This course will juxtapose modern arguments against the reality of God with the wisdom of pre-modern culture (as expressed in poetry). The first part of the course will center on John Gray’s book Seven Types of Atheism. Gray shows that modern arguments against the reality of God are: a) partial, conflicting, and contradictory and b) a secularized form of points already articulated in revealed scripture’s critique of religiosity. This point will be further detailed with the help of Merold Westphal and Paul Ricouer. The starting point of the second part of the course will be Niaz Khialvi’s poem تم اک گورکھ دھندہ ہو (You are A Maddening Puzzle) — performed as a qawwali by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. This part will look at traditional poetry (Persian, Urdu and Punjabi with translation) to discover how pre-moderns dealt with the intellectual questions and existential conundrums that the reality of God gives rise to. A comparative analysis will show that Pre-Modern wisdom looked at these questions and conundrums with a degree of honesty and clarity that modern reasoning is barely able to imagine (let alone comprehend and embody). The last part of the course will look at the reasons behind the inability of university educated individuals to recognize the grave deficiencies in the modern thought and the life-giving potential of Pre-Modern wisdom–with the help of the reflections of Alasdair MacIntyre and Christian Smith on modern higher education.