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Read the following essay and answer the question, “Do you agree or disagree? Please explain why.”

Feel free to submit your essay below for review or contribute your thoughts on other essays posted. Both activities will help you prepare for the exam and the more you contribute, the more you will get out of this section.

ESSAY PROMPT

Evidence and Deeply Held Beliefs

 

“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be just as quickly rejected without evidence.” 

A god, by definition, is a being or object believed to have more than natural attributes and powers. However, there is no evidence for the existence of anything supernatural ever having any influence on our natural world. In the absence of evidence for the supernatural, it cannot be demonstrated that a god is even a possibility let alone a reality; never mind your specific Hindu, Christian, Islamic, Jewish, or other gods. While anyone can believe a god exists or that Santa Claus streaks across the night sky to billions of people inside 24 hours driven by reindeer, belief is not knowledge. Knowledge requires evidence. Therefore, with the same certainty there is neither Santa Claus nor flying reindeer nor leprechauns nor fairies, the assertion of any gods can be flatly rejected.

“Do you agree or disagree? Please explain why.”

Your essay should be well-organized and include support from the story for your main ideas.

If commenting on the essays please remember the rules and stick with positive suggestions that can help the author. Focus on the essay structure and quality. The following guidelines are by no means compete, but can serve as a guide for useful suggestions.

  • Quality and impact of thesis statement and opening paragraph. This may be the most important paragraph. Does it provide a roadmap for the essay?
  • Supporting paragraphs. Do these follow the outline of the 1st paragraph? Do they use explicit examples and not deviate unnecessarily from topic?
  • Prose. Are the sentences direct and effective with proper grammar and correct spelling?
  • Conclusion. Perhaps the least important paragraph. Does it wrap it all up?

This Post Has 3 Comments

  1. I agree because without the evidence, how do you know it really exists? You need proof. It’s not knowledge if there is no proof. This makes sense. If you have seen something with your very own eyes, that’s knowledge. But if you just believe in something without kn owing for sure, then that’s just pure belief. “Seeing is believing.” That saying is actually true. People have seen water, so they know it exists. There is evidence for that. But no one has seen God, so that’s just a belief or a myth.

    A belief is a wish for something to be true, but that doesn’t mean it’s actually true. If you wished something was true and it actually is and you actually have proof, that’s knowledge because you have evidence. Many people believe Santa exists. But no one has actually seen him. All those videos on YouTube or those “sightings”, those are either scams or just one of humanity’s wild imaginations. If someone took a real live picture that was not tampered with and sent to a bunch of people, that’s evidence, so Santa isn’t a belief, it’s a fact.

    In the past, before science was the basis of our world, people used to believe in God. They didn’t know what really caused the universe, so they created the belief of God. Now that science has taken over, we know how the universe started (the Big Bang), and we don’t need God to answer our questions. Science is there for us and is something that is actually real.

    Yet some people still choose to believe in God. They manage to find loopholes where science hasn’t filled in yet. In the future, science will fill in the gaps where the belief of God has been. It’s just like the past. Humanity has replaced God with science before, now we’ll do it again.

    Religions are beliefs, science is knowledge. Religion is based on us, science is based on evidence. I agree with this prompt because without proof, how do you know if it’s real?

  2. I kneeled on the ground as I peered up at the massive stone cross that stood before me.I then proceeded by bowing my head and saying a meaningful prayer.In today’s society a multitude of religions exist in different parts of the world.Religion is used to explain the beliefs of oneself to prove the unprovable.In the passage, “Evidence and Deeply Held Beliefs” we are faced with an argument about the presence of a God.The author clearly gets their point through to the reader that there is no evidence that a God exists.However, the evidence to make a counter-claim for this argument is just as strong as the evidence given in the story.Although there are multiple opinions to why a God does not exist, there are also a few arguments to prove that a God does exist:the meaning of supernatural,amount of evidence,and contradictory statements.

    Supernatural means that an event is beyond scientific understanding,and therefore is not bound by natural laws.Throughout the passage, the author makes a bold assertion that a God does not exist in a world where a supernatural event has never occured. To illustrate, “However, there is no evidence for the existence of anything supernatural ever having any influence on our natural world. In the absence of evidence for the supernatural, it cannot be demonstrated that a god is even a possibility let alone a reality…”If something is supernatural, there is no way to prove how it occured, or in this case how it happened.Something supernatural can happen without explanation and at any time, it does not necessarily have to be observed by somebody.There is no evidence that shows that nothing supernatural ever occured.All around the world, believers of different religions experience events in their daily lives that are beyond understanding, which are called miracles.Thus, many people experience supernatural events in their daily lives that correlate to the world we all live in.

    1. I like the introduction and the writing style is quite good. You did not pursue all the points of argument from the introduction, but that is okay because there really is no evidence to support the counterpoint — it is, after all, a claim of logic. For example, you claim religion proves the unprovable. Where is the evidence for that claim? I could argue religion has never proven anything or advanced our knowledge as a species on most any topic and offer abundant evidence. You are correct that something supernatural could occur at anytime — a spaghetti monster could fly across the sky and pronounce it is our God — and yet it never has. In fact, countless things we thought once had supernatural causes are readily explainable and there is not a single example of the reverse — something known through natural observation later explained by religion or the supernatural. The core claim here is one of logic, not religion. In the absence of evidence, why would you believe any claim? Religion is just the tricky example provided because people are generally taught religion at youth before they understand the burden of proof or critical thinking skills like the above claim. By the way, there has never been an actual miracle, ever — only people who want to believe the cause of events was a miracle based on, you guessed it, no evidence.

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