so, with no further ado, i give you professor ninian smart. [professor ninian smart:] first of all, every civilized person ought to know about the world's religions, as a matter of course. they're deep as faith of human civilization. so, if you're studying human civilization, you should study the religions. secondly, of course, the study of religion makes a lot of challenges to people's assumption. western assumptions are challenged by the ones in the east or the south - the south of the world, africa and so on. african religions make a number of challenges to western ideas. now these challenges often deepen our understanding of our own cultures. the very fact that, let us say, buddhist ethics are little bit different from christian ethics, challenges us to go deeper into the nature of christian love, for example. [dr. simons:] often times students, faculty, the general public, confuse our disciplined religious studies with theology or the philosophical endeavors. what are some of differences or the unique aspects of religious studies? [profes

appropriately, in our second class, we'll be looking at those as somewhat arbitrary structure, but ninian smartreated the six dimensions of religion, and i found it very effective in looking at that. well, let's go through the six dimensions, and then we'll show a little piece on the mount of beatitudes, and we'll be able to come back and see where they come from. we're really moving through the course, and the first one we're going to look at is the experiential dimension - religious experience - and we've talked about that, how the idea of boundary questions or profound life questions - well, these engender religious experience and so we'll be looking - that's our first dimension, and we'll be looking at different kinds of religious experience and following it on from there. the next would be myth. in religious studies, not false stories, not untrue stories, but profoundly true. maybe not scientifically provable, maybe not common-maybe it defies common sense - but to the believers, these are the profoundly true original stories, and we'll be looking at those. one interesting facet, we'll look

we're interested in that power question that ninian smart mentioned. we're interested in the power of it. so that's put us back in the practical and social here. personal - we don't teach religion here. we teach about religion. but, i'm in the trenches. you know, sometimes people think, you know, i'm sort of a commentator. you know, they hire like bill curtis or somebody to run this class. no, i'm an in the trenches teacher of western illinois university and i taught to thousands and thousands of students down there. most of them think of me as kind of a metabolic impediment to their more practical goals in life because westerns have very practical schools, so i constantly have to win them over. but, the personal side, nobody has ever come up to me and said for taking this course, beliefs and believers, that somehow it ruined their religious life or confused them. if anything if i hear anything it's usually the opposite. well, that's just not the goal of this class to enlarge in or enliven your particular personal religious search. there's nothing wron