Is religion a positive or negative force in society?

Part One: The Topic

Part One: The Topic

 

I’ve tried hard to come up with an essay assignment that would allow all of you the widest possible scope to concentrate on areas of the course that interest you.  So, the topic I’ve chosen is deliberately broad, and can take you in many different directions.  As we’ve seen in the course so far, religion can be (depending on your point of view) both a positive and a negative force in many different ways.  But, if you had to take a position one way or the other, would you argue that religion is—on balance—a positive thing or a negative thing?  (“On balance” here means: accepting that there are both good and bad points about it.)

In other words, you could argue that, although it clearly has its bad points, religion is—if you had to decide one way or the other—a good thing.  Or you could say the opposite…that, although it clearly has its good points, religion is—on balance—a bad thing.  

You could take a position on this question in relation to some aspect or aspects of society or the individual--or both--and you can do it with reference to a religion/religions or particular issues/examples that you find most interesting or compelling in some way.  You can also focus more on the present day or on the past, as you prefer.  But you must take and argue a position on the question, and this must be the focus of the essay.   

Part Two: The Structure

There are many ways to construct an argumentative essay, and this one will be organized in one of the classic formats.  Here is a paragraph-by-paragraph guide: 

Your first paragraph will be an introduction.  This will need three things: 

a) a written “hook” of some kind, to engage the reader (e.g. “it has been said that both rationalism and revelation have been foundation stones of western civilization…in other words, both Athens and Jerusalem.”)

b) a “road map,” or preview of what you will be doing in the essay

c) a thesis statement, taking a position on the question asked in the assignment

Your second paragraph will explain and develop a point/argument in favour of your position on the question. Your third paragraph will explain and develop a different point/argument, again in favour of your position on the question.  So…you will have explained two well-developed “supports” for your thesis, after you’ve finished these two paragraphs.

Your fourth paragraph will articulate a point or argument that goes  against  your position… in other words, an argument from “the other side.”  For example, if your thesis is that religion is—on balance—good, you will need in this paragraph to explain an argument on the side of “religion is, on balance, bad.”  Then… crucially… you must then, in that same paragraph, refute/rebut/answer that argument or point, so that you have “beaten” it, in a sense. The point of this paragraph is that, by identifying and answering/rebutting/refuting a counter-argument, your overall argument becomes stronger, since it going beyond simply articulating supports for your position (as it did in paragraphs two and three).   

Your final, fifth, paragraph will be a conclusion, which must do two things: 
a) restate/recap and tie together the main points/arguments that you’ve made in paragraphs two, three, and four 
b)reach some kind of conclusion about the topic of your essay. 

Part Three: Sources

The minimum number of sources that you must use for this essay is three.  A source does not count unless it is cited at least once in the essay. The good news is that you already have a set of resources available to you through the Readings and Videos folder.  For almost every week in the course, I’ve provided sources, some of which are lengthy and cover quite a bit of ground beyond what we take up in either the class or the assigned questions in the weekly activity sheets.  These can be very good resources for you, and I encourage you to use them for this essay more deeply than has been possible so far in the course.  Some of them cover religion broadly, and others focus on particular religions, as you know… but all can potentially be useful in a paper like this.