Agnosticism paper

in rough draft form:

That's the basic outline of it, i'm going to rewrite it over the weekend, and have it ready to turn in by next week.





Agnosticism is not something that has happened overnight. It has taken years of dwelling and pondering our existence to fully persuade myself from being a firm believer in God as my Christian faith has described it, to becoming more skeptical into the sense that maybe I shouldn't believe everything i've been told from a young age. There is absolutely nothing wrong with pondering your existence, and questioning your beliefs. If you do not question what you believe, then what substantial stance do you even have on anything? This is a great question that I feel more peolpe should be asking theirselves regularly.

Now, there is a difference in disagreeing with the fathoming of a God being amongst our existence, or above our existence, and that there of being a personal issue with religion as a whole, or against any particular religion. Questions the existence of God is something that should be a normal part of human pondering; however, in today's society your opinion is respected and looked highly upon, as long as you believe in God. I have never, or will never, figure out why judgement upon other citizens in our society take place so fiercely. Why can't people choose to think how they want? How come we are molded into not expanding our minds, but regressing into a shell of disparity where thinking outside the box is actually frowned upon? There is an underlying hatred of opposing religions. This has been made much more apparent during the presidential election, where my candidate of choice, Barack Obama, was accused of being Muslim. When did being a Muslim automatically turn you into a terrorist, or automatically make you a bad person? Personally, I do not care about the job the president is doing, as long as he/she can complete their job efficiently, and accurately. Our society has dwindled down socially into almost neanderthal-like to where you cannot disagree without being disagreeable. I personally feel you should be able to disagree, without being disagreeable.

My objections and agreeances to religion are only based upon facts; although, I feel there essentially two parts to religion. You have on one polar end of the spectrum of the people that live their lives by the book, and only to embetter themselves on a daily basis living towards a greater good, and that aspect is absolutely fine. But as precisely good as things may seem on one side, with religion, evil always seems to be lurking around the corner. As most recently as the attacks on the Twin Towers, along with the Pentagon, are more apparent of religious battling. The islamic extremists have waged holy war, also known as jihad, on American soil. Now, almost no religions are safe of criticism. If you remember back to the crusades, Christians committed many vicious, brutal attacks and murders to those who opposed the religion. Most people seem to forget history, and are quick to point the finger and play the blame game. The problem with any side, no matter what argument you decide to take, is that tolerance needs to be at a high level.

War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime and corruption are all things that directly contradict the teachings of Jesus, and yet in massive numbers, all accross our globe they are happening constantly and consitently. Now, I know that in the Bible it states that we live in a state of free will; however, I just cannot imagine how a superior beign that is watching over us at all times can allow the detrimental state of affairs we live in to continue. Also, we live in a divine plan according to the Bible, so what would be the use of praying at all? Divine will? It's all under the same context, why are we not just living under God's will? It's a very confusing concept to try and comprehend from all angles, which is why I find it essential to question.

As controversial, or troubling my views may seem to somebody that is very religious, there is still hope. I, as a human beign with my limited understanding of the world around us, basically have to leave my pondering up to one basic principle: We have a superior beign that has created us; however, I have not seen, or stumbled upon anything that should force me to live my life by a book that was intended to have people better their lives by. I still believe there is a God that created or started our Universe, but after that I honestly have no clue what else is out there. I would like to hope for an afterlife, but a possible thought of a false pretense should not deter me to slow my life down, I will continue to live life to it's fullest and strive to do as much as I can with the time I know for certain that I have.

nice paper its easy kinda to under stand but states the truth

It's still in rough draft form, I plan on elaborating more. But for now, this little 20 minute write up will do.

Man... that's one hell of a read!

A book that I think is worthwhile to read, especially since you have this paper, is "The Shack". It is supposedly (heavy emphasis on supposedly) a true story about a christian man who meets God. And it isn't at all what I was expecting when I finished it. Now, I'm not saying that it has converted me, but it definately gives a deeper understanding to him, and proves that a majority of these bible thumpers are psycho beyond help.

For instance, God detests Christianity. He detests all religions. He explains that religion is a product of man's need to control each other.

Anyways, yeah. Good paper. There are a couple spelling errors though, such as in the last paragraph, beign - being. A quick spell check should help!

Nice job on the last paragraph. There are some parts that I find hard to follow your train of thought; this in particular:

Personally, I do not care about the job the president is doing, as long as he/she can complete their job efficiently, and accurately. Our society has dwindled down socially into almost neanderthal-like to where you cannot disagree without being disagreeable. I personally feel you should be able to disagree, without being disagreeable.

I'd word that differently.

All in all, it's normal for human beings to question their existence and nobody should ever look down on you for that. It's important to gather information from every perspective and deduce your opinion off that research. I honestly feel bad for kids that are raised extremely Christian and feel as if they can't do anything slightly wrong in case they look bad in God's eyes. That shouldn't be the way you live your life.. you only have one, make the most of it.

Yeah, that part in particular is really the only spot I totally went offtrack and now am working to revise it, entirely. I think I might just eliminate it completely as it really is not needed, I think a spurt of ADD must've kicked in because when I went back and actually read it, it seemed very out of place.

A few things:
1. Your sentences are kind of convoluted and borderline run-ons. The introductory paragraph is a good example of this and I'd suggest that you rewrite it.
2. Why is it that you don't care what kind of job the president does as long as he/she does it efficiently? Does that mean you would support a tyrannical president as long as the public executions were done in a timely manner? I find this rather odd since it ws our current president who dragged in religion again and made it the core of his philosophy which is clearly a contributing factor to the ridiculous war. I think the kind of "job" that a president does may be more important than their efficiency as long as that lack of efficiency doesn't completely discount the job entirely.
3. Paragraph 3 could use a bit more organisation. You speak of two sides of religion and go into a little depth on the first part but you seem to get sidetracked with teh second one. You also leave out the more obnoxious aspect of many religious people which is to "live by the book" only superficially and to look down on others who don't "read the good book" even if those others have a more pious life. For example: Ted Haggard, an evangelical leader of the New Life Church, was notorious for espousing anti-gay rhetoric (clearly fags are the the spawn of Satan) and, wow big surprise!, he was found having sex with his male masseuse and smoking crystal meth. Basically you should place more emphasis on the massively invalidating hypocrisy that is extremely pervasive in the world of organized religion.

Hopefully this helps somewhat.

Well I got my paper back, btw. A 54/100 was given to me. The final edit was rewritten slightly, reworded in a few spots and touched up nicely for a final edit.

You failed? Burn.

And you think you failed because your teacher disagrees with your point of view?

Well, nothing gramatically was wrong with the paper. The only thing that was wrong was the questioning of the thought process, but not in the sense of me losing track, but that my ponits of view were not valid? It's weird, I read it over a few times and kept thinking the reasoning seemed incognito; however, she has told me she would allow me to rewrite the paper and turn it back in for a better grade. So i'm thinking it must not be biased.

You need a thesis

It's weird, I read it over a few times and kept thinking the reasoning seemed incognito

So your point was hard to find?

No, the reasonings behind her edits. It's weird, I'll ask her tuesday as it's our last day in class.. oh well.