Faith and Reason

Nicole Saunders

19/4/07

 

This is a Philosophy of Religion teaching exercise for first-year university students who have basic familiarity with Rationale, but are not studying a dedicated critical thinking course.

 

The exercise is based around an extract from a set text: Michael Scriven’s Primary Philosophy (McGraw-Hill 1966, pp. 98-102). Here’s a copy of that in a PDF file: scriven.pdf

 

The main focus of my exercise was getting students to evaluate Scriven’s argument, and arrive at a well-considered view of their own about whether it is a good one or not.  I also wanted them to have some practice at mapping the logic of an argument, but that was a secondary focus.

 

To achieve my aim I devised this two-step exercise.  My students worked collaboratively in small groups of four, given that a vital part of philosophy is engaging with each other’s thought.

 

Step 1 (achieving my exercise’s secondary focus)

 

I asked the students to use these claim boxes to map two of Scriven’s lines of argument:

 

 

 

 

Here’s my model answer for Step 1:

 

 

 

 

Step 2 (achieving my exercise’s main focus)

 

Students then attached my map of Scriven’s other major line of argument to their existing map in the appropriate place, and then evaluate the whole.  I asked them to attach Rationale sticky notes to explain any aspects of their evaluation that they felt were especially important. Here’s my map of Scriven’s other line of argument:

 

 

 

Here’s my model answer for Step 2, showing some possible sticky notes:

 

 

Copies of my Rationale files are here:Faith vs. reason.rtnl

 

My files are in Rationale version 1.3 because I wanted to play with the new drag-and-drop browser feature. I’m pretty sure you can download version 1.3 for free from the Austhink website.