10-18-2015, 12:17 AM
(10-18-2015, 12:04 AM)StLucieBengal Wrote: Talking about God is never a bad thing. Although I am sure your atheist buddy here would want to mark all this with .... Well this is made up .... In the end it comes down to who is teaching the matieral. personally I would love to teach this clas. I think it would be quite interesting. And would really invoke some great discussion.
No. He wants it taught purely from a historical/sociological angle with no comment on whether any doctrines or beliefs are untrue or not.
For example, with Christianity, you would teach about the culture in which it was founded, what other nearby religions were teaching and around at the time and their influence, the original church "fathers" and how their opinions shaped Christian dogma, how the books of the Bible were assembled into the canon, what basic Christian theology is (stuff like original sin, atonement, etc.), the history of some of the various denominations and their differences... Then get into how these beliefs grew, how those beliefs were used by societies, etc.
And then the same type of lessons on the other major world religions. Presumably, information about cults and how they form would come into play, too.
Tl;dr: There's no "God is real" or "God isn't real" in the proposal. Just the objective facts about how/when the various religions formed, what they teach, and how they influence society.
