A rough, uncompleted version of my childhood indoctrination essay.

[connor...@hotmail.com]

[Paul Geldart]

Hey, this is awesome. I don't think we have met, but I just wanted to say that it is really well written, and you make very good points.

On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 6:58 PM, connor...@hotmail.com <connor...@hotmail.com> wrote:

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[Paul Geldart]

oops wrong email address... this is weird

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[Eric Kuypers]

- Extremely well thought out work.

- Easy to understand which side the writer is trying to support in the essay, and gives many strong points to justify their cause.

- Quotes given help the essay to flow well with the sentence that they are put into.

- Writer talks about more than just one supporting idea, along with adding in as many as possible, from all ranges of life to really bring the essay together. Such as: using text from famous religeous idols, and modern historical facts about our society. This allows the writer to compare between the society of today, and the society of yester year.

- The opening paragraph gives a well thought thesis, and introduction. One thing that I had liked about the opening paragraph was that it took the effort to explain the more important details about “Abrahamic Religions” to the reader, if they had no experience or just simply did not know what the writer was talking about.

- Grammer, spelling, and sentence structure flow nicely.

- Did not feel like the writer was being biased, but rather tried to appeal to both sides, as equal as possible as one could when you want to prove a point. I felt like the writer has no hatred for the topic, as basically what I mean to say, but still show how they feel about the topic in the essay.

[Naweed Zamani]

I have to say that looking at it from an unbiased view point, it is very well written. Now my bias comes into play. I myself have disagreements to certain issues presented in this essay, but that is opinion. And be careful when you say it deprives reason, for example, Reason in Islam is held as one of the greatest gifts, history has shown it hasn't deprived their civilization. On the other hand with the history of the church, eg; The Vatican, it is has historically been shown to butcher their reason and purist of knowledge. You also need to be clear on who is oppressive to women and be not only historically accurate but accurate with religious text. You have to know the difference between the Religion, and the followers. Religion does not teach men to be violent against women or their wives. With most problems, it is the followers fault, and their lack of recognition and interpretation. People can be easily manipulated. If you are going to say the west has has been plagued by conflict because of the Abrahamic religions, then specify probably "why" that is the case. There must be a certain agenda behind this. Be careful when you use the word Jihad, it has an abundant amount of meanings. Don't pick and choose one to best suit the argument. Jihad is a form of struggling for God. You giving up alcohol or learning in school is known to be Jihad. When speaking about religion and it dumbing down the masses, it is only true in one case, and that is during the dark ages. Other wise it is given birth to an entire Islamic civilization that has learned from the Greeks and further pursued science, mathematics and philosophy. This age, known as the golden age, basically was the catalyst which gave birth to the European renaissance. Other wise it is a well structured essay, which captivates the reader. There are strong points made and you have proof to back it up. But you make bold and blunt assertions with a feeling of generalization among certain religions. A clear distinction needs to be made. All the best.                        

On Wednesday, 10 October 2012 18:58:13 UTC-4, Connor "the kid" Duggan wrote:

[Connor "the kid" Duggan]

Okay, I'll break my reply down point by point...

-I take reason to mean anything from spirituality (believing in God, for example. From an objective anthropologists view point, the existence of a deity would be seen as ridiculous. Furthermore, the statistical likelihood of some ultimate creator is incredibly slim. Fred Hoyle likens the possibility of God's existence to that of an incredibly powerful hurricane assembling a (disassembled) Boeing 747 in a scrapyard). When I say "depriving of reason", I do not just mean the death on intellectualism, art etc. (because I'm not an idiot; this is not true, otherwise there would never have been the Islamic Golden Age, or the Renaissance), but I also mean such things that would be seen as ridiculous if it happened in something outside of one's religion (I actually point this out: "It is what allowed people to believe in resurrection, the efficacy of prayer, and what enthralled millions of people to monarchs and bishops who ruled with a divine right (much to the detriment of the commons)." 

-On the oppression of women, it is quite clear in most non-secular states, women are viewed as inferior to men (look at the difference between pre-1980 Iran and present day Iran). As I used actually excerpts from religious texts in illustrating religion's violence, I suppose I can do the same for it's crude treatment of women (important parts underlined): "Once Allah's Apostle went out to the Musalla (to offer the prayer) o 'Id-al-Adha or Al-Fitr prayer. Then he passed by the women and said, "O women! Give alms, as I have seen that the majority of the dwellers of Hell-fire were you (women)." They asked, "Why is it so, O Allah's Apostle ?" He replied, "You curse frequently and are ungrateful to your husbands. I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you. A cautious sensible man could be led astray by some of you." The women asked, "O Allah's Apostle! What is deficient in our intelligence and religion?" He said, "Is not the evidence of two women equal to the witness of one man?" They replied in the affirmative. He said, "This is the deficiency in her intelligence. Isn't it true that a woman can neither pray nor fast during her menses?" The women replied in the affirmative. He said, "This is the deficiency in her religion."  (Sahih -al-Bukhari). In Christianity, "Men are superior to women. Jesus is superior to men and God is above all. Women should worship all of them” (14: 34& 35, Corinthian). Lastly, we have Judaism, "I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you" (Genesis). If we want to look historically, that's fine. We can easily look to the niqab, or women being barred from many religious leadership roles.

-You wrote "You have to know the difference between the Religion, and the followers. Religion does not teach men to be violent against women or their wives. With most problems, it is the followers fault, and their lack of recognition and interpretation." This argument is unsound. We don't have a general distaste for Communism because the Communist Manifesto is bad, rather, we dislike (and, occasionally are violently hostile towards it) because it cannot be implemented in it's purest form, and it never has (the Soviet Union). 

-You have a problem with my usage of the word jihad (but, for some reason, you had no problem with my usage of the generally Christian "crusade"). You state that I am picking and choosing to best suit my argument, but when a word has such an abundance of meanings, obviously I am going to choose the one best for my argument (otherwise no one would use that word, ever). I am also perfectly clear in what I mean when I say jihad, "it is a good bet that there would be no suicide bombers". Of course, many would take this jihad as a perversion of faith, but it is Jihad nonetheless (the physical struggles against the enemies of Islam, which extremists take to mean the West and it's allies/sympathizers). 

-"When speaking about religion and it dumbing down the masses, it is only true in one case, and that is during the dark ages." Here you are wrong, as in my essay, I actually point out several occasions where Renaissance and Enlightenment age thinkers were prosecuted (see Galileo, Martin Luther); Church's across the world teach that evolution is a lie. Religion is still holding millions of people back.

As I am editing my essay, I've made my arguments more eloquent, and am working on drawing my points back to the thesis.

[Paul Geldart]

Mr.Bailey, if you are reading this, you should give Connor bonus points for this well organized and researched rebuttal.

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[naweed a]

I replied to his rebuttal, but it was via text. 

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Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2012 23:13:12 -0400
Subject: Re: A rough, uncompleted version of my childhood indoctrination essay.
From: thedrumm...@gmail.com
To: writerscraft2...@googlegroups.com

[Naweed Zamani]

So I looked over it again, and through the perspective of arguements sake, you have a done a really good job. You do have some misunderstandings in some cases, like I metioned beofre. With terms such as Jihad, but I can see why you used the defention that you did. It provides more strength your argument. But when you said "Islam" is a supposed religion of peace, here is where it gets iffy, you need to bring things into context, when you say the question of whether islam is in hands with peace, it is no longer a question becuase it is justly answered. But you have done well for arguments sake 

[Naweed Zamani]

Also, maybe you can make this a bit longer with adding more context to some of your points. When talking about such religions, maybe add some more background informatio so the reader can get a better understanding. Also, you can give more instances and cases where you have such indoctrinations. Make it a bit longer, its a good paper though.