Science and religion are often depicted as two titans, eternally duking it out for the hearts and minds of an existentially bemused humanity. Today’s newspapers and bestseller lists are filled with polemics propping up one and degrading the other. From myopic creationists to Oxford Don Richard Dawkins, no one seems to think the two can live in peace.

Assistant Professor of Physics Don Smith and Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Eric Mortensen hope to challenge this popular conception with an IDS course in spring 2008. Mortensen argues that most serious European scientists, until relatively recently, were men of the cloth. Darwin’s loss of faith was the exception, not the rule.

The course, tentatively titled “Magic, Science and Religion,” will not focus entirely on the science versus religion showdown. Both men vehemently oppose the assumption that science and religion are mutually exclusive, but they hope the class will shake up more then one popular metaphysical assumption.

“We met during the science and religion discussions that were held last year during the Year of Spirit and Spirituality,” Mortensen said. “We’d bring different things to this – besides fun. I’m a comparative (religion) theorist, but I’m also an agnostic, Buddhist, folklorist and relativist.”

“One of the things I hoped for in coming to work at a liberal arts school was that I would be able to do team teaching,” said Smith who describes himself as a Quaker astrophysicist. “We will basically be looking at different ways of looking at the world.”

Mortensen has taught a previous incarnation of the course as a 400-level religious studies capstone and enlisted the only surviving member of the original class as a teaching assistant.

“It was my favorite class I’ve taken at Guilford, so I was really psyched when Eric asked me to T.A.,” said senior religious studies major Amanda Armbrust. “It made me question my whole paradigm and the very fundamentals that shape it. It became problematic to use words like ‘fact’ and ‘truth.'”

“(This course) gives me a chance as a practicing scientist to step back . it’s the classic Socratic self-examined life,” Smith said. “You can’t understand your own world view, unless you step outside it.”

And, what about magic?

“Magic is the wild card of the class,” Mortensen said. “What is magic? Is it a useful term in the academy? It’s a problematic term; it’s not science and, it’s not religion.”

“Science has its roots in magic,” Smith said. “Astronomy started in astrology. The lines were blurred back then. The ancient Babylonians did what we call astronomy, but they cast horoscopes for kings with that information.”

The course is meant to challenge students’ basic assumptions about our understanding of reality, the scope of rationality, and cross-cultural relativism, amongst other arcana. Mind-bending readings abound, from Christian scripture and the works of the Dalai Lama to an Umberto Eco novel.

“How can we talk about one paradigm from within the rubric of another paradigm? How can you talk about matters of faith from an empirical perspective and vice-versa,” Mortensen said. “We’re going to read Darwin, and I’d like to bring in a creationist preacher. It’s the only way to read Darwin, really.”

The course is not yet approved, and the syllabus is under construction. But, for anyone willing to tackle quantum physics, world mythology and a bit of Buddhist emptiness theory, there may yet be some hope of putting the two titans together.