Essay #1 (1,000 words)
You need minimum 2 sources for your MLA Works Cited page.
Choice A
Read Tad Friend’s New Yorker online article “Can a Burger Help Solve Climate Change?” and look at two opposing camps on the role of alternative protein sources as a viable replacement for meat. One camp says we face too many obstacles to accept non-animal alternative proteins: evolution, taste, and cost, to name several. An opposing camp says we have the technology and the proven product in Impossible Foods and other non-meat proteins to replace animal protein. Assessing these two opposing camps in the context of Tad Friend’s essay, develop an argumentative thesis addresses the question: How viable is the push for tech companies to help climate change by replacing animals with alternative proteins?
Choice B
Read Elizabeth Anderson’s “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?” and defend, refute, or complicate the author’s claim that non-religious societies offer a superior moral framework for human evolution than religious societies.
Choice C
In the context of the Netflix documentary Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, develop an argument about how Yuval Noah Harari's explanation of the Cognitive Revolution exposes human vulnerability to mass manipulation, deceit, and Groupthink.
Choice D
Support, refute, or complicate Harari’s assertion that the “agricultural revolution was the greatest crime against humanity.”
February 18 Introduction; Homework #1 is to read Tad Friend’s New Yorker online article “Can a Burger Help Solve Climate Change?” and in 200 words explain the difficulties of replacing animals with alternative proteins.
February 20 Alternative protein debate; Homework #2 is to read Elizabeth Anderson’s “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?” and explain in 200 words how she supports her claim that non-religious societies are morally superior to religious societies.
February 25 Cover morality debate; Homework #3 is to read Sapiens up to page 60 and in 200 words explain how “limited liability companies” and “imagined realities” are part of the Cognitive Revolution.
February 27 Cover Cognitive Revolution in the context of the documentary Fyre. Homework #4 for next class: Read Sapiens, up to page 132 and in 200 words explain how Harari makes the claim that the Agricultural Revolution is history’s “biggest fraud.”
March 3 Cover the Agricultural Revolution. Homework #5: Read Sapiens to page 159 and in 200 words explain how “imagined orders and hierarchies” resulted in “unfair discrimination.”
March 5 Logical Fallacies and Signal Phrase review; Go over Sapiens to page 159.
March 10 Chromebook In-Class Objective: Write first half of the essay.
March 12 Chromebook In-Class Objective: Write second half of the essay.
March 17 Essay 1 Due on turnitin
An expanded study, from an earlier post, of Elizabeth Anderson’s “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?”
One. What is a binary view of the universe?
Morality (moral code of right and wrong) Vs. Nihilism (idea that life has no meaning, there is no such thing as right or wrong, vice or virtue; all one can do is live a life of pleasure and then die).
Two. What is Anderson's main critique?
Common Proposition of Religion: Without faith, morality is impossible
Anderson presents a critique to the proposition that without the notion of God people will turn to a life of immorality an nihilism.
For it is argued by many that without a belief in God, the world won't have a healthy fear of divine punishment and embrace an "anything goes" approach to life.
Three. Is the fear of God an antidote to violence and chaos?
Some argue that even if religion isn't true, we need it to put the fear of God in the hearts of the barbarian horde and keep evil and chaos at bay.
Thomas Hobbes is famous for making that claim that without fear of God and retribution from the state the masses would be reduced to barbarian hordes sending society into a state of lawless anarchy.
Four. What major question does Anderson present?
Do we need religion to have morality?
Many religious people make a similar claim: We need God to give us a moral foundation, and that without this foundation, we will dissolve into chaos, anarchy, and anything goes.
God is the author of morality, according to this logic. In the absence of God, we have no morality.
Empirical Evidence May Contradict Above
Over the last three decades, I have gotten to know families, through my students, who are not explicitly religious; however, these families have strong moral values: love, loyalty, commitment, sacrifice, etc.
It appears that family bonds generate their own kind of morality.
I have seen religious people who are good and religious people who are evil. Therefore, I have doubts that religion based on a belief on God, has a monopoly on morality.
Five. What is the common Christian argument?
Philosophy professor Elizabeth Anderson begins her essay “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?”with a common Christian argument that the “evil tree” of evolution, atheism and secularism grows evil branches: “abortion, suicide, homosexuality, the drug culture, hard rock, alcohol,” to give a partial list.
Anderson explains that religion objects to evolution on moral grounds and that “the basic cause of this immorality is atheism.”
Six. How do we know difference between right and wrong without a religious text?
Theists would have us believe that in the absence of religion the world would succumb to chaos and moral dissolution.
Christian apologist William Lane Craig argues that without God-ordained morality we cannot know the difference between right and wrong. Everything would be permitted. We would plummet into nihilism and decay.
Anderson shows insight in making the claim that theists have a gut hostility toward atheism, not because of solid evidence for a belief in God, but because of a conviction that “without God, morality is impossible.”
Seven. What is Anderson's claim?
She then presents her thesis, which is that not only do we not need religion to flourish morally as a society but also that religion is too often an impediment to moral development.
Eight. Does belief in hell help steer us toward moral behavior?
Anderson's thesis contradicts the Jesus of the Four Gospels who believed we had to love God with all our heart.
Also, he encouraged us to fear eternal hell to develop our morality. Whenever we are tempted to commit an immoral act or sin, we should contemplate our rotting in hell.
Many of us have been raised to believe that following Jesus’ words are the only way to the Moral Path. Some would argue that a belief in a literal hell is for taming wild children, that as adults mature they see that immorality is its own punishment (just as virtue is its own reward). Perhaps some people are more mature than others. Some people need the fear of hell while others can mature beyond such a stick to repel them from immorality.
Fear of the stick (hell, for example) to be good is not the sign of a mature adult.
Enticed by the carrot (heaven, for example) to be good is not the sign of a mature adult.
Fear of punishment and enticement through reward is inferior morality, according to Anderson.
Anderson dismisses the idea that religion provides motivation for morality. The idea that people should be enticed with heavenly rewards or threatened with hell is in fact off-putting: “On this view, people must be goaded into behaving morally through divine sanction. But this can’t be right, either. People have many motives, such as love, a sense of honor, and respect for others, that motivate moral behavior.” In fact, she points out, Pagan societies are just as morally robust as religious ones.
Nine. If morality doesn't come from religion, then where does it come from?
Anderson sees morality as not a byproduct of religion but as a natural occurrence in any healthy society. Morality evolves to make societies more stable and cooperative.
As Anderson explains, morality does not belong to religion; rather is a natural occurrence in any healthy secular or religious society.
She writes, “Every society, whether or not it was founded on theism, has acknowledged the basic principles of morality, excluding religious observance, which are laid down in the Ten Commandments. Every stable society punishes murder, theft, and bearing false witness; teaches children to honor their parents; and condemns envy of one’s neighbor’s possessions, at least when such envy leads one to treat one’s neighbors badly.”
Secular societies banned immoral behavior long before religion, according to Anderson.
People have been aware of these moral codes, Anderson observes, “long before they were exposed to any of the major monotheistic religions. This fact suggest that moral knowledge springs not from revelation but from people’s experiences in living together, in which they have learned that they must adjust their own conduct in light of others’ claims.”
Is this true?
However, one could argue that pagan societies were not as morally robust as religious ones. For example, Elaine Pagels, who is not a religious fundamentalist, points out in her book Adam, Even and the Serpent, that in ancient societies, pagans threw unwanted babies away on the curb to be taken away in the garbage dumps while Christians did not engage in this abhorrent act.
We should remember that Elaine Pagels is no friend of religious fundamentalism, the kind that preaches heaven and hell in the traditional sense.
Ten. How does Anderson rate the morality that we get from the Bible?
Anderson claims that the Bible most often actually degrades morality.
The great turn in the essay is where Anderson explains the moralistic argument: If something leads to moral rot, we should reject it. Not only does Anderson argue that atheism does not lead to moral rot, she argues, in a big twist, that it is theism, especially organized religion from the Old and New Testaments, that creates moral abominations and catastrophes.
The God of the Bible is so full of whimsy, caprice, cruelty, tyranny and other abominations that this God can make anything appear to be good, including lots of things that are very, very bad.
Anderson writes that, “God could make any action right simply by willing it or by ordering others to do it. This establishes that, if the authority of morality depends on God’s will, then, in principle, anything is permitted.”
Crimes of the Old and New Testament: God-ordered genocide, tribalism, slavery, stonings, sexism, homophobia, witch burnings, heretic torture, hell-philia (love of hell doctrine so that one's revenge fantasy can see one's enemies face eternal torment in the flames of hell)
Anderson anticipates that theists would defend their God by saying that “God would never do anything morally reprehensible Himself, nor command us to perform heinous acts.” But Anderson will have none of us. She will devote the next portion of her essay—a rather large chunk—to detailing many heinous acts done in the name of God. She plumbs the Old Testament for all kinds of war, murder, genocides, plagues, curses, famines, infanticide, slavery, adultery-spurred stonings, and finishes one litany-laden paragraph with “This is but a sample of the evils celebrated in the Bible.”
Anderson is equally repulsed, morally, by the New Testament. She disdains Jesus’ “family values” and the doctrine of eternal damnation. Anderson is equally offended by Jesus dying for our sins and becoming the “scapegoat for humanity.” She argues that “scapegoating contradicts the whole moral principle of personal responsibility.” She is also offended that God needs to kill his son to forgive humanity. He should be able to forgive humanity “straightaway.”
Slavery in the Bible
The Old and New Testaments, human chronicles confined to their age, treat slavery as if it were normal and morally acceptable. If they were truly divine, some say, they would give us an unequivocal condemnation of slavery so that immoral people could not use the Bible to justify slavery.
Anderson sees cruelty in the Bible.
Her verdict of the Bible is that it is a disgrace and an abomination. She writes, “I find it hard to resist the conclusion that the God of the Bible is cruel and unjust and commands and permits us to be cruel and unjust to others.” Here are religious doctrines that on their face claim that it is all right to mercilessly punish people for the wrongs of others and for blameless error, that license or even command murder, plunder, rape, torture, slavery, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. So we should reject the doctrines that represent them as right.”
Anderson then looks at way theists could be decent by glossing over reprehensible Bible passages and leaving fundamentalism to become liberal theists, because she concludes, “that there is no way to cabin off or soft-pedal the reprehensible moral implications of these biblical passages. They must be categorically rejected as false and depraved moral teachings.” Liberal theists can reject these teachings; fundamentalists cannot.
Anderson later observes that the Bible contains good and bad passages and that the picking and the choosing depends on our moral character: “the Bible is more like a Rorschach test: which passages people choose to emphasize reflects as much as it shapes their moral character and interests.” Our beliefs, Anderson observes, are often the result of “cognitive bias” and self-interest.
Anderson is further repulsed by the biblical God’s “raw power,” which people tend to worship in fear rather than rational understanding and love. Quoting Thomas Hobbes, Anderson explains that people, including the biblical scribes, often worship “raw power” for its own sake regardless of moral considerations.
Eleven. How does Anderson evaluate the fact that several religions make competing claims about having the single truth?
Different religions claim to have the "one truth":
Anderson gives a personal account of an annual summer fair she attends. Many different religious people give out information in their booths. They all claim to be right while disparaging others’ beliefs. For Anderson, the major religions are no better than mountebanks L. Ron Hubbard, Joseph Smith, the Rev. Moon, Mary Baker Eddy, and others. The major religions are no more legit than “Zeus, Baal, Thor, and other long-abandoned gods, who are now considered ridiculous by nearly everyone.”
Anderson takes offense to the non credible evidence used to defend religion: “revelations, miracles, religious experiences, and prophecies, nearly all known only by testimony transmitted through uncertain chains of long-lost original sources.”
These flimsy bits of evidence, Anderson writes, “systematically generate contradictory beliefs, many of which are known to be morally abhorrent or otherwise false.”
Twelve. So if not religion, then where does moral authority come from?
So if we have no faith in God, Anderson asks, where does moral authority come from? Having definitively rejected theism, Anderson writes that we humans, not God, are responsible for moral authority. Our authority is not absolute. Rather morality is part of “reciprocal claim making, in which we work out together the kinds of considerations that count as reasons that all of us must heed, and thereby devise rules for living together peacefully and cooperatively, on a basis of mutual accountability.”
Choice B
Read Elizabeth Anderson’s “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?” and defend, refute, or complicate the author’s claim that non-religious societies offer a superior moral framework for human evolution than religious societies.
Sample Outline
Paragraph 1, your introduction, write a profile of someone you know who demonstrates strong morals and put this person in a religious or non-religious framework.
Paragraph 2, transition from your profile to your claim or thesis in which your defend or refute Elizabeth Anderson's claim that religion is not only not necessary for morality but actually an impediment to morality.
Paragraphs 3-6: your supporting paragraphs
Paragraph 7: your counterargument-rebuttal.
Paragraph 8, your conclusion, a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Sample Thesis Statements
Supporting Elizabeth Anderson
Philosophy professor Elizabeth Anderson makes a persuasive case that flourishing secular societies develop superior morality to religious ones because secular societies rely on universal or common law to implement justice, not prejudicial religious law, which may or may not exact justice (for example, most religious texts encourage slavery, sexism, and homophobia), because religions have so much toxic baggage contained in their doctrine the only way their believers can market their faith as savory is by cherry-picking passages, emphasizing the good lines and "back-pedaling" the bad ones; and finally, secular societies are better positioned to encourage virtue for its own sake rather than push heaven and hell incentives, which are primitive and childish methods for encouraging moral behavior.
Refuting Elizabeth Anderson
Philosophy professor Elizabeth Anderson's attempt to make the claim that secular societies provide superior morality to religious ones collapses under her misguided view of religion in which she distorts the essence of religious belief; her failure to see that secular societies only provide the most superficial morality for a semblance of order while failing to address the wickedness and urgent need for salvation in the hearts of humanity; her failure to see that adhering to secular society norms is no morality at all but rather conformity to civilizations that emphasize worldliness, not spiritual sacrifice, as the human ideal; and her failure to see that religious values are far more universal than secular ones, which often clash depending on which part of the world they arise.
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