I didn’t think it had and this essay is sounds a little angry and hectoring. I use Cupitt a lot.

Coghlan gave me a distinction for the course, which was nice of him considering the tone of the essays.

It may be considered ratbaggery at a catholic university to submit an essay that basically says that miracles don’t exist and if they did they would disprove the existence of God. This essay has an odd snarky tone and uses some medical examples that I seem to recall the marker didn’t completely grasp. In other words an ill considered effort. I had the gall to submit this to the in house journal, I believe, where it was ignored, and rightly so.

My semester two subject in 2003 was Issues in Philosophy of Religion. The lecturer was Peter Coghlan BA (Uni Melb) MEd (Monash) who had been teaching philosophy since 1974. It looks like he was still teaching at least to 2007 and the subject appears to have ceased being offered in 2013. There are some publications here and some others at ACU. Here is an article he wrote for the Age. I never met the lecturer, since this was all online, and I pretty sure I had no idea he had nearly 30 years of teaching experience at the time.

The aims were to introduce us “to some of the basic philosophical issues posed by religious belief”, looking at the rationality of religious belief and the concept of God. Philosophy in general hurts my brain, but I was a big Don Cupitt fan, so it was worth a go.

The modules covered:

• The Ontological Argument
• The Cosmological Argument
• The Design Argument
• Religious Experience
• Objections to Religious Beliefs
• Religion and Science
• Religion and Morality
• The Concept of God
• Religious Language
• Some Radical Alternatives
• Revelation
• Religious Diversity

That was a lot of material and the notes were extensive with well chosen readings supplied for each module. Despite being online, being 2003, it was still all text based. There were two assignments worth 40% and 60% of the assessment, with suggested activities for each module that were not for assessment.

The risk for me with these topics was to succumb to being a ratbag radical upsetting people at a catholic university.