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Welcome to Atheism, Agnosticism, and Humanism
Welcome to Atheism, Agnosticism, and Humanism.
About one person in four around the world has no religious affiliation, roughly 1.9 billion people. In the United States, nearly three adults in ten describe themselves as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular. They marry, raise children, fall ill, and grieve, and many of them will one day sit across from a minister. Doubt also lives inside every faith: the Bible itself contains Job’s protest and the weariness of Ecclesiastes.
In this course you will study what unbelief means, its long history in India, China, Greece, the Muslim world, Europe, and the Americas, the main arguments for and against belief in God, and the humanist search for ethics and meaning without the supernatural. You will hear from Black, Asian, Jewish, and ex-Muslim nonbelievers, and from the women freethinkers who led the fight for women’s rights. You will look honestly at how the nonreligious movement has treated women and people of color, and at how atheist governments have persecuted believers. And you will learn to serve nonreligious people, and the families of those who have left their faith, with respect.
Confluence ordains people of every faith and of no faith. Whatever you believe, this course will help you understand and serve the growing number of people who believe differently.
How This Course Works
| Topic | Details |
|---|---|
| Prerequisite | None. Titles and degrees begin with ordination through the Ordination Orientation. |
| Pace | Self-paced. Most students finish in four to six weeks, studying about four to five hours a week. There are no deadlines. |
| Structure | Eight modules. Each module has a lesson, a reading assignment, and a ten-question quiz. |
| Book report | Read one of the books offered, pass its ten-question quiz, and write a one-paragraph summary, after Module 8. |
| Final exam | Fifteen multiple-choice questions and one essay of 1,500 to 2,000 words, taken after Module 8. |
| Credit | 3 credit hours toward further titles and degrees. |
Grading
| Part | To pass |
|---|---|
| Module quizzes (8) | Pass each with 70% or higher. Retakes allowed. |
| Book report quiz (10 questions) | Pass with 70% or higher. Retakes allowed. |
| Book report summary (one paragraph) | Approved by the school |
| Final exam, Part 1 (multiple choice) | Pass with 70% or higher. Retakes allowed. |
| Final exam, Part 2 (one essay, 1,500 to 2,000 words) | Approved by the school |
Required texts
- Atheism: A Very Short Introduction, second edition, Julian Baggini
- Doubt: A History, Jennifer Michael Hecht
- Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe, Greg M. Epstein
- Dust Tracks on a Road, Zora Neale Hurston (the chapter “Religion”)
Many of these books are available from public libraries, used bookstores, and as ebooks. The shorter primary sources assigned in some modules, such as Ernestine Rose’s “A Defence of Atheism” and Thomas Henry Huxley’s essay “Agnosticism,” are free online.
What you will study
Module 1: What Is Unbelief? Module 2: Ancient Doubt Module 3: Doubt Within the Faiths and the Age of Reason Module 4: Freethinkers and Reformers Module 5: The Case For and Against God Module 6: Humanism: Good Without God Module 7: Unbelief Today: Women, People of Color, and the Wider World Module 8: Ministry With the Nonreligious
Book report choices
Doubt: A History, Jennifer Michael Hecht; Good Without God, Greg M. Epstein
Academic honesty
All written work must be your own. You may quote and discuss the course readings and other sources, but you must say where the words and ideas came from. Submitting work written by someone else, including work generated entirely by AI tools, is not permitted.