School Continues

I have been busy with my education so I have not "blogged" in awhile. I also haven't painted but I will return to that shortly. I have, however, been writing. I am working on my final paper for my Advanced Writing course and I would appreciate critique and criticism, so as I write I will publish what I have done thus far here.

First is the outline of my writing project. It is following a template provided by my instructor and I hope to follow the path I've laid out as I write my paper.

My second post of the day are the introductory paragraphs and thesis. Please feel free to make suggestions. As always, Caroline

I. Introduction
A. To ascertain the distinction between belief and faith
B. To explore the nature of religion and how it affects man’s need for God
C. Following the path of man’s intellectual growth, the parallel of who God is and what He represents has altered to fit the needs of man at the time.

II. The understanding of man’s need for a religious experience.
A. Seeing and trying to understand the reason for life and man’s existence in it, the concept of an all powerful being(s) grew (Dawkins, 2006).
B. The invention of transcendental beliefs to express the necessity of “It” (Lurier, 2002).

III. In the earliest civilizations, the path of man’s belief in magic led to the worship of many gods.
A. The history of religion was an orderly development in which all people passed from magic to religion through stages, each progression taking place when a proper intellectual level had been attained.
B. Though little is actually known of these people and it is more speculation from findings than certainty, we do know that for thousands of years burial sites have included grave images. One belief is that these images are the discovery of gods in primitive societies (Stark, 2007). From 1600 to 900 BCE the careful study of the Axial people has given rise to the fact that they needed to give divinity to common place things: e.g. fire in the hearth is Agni, thunder, lightning and rain is Mithra, creator of the world is Dyas Piter, etc. (Armstrong, The Great Transformation , 2006) and these gods needed to be appeased or fed in order for prosperity to occur or be maintained.

IV. Many gods eclipsed into the rebirth of monotheism which was born throughout the land at approximately the same time.
A. There was a rapid transition into a monotheistic society and that conversion quickly and simultaneously spread throughout the Near, Middle and Far East.
B. From southern Italy to China, this rapid alteration happened around the sixth Century BCE and has been recorded in the writings of Confucius, Zoroaster, Mahavira, the principle authors of Hindu, Pythagoras, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, and Jeremiah and Ezekiel (Stark, 2007).

V. With this rebirth of monotheism came the introduction of Yahweh and Judaism in ancient Israel.
A. Yahweh was borne out of the deities at the time.
B. Yahweh clearly came out of a world of the gods of the ancient Near East, so that kinship relations to these other deities are there from the beginning. The development and typology of convergence and differentiation is a major contribution to the possibility of a complex but coherent understanding of the origins of Yahweh and the place that deity had in the extended history of Israel up to the exile (Smith, 2002).

VI: As foretold in the Old Testament, the need for a savior as well as a kinder, gentler, forgiving God led to the birth of Christianity.
A. By 30BCE Jews were devout monotheists who did not expect the Messiah to be divine but rather an ordinary person.
B. At the same time as Philo was expounding his Platonized Judaism in Alexandria and Hillel and Shammai were arguing in Jerusalem, a charismatic faith healer began his own career in the north of Palestine (Armstrong, The History of God, 1994).

VII: Seeing other people who had not experienced Monotheism, God spoke to the Arabs and Islam was born.
A. Although Muhammad had definitely never read the Bible, he had a dream similar to those experienced in earlier years by prophets of the Old Testament.
B. In about the year 610, an Arab merchant of the thriving city of Mecca in the Hijaz, who had never read the Bible and probably never heard of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, had an experience that was uncannily similar to theirs. He had a vision of an angel telling him to recite the words of God but when Muhammad refuse the angel hugged him taking the air from his body. The angel requested he recite again and still Muhammad refused. This happened three times before Muhammad found the first words of a new scripture (Armstrong, The History of God, 1994).

VIII: Today, thanks to education in science and logic, many fundamental obstacles stand in the way of understanding and believing in God.
A. The inability to understand the true lessons of God prevents the three major religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam from accepting each other for the similarities and differences found in each teaching.
B. God has taken his three major religions of today and put them in the holiest place on earth to see if they have actually embraced his teachings. Unfortunately, man still places himself above God and they have yet to learn to live together. It is a test that we are failing.

Works Cited
Armstrong, K. (2006). The Great Transformation . New York: Alfred A Knopf.
Armstrong, K. (1994). The History of God. New York: Alfred A Knopf.
Dawkins, R. (2006). The God Delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Lurier, H. (2002). A History of the Religions of the World. Westchester, NY, USA: Xlibris.
Smith, M. S. (2002). The Early History of God. Grand Rapids: William E Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Stark, R. (2007). Discovering God. New York: Harper Collins.