ALL WORK DONE IN CANADIAN ENGLISH PLEASE with mla citations and end notes the major assumptions in Bill Maher’s movie “Religulous.”
• This is not merely an opinion piece but a well thought out, critical, and researched work.
• You are not merely picking ideas out of the sky, but researching them and backing them up with clear reasoning and argumentation.
• Maher makes numerous historical and theological claims. Does he make mistakes? Is he clearly biased in some regard? How, why?
• Is his reasoning clear or flawed? In what ways?
• Does he accomplish what he sets out to do? If so, in what ways?
• Are there inconsistencies, errors, fallacies of reasoning in Maher’s approach that you can fix? If so do so.
• Use endnotes rather than footnotes. Google “how to make endnotes”
• Introduction: state what will happen in this essay
What the topic is about
• E.g. what the author argues
What you intend to persuade/convince the reader of
• The thesis you will argue for and the main points of how you will arrive at that
• Main Body of the essay: division into clear paragraphs
- Each paragraph should address a specific argument that is made by the author, or examined, or provided by you with the help of your research
- There need to be clear transitions of thought between paragraphs
- The main body of the essay needs to have a logical build up or structure that leads the reader to the main conclusion that proves the thesis
- Obvious objections to one’s argument must be considered and answered
• Conclusion: the concluding section needs to prove the thesis to be correct. This is not a mere restatement, but a pulling together of all main points argued in the essay.
The two texts used in this religion course are
1) Understanding Religion in a Global Society, Richter, et. al., eds., Wadsworth, ISBN 978-0-534-55995-3.
2) Classical and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Religion, 3rd edition, by John H. Hick.
Published by Prentice Hall in 1989, ISBN 0132307340.