Word: atheist
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...indoctrinate. Their purpose is to explore an academic discipline that receives little or no treatment at Harvard. Studying religion involves coping with unanswerable questions, confronting humanity’s limitations, and thinking beyond oneself. No literature or science course can teach these skills. And regardless of whether students are atheist or devout, thinking about religion in an academic environment expands their view of the world and opens their minds to a new and different way of thinking. The basic principle that underlies other areas of the general education report should apply to reason and faith: A fundamental understanding of religious...
...considered cooler—and more intellectual—to read Nietzsche than C.S. Lewis, to engage in intellectual discourse grounded in secular thought rather than the religious dimension. Of course, it is incredibly valuable for a religious person, who may not understand how someone can be an atheist, to read great secular thinkers to understand the alternative point of view. And Harvard students get this exposure through the current Core, which requires every student to read secular moral thinkers. But, likewise, atheists who don’t understand how someone can be religious should be required to take...
...substantially different view of faith. My father was almost entirely absent from my childhood, having been divorced from my mother when I was 2 years old; in any event, although my father had been raised a Muslim, by the time he met my mother he was a confirmed atheist, thinking religion to be so much superstition...
...think of the student who wanted to write her term paper on women’s issues in Islam and discovered the breadth and power of Muslim feminist writers she didn’t know existed, the Muslim student who discovered the writings of Abraham Joshua Heschel, and the atheist who found that Buddhist philosophers didn’t “believe in God” either...
DIED. Vashti McCollum, 93, Illinois housewife and humanist (a term she preferred to atheist) whose objections to religion classes at her son's school led to a landmark 1948 Supreme Court ruling protecting separation of church and state in public education; in Champaign, Ill. After her son decided he did not want to attend the Protestant-oriented classes--Jews and Catholics went off-campus for instruction--she sued the school board. McCollum, who endured threats to her family and lost her job, later said she fought because "I knew I was right...