Matt Scheidker
Religious Studies 2110
March 16, 2015
Extra Credit Opportunities

David Tamayo
Understanding Latino Weirdness

I really enjoyed listening to David Tamayo about how Hispanics will soon become a very big part of the population here in the United States about two-thirds of the population by 2060 to be exact. This statistic really surprised me a lot, I did not think the number of Hispanics in the United States was anywhere close so it, this really helped me to get a grasp of how to divided the United States is when it comes to culture since majority of Hispanics are located out in most of the western states. Some strong points that David went through are how important family values are to Hispanics. He went into great detail of how close-knit and strong Hispanic family ties are, and how significant religion is considering most practice Catholicism.

Vyckie Garrison
How to Use a Woman’s Faith & Trust to Make Her a Willing Accomplice to Her Own Oppression Vyckie Garrison made some very interesting points in her presentation on domestic violence. In my English 1000 class freshman year that was the main discussion point of the class and we got to read multiple books and have other guest speakers from the various domestic violence prevention centers come speak to us about these cases. When she brought religion into the mix of a women getting abused it complicates the situation a lot more because the women becomes overwhelmed with the situation and she may or may not want to admit what exactly has happened to her or how it was exactly that she was harmed. For women in this type of situation I believe that it would be extremely hard to decide what exactly it is that she should do.
Kara Riggs
Anti-Science: A Bipartisan Issue After hearing Kara Riggs speak on anti-science views and how they can be found on both views of the political spectrum it really raised a lot of questions for me. Although I believe the biggest example of this bipartisan issue is vaccinations. I don’t think that what political party that you are tied to really makes a difference when it comes to science and more importantly vaccinations. I think that it relies on purely the person not whatever political background they are, the person has to understand science as a whole and all the benefits that can come from science.

Dr. Dan Cohen
Atheist Spirituality: Exploring Secular and Religious Worldviews through Neurological and Neuropsychological Representations of Selflessness!
While listening to Dr. Cohen’s talk about atheist spirituality it really reminded me of many concepts that we covered in lecture regarding all the different types and forms of religions and beliefs. But with atheists it is often thought that they have no spirituality that all that they care about is putting down other religions. I don’t believe that this is true at all, I think that science as a whole is neglected especially the whole idea of evolution. But as an atheist you can still be spiritual and no believe in literal “God” but you could still consider yourself spiritual. All and all, spiritual atheist I fell like are just misunderstood atheist that want to believe in something