Raphael The Religion and Philosophy Web Site at the ACA Virtual Center

Raphael
Newsletter of the Religion and Philosophy Web Site at the ACA Virtual Center

Volume 1
Number 2
April 2001

Highlights of this issue:

Call for Presentations

ACA Tech Summit IV
October 18-20, 2001
Adelphia Centre, Johnson City, TN

The Appalachian College Association will hold its fourth Tech Summit on October 18-20, 2001 at the Adelphia Centre in Johnson City, TN. The Tech Summit is an outstanding opportunity for ACA faculty to receive information, inspiration, and training in the many uses of technology in our roles as teachers and scholars. Last year, almost 300 ACA faculty, staff, and administration attended Tech Summit III. This year's Tech Summit promises to be even better. This will be a major conference of interest to all faculty members and administrative persons who are interested in learning more about successful instructional technology innovations being used in the classrooms of our institutions and at comparable institutions elsewhere. We hope you will make plans to attend.

The fields of religion and philosophy have always been well-represented among presenters at the Tech Summit. Two groups of religion scholars among ACA schools received collaborative grants from the ACA. These groups will present interim reports on their work at the Tech Summit. Hopefully, these two presentations will form the core of a religion and philosophy "strand" of presentations by other ACA teachers and scholars who would like to share innovative ways they are using technology to enhance their teaching.

Have you developed a project or technique that combines technology with teaching or scholarship in an innovative way? If so, the ACA invites you to submit a presentation proposal for Tech Summit IV. You may answer the call for presentations in any of the following ways:

Send an abstract of your proposed presentation to J. P Brantley, Director of Programs, Appalachian College Association, 210 Center Street, Berea, KY 40403.
Email Dr. Brantley at aca.jp@popmail.berea.edu
Submit your presentation proposal online at the ACA web site when the online form is completed in a couple of weeks. Check the ACA web site regularly for updated information and the availability of this form.

The deadline for submitting abstracts is May 15, 2001.

In the News

Two Religion Projects among Latest ACA Technology Grant Recipients

The latest round of grants in the ACA's Teaching and Technology Stage II program includes projects by two groups of religion scholars working at seven different ACA schools.

Three scholars from ACA schools are pursuing a project that will introduce students in religious studies to the ways material culture informs the religious quest. David Howell, assistant professor of religion at Ferrum College, Peggy Cowan, associate professor of religion and philosophy at Maryville College, and Vicki Phillips, assistant professor of religion at West Virginia Wesleyan College, will collaborate in the creation of a project entitled, "Text and Context: Connecting Students with the Historical, Social, and Cultural Realities that Shape the Practices and Texts of Religion." The project's web site will focus on the material elements of the three great monotheistic religions of the West. Included in the web site will be a series of learning pathways featuring images, audio resources, religious texts, and online quizzes. It will also include a series of threaded discussions on various aspects of religious phenomena, links to important web sites exploring those phenomena, and an alphabetical index of the various media in the site. These resources will be available for use by students in a variety of types of courses in religion and philosophy.

A group of seven scholars who teach biblical languages have received a collaborative grant for a project entitled, "Biblical Languages Lab: A Collaborative Web Site Providing Online Learning, Guidance and Resources for the Study of Biblical Greek and Hebrew." Bob Dunston and Garland Young of Cumberland College, Tim Crawford and Ken Lyle of Bluefield College, Wade Bibb of Carson-Newman College, and Dwayne Howell and John Hurtgen of Campbellsville University will collaborate on this project. These faculty envision the creation of an interactive web site which will include a number of tools to aid in the teaching of biblical Greek and Hebrew on their respective campuses. The web site will include grammar reviews, interactive quizzes, vocabulary exercises, downloadable handouts for students and instructors, and a question forum where students and instructors in biblical language classes can discuss the fine points of Greek or Hebrew grammar.

Both of these grants were funded by ACA's Mellon Technology Collaborative Grant program with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Featured Web Site

The Jesus Archive is a site which according to its author, is "dedicated to the study of the historical Jesus, early Christianity and Second Temple Judaism." Its author, James Bacon, is a magazine publisher by profession who has made a fine hobby of producing one of the most attractive and informative sites on the historical Jesus on the web. Bacon's web site presents cutting-edge scholarship on the historical Jesus in a format accessible to both scholar and layperson alike.

The web site has a fine webliography of resources dealing with all aspects of the literary and social worlds of the ancient Mediterranean world. Especially useful are links to online texts dealing with Jesus research, such as the Nag Hammadi texts and New Testament apocrypha. Users may submit their information to a registry of Jesus scholars. The site contains reviews of much of the important, recent work on the burgeoning field of historical Jesus research. These reviews include books by both evangelical and non-evangelical authors.

The Jesus Archive would be a fine resource for both students and teachers of early Christianity.

Book Review

The End of Certainty and the Beginning of Faith, by D. Brian Austin

D. Brian Austin. The End of Certainty and the Beginning of Faith: Religion and Science for the 21^st Century. Macon, Georgia: Smyth and Helwys Publishing, Incorporated, 2000. ISBN:1-57312-262-9 $20.00 paperback

Reviewer: Michael Robinson, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Cumberland College, Williamsburg, Kentucky

A common assumption of contemporary western culture is that science and religion are antagonists, and that while science is an objective source of knowledge whose content is verifiable and certain, religion is merely a subjective endeavor whose tenets are inescapably speculative, uncertain, and thus of questionable value. In his text, The End of Certainty and the Beginning of Faith, D. Brian Austin of Carson-Newman College seeks to dispel this strong dichotomy between science and religion. Austin is convinced that a clear shift has occurred in the epistemology of science away from a smug assurance that our concepts fully (even adequately) convey the nature of the physical universe toward a more humble assessment of the human capacity to understand the world. Drawing from the insights of Bergson, Nietzsche, Whitehead, and Peirce, Austin argues that human concepts are always interpretations--ever imprecise, ever incomplete (19-34). Further, there is mounting evidence that a genuine randomness persists at all levels of the physical universe--from subatomic (quantum) occurrences, to the emergence of unpredictable structural patterns in systems that are far-from-equilibrium, to the immense diversity of biological organisms, to the incredibly complex electro-chemical nexus that constitutes the human nervous system. Randomness is real (37-56).

[READ MORE]

Call for Contributors and Ideas

The religion and philosophy section of the Virtual Center needs your ideas and contributions. You can help by:

making suggestions regarding the types of materials you would like to see on site
submitting materials for posting on one of the sections of the site
send the site manager information about special events on your campus related to the study of religion or philosophy (lectureships, grants and awards, faculty publications)
submit links to be published on the webliography maintained on the site
information for feature articles relevant to the stated purposes of the site.

You can submit materials for the Religion and Philosophy Virtual Center by emailing the editor to submit materials.

What Is the Religion and Philosophy Virtual Center?

The Virtual Center, sponsored by the Appalachian College Association, is a set of webs designed to serve as teaching tools for faculty in the various ACA colleges and universities.

The purposes of the religion and philosophy section of the Virtual Center are:

to serve as a teaching resource for teachers of religious studies and philosophy
to provide opportunities for collaborative work in pedagogy in religion and philosophy