Course Overview
RELI 1000
Spring Semester, 1998
Off Campus Credit Courses
Instructor: Dr. Paul Flesher
Office: Hoyt Hall 428, 766-2616
Office Hours: T 11-11:50 & Th 11-11:50 & 1:10-3:00, or by appt.
E-mail:Pflesher@UWYO.edu
Religious Studies Program
University of Wyoming
Laramie, WY 82071-3353
The importance of religion in shaping human culture, history, and society, as well as political and economic life, has long been recognized. Even in modern, "secular" America, religion plays an important role; it provides the basis for our ethics, the core of a major political party, and has a voice in public debates about everything from medicine and education to military activity and foreign policy. Given this widespread influence, it is important to understand what religions are and how they function. This course provides the first step towards that goal by introducing students to seven different religions from around the world and to their modes of expression, explanation, and power.
This year this course will incorporate a new feature, the World Wide Web (WWW). The Web is an everchanging collection of sites with all sorts of information. Most major religions and many less-than-major religions have numerous sites where a person can read about a religion or about a particular version of a religion. This course will use this information to complement their readings and the class lectures. Many reading assignments will be of material on the Web itself. These on-line readings will be raw, uncensored presentations of different aspects of different religions. Some will be "nice" and inocuous, others will be "in your face." We will take the good with the bad, the pleasant with the unpleasant. We shall struggle to understand and learn from everything.