to remember from this section. week. Explain in a clear and complete manner. Explain in a way that someone reading would be able to know and understand the ideas appreciate its worth. Make it clear why you think these are worth remebering. 3) One image of that reminds you of the topic. Attribute, link, your source. 4) Short reflection on the greatest challenges to faith/Faiht in our life here and now OR Suggest to me a fourth thing to do that will help you review section, think more deeply about issues you choose and prepare for the test.

Let me know if you have another idea rather than a journal. I like creative and self chosen assignments.

Recommended extra credit

Check the extra credit web page. Remember that you can contract with me if you have any good ideas. Any extra credit must be approved.

Look on to one of these great websites and choose a program that is relevant to the contents of this section.
View a Frontline program and write a summary of it. Show which key ideas it illustrates. Suggested program: The Persuaders

Listen to a A History of Doubt from Speaking of Faith radio program and write a summary of it.