I am currently preparing a teaching module on apologetics for the Maryvale Institute in Birmingham. This module will be part of a new MA (MA PES 9), validated by the Open University and due to be launched in early 2011. Topics to be covered include:
- An appreciation of the importance of philosophy for apologetics and an understanding of the aims and methods of philosophical inquiry.
- An understanding, reinforced by practical examples, of true and false methods of reasoning in philosophy and apologetics.
- A knowledge of traditional arguments for the existence of God, together with an assessment of those arguments philosophically.
- An understanding of atheism as not merely the rejection of God but a substitution of God or, in certain cases, rejection or scepticism regarding causation.
- A critical appreciation of key figures and historical developments that respond to the naïve conflict metaphor of science and Christianity.
- Arguments for and against the fruitfulness of science in a Christian cultural environment, and a comparison with the impact of other kinds of cultures on science, including atheist societies.
- A critical appreciation of the implications of two historical events: the introduction of the theory of evolution and the Galileo trial.