Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Chris Gorham Final Project Proposal
My final project is meant to challenge one of the most controversial topics in today’s society, religion. I want to dig deep into the lifelong question of “Is it real?” Is there really a good, or have we all been misled by a long line of storytelling. Sure, this could qualify for a Class A ticket to hell, but I’m interested after reading the literatures that have been presented in this close to challenge the “given.” I think that with everything that has happened through history that it is hard to believe that we should rely on some higher being for justification. A great deal of the conflicts that have arisen throughout history have been derived mainly from the dispute of religion. If there was a God, shouldn’t he prevent our self destruction through sin and monstrosities like murder and more presently, technologies on the verge of disproving him and his ways? How can we put so much faith in something so unknown? I believe that religion has one sole purpose, and that is structure. Religion is an empty belief to keep structure in the world. This empty belief is also the precursor to our self destruction. Many religious people embrace the end of times because it leads to Heaven, but if we can’t prove Heaven, and we can’t prove God, then why the hell are people so eager to get there. Personally, I can agree that it is nice having Heaven to rely on when people die because we can all say, “They’re in a better place.” But why? Should Heaven make us forget that our so called God just let our mom die in a car accident, or our brother get exilled by a roadside bomb. There’s too much hurt in the world to believe that God is so loving and so kind because if he is real, he causes hurt. Saying this, I can already predict what the typical religion fanatic would say, “It’s meant to be, it’s HIS plan.” I say, prove it. I say prove that there is a God and then tell me that innocent people die for a reason. Tell me that the technology that is disproving souls in humans is His plan. Tell me that the possibility of recreating man with human technology is His plan. I’d love to believe in it, but with everything that has happened in history, and everything that continues to happen, it’s getting harder. So my final project is to explore the possibility that our belief in God is misguided. Really, I think that we take belief in something unknown because we take comfort in it when things go wrong in our lives. As you can see…my thoughts are kind of all over the place, so I might need a little help on that, but this is my general proposal. I plan on gathering extensive research from a lot of philosophical and religious sources. I'm sure there are plenty of smart people out there that have argued this same thing so I will be looking for their research and arguments to complement my own. I will most likely start in the library looking for books that will help and then move on to some online resources.
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3 comments:
As you already recognize, your problem here is focus. Obviously people have done this sort of thing before. In theological circles, your wrestling with something like a theodicy - a genre of theological writing which tries to reconcile the existence of evil with the existence of God (the Book of Job in the Bible is the most prominent example).
So, you want to try to define the role (or lack thereof) of religion in modern society, while asking whether there is any "there" there. It's way, way too much for one paper.
How to focus?
Well, to pick a couple examples from class, you might argue that Silver's book essentially proves the emptiness of religion, or that McKibben's does so, or you might look at something like Lilith's Brood and ask "at what point does scientific knowledge disprove God?" When we discover that we are genetic robots? When we encounter aliens? At what point is faith disproven?
These aren't necessarily the *best* ways to find a focus, but you need to tame this material somehow, and bringing it more directly into the context of the class is one obvious way.
Chris, I don't know if you have though about doing a creative short story instead of an Essay, but I think it would be really interesting if you used your ideas about misguided religion and rewrote the history of religion as you think it actually happened. You could pick Christianity and talk about all the times that the bible has been re-written. However,that is just a random idea that I got from reading your proposal, if that is not a direction you want to go in (because I def would be intimidated by writing a short story) I think after you direct your thesis it will be a lot easier to write your paper. Maybe when trying to decide in which direction to go in you could write an outline for each one. Which ever would be more complete and that you have a stronger opinion about would probably be the way to go, and then you're starting out your draft with a working outline. I really like your ideas though, and you have a controversial essay which is always a good place to begin and will set you up for a great counter argument!
You asked many questions in your proposal so narrowing your topic could be as simple as answering one. Doing so would greatly simplyfy your arguement and make this a managable essay. As for research, Using one of Silvers sources or just going out and researching different views on religion and building off of that would work well. You are not going to haver truoble relating this with the class so as long as you narrow it down, create a specific thesis and counter arguement, and find research to raise intrest in the reader, you should be alright. Hope this helps. GL
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