OMG UPDATE: Question? Answer.

Updated on Sunday, April 13

#6319

QUESTION: I am interesting in learning more about world religions and I am debating between taking RS100 (Religions of the East) and RS 110 (Religions of the West).

I grew up in a Christian community, so I feel like the RS 110 may be a bit boring as I already know a lot about it, but I know little about Islam. But I fear the cultural differences may make RS100 difficult (based on online course reviews) and this will be an elective - so I don't want it to affect my other studies.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Which was more interesting, why? Which was more difficult? Did you take it online or in class?

**Note: I know there have been some religion flame wars lately on here, I am not taking this to promote god or anything, I simply want to understand others beliefs since they can play such a central role in a person's outlook. So let's not debate religion mmkay?**

9 comments

  1. rs100 is pretty easy, and not too culturally challenging. whatever that means

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    1. Did you take it online or in class?

      And by culturally challenging I was referring to reviews I have read where language differences or cultural points were not fully explained, making the concept harder to grasp.

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    2. ^ took it online in 2011 with a nice lady professor who gave me a scarf that dalai lama touched or something, for answering a question. not relevant but eh

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    3. ^ wait shit sorry IN CLASS.

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  2. If you want to actually learn things, skip intro courses and take a 200 level one. I took a 200-level SI course first year and loved it, then went back to take the 100-level RS courses and found them very boring and not taught well. In general, though, I dislike most intro-level courses.

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  3. I took RS 110 and loved it, from a christian family but essentially non-religious upbringing. I found it extremely interesting, ESPECIALLY Islam! Such a misunderstood religion, it was actually the religion I identified with the most.

    I took it online, the course modules were straightforward and not too much work. Exam was very fair. I would love to take RS 100 now to compare :)

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  4. RS 100 is probably the easiest course I've taken at UW. I grew up in a Catholic based school system and household and found the course to be very interesting. I have a tendency to find subjects that I know a lot about to be more difficult as it tends to be original ideas and concepts that i consider rather than the new material

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  5. If you're looking for actual WORLD religions, neither of those are a good bet. RS110 is Islam, Judaism and Christianity, and you've probably got a solid idea of their components already. RS100 is the one I actually took in class just this past term, and it was just India/Asia (hence "the East").

    RS100 was really easy, only 4 tests consisting of 50 MC, 2 Short, and 1 movie/essay question. We did Hinduism, Jainism+Sikhism, Buddhism, and Daoism+Confucianism+Shinto. The prof was alright, actually learned a lot despite not studying, but I took it solely for Daoism so that was a huge mistake. Don't worry about cultural differences, each unit is basically half the religion itself and half the culture surrounding it.

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  6. Both a waste of time

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