Sigrid Peterson, Ph.D. » Relevance and Truth

Relevance and Truth

Relevance and Truth
Perhaps not in capital letters, but thus: “relevance and truth.”
These are criteria for judging the material (music, pictures, and texts) in this course.
Another way of putting it is “Who cares? and what does it matter?”

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Examining religion and science starts with the background of disputes between the two. These disputes are the historical basis for connecting the two in one course.

The connection among religion (God creating human), science (emerging studies of the brain as seat of consciousness), and the universe (a galaxy of stars as seen by the reincarnated Hubble telescope) is our discourse about all three topics.

See this link, which contains the link to my cv.

"I do believe that religion is, among other things, an intellectual activity -- and to play upon Paul Ricoeur's well-known phrase, it is the perception of incongruity that gives rise to thought." -- Jonathan Z. Smith (Map, 1978: 293-4) Jonathan Z. Smith's well-known description of religion, and of the academic study of religion, combines the well-known phrase "perception of incongruity" as developed by the anthropologist of mind, Jerome Bruner, and the similarly well-known phrase from Paul Ricoeur, "the symbol gives rise to thought." Did Smith mean that the perception of incongruity necessarily led to the invention of religion, or to the examination of religion?