Writing Assignment 6. Is Jesus a supernatural entity? Adam and Eve? Sin?

In our discussion yesterday brainstorming supernatural entities in response to Hartmann and Blass's question 4 on page 20 (2007), we had some uncertainty and some controversy over whether or not different suggestions really were supernatural entities. The solution, usefully suggested by Mee, and followed up my My, was that we needed to sort out the meaning of the term supernatural entity. And we're getting better with practise: this only took about 20 minutes, whereas our earlier discussion of the term image took 30 minutes; with our definition in place and available to use, we could then come to agreement on which items to include as supernatural entities and which to cross out. Stories about the life of Jesus or Buddha were easy to exclude from our list when our understanding of supernatural entities had been clarified: stories such as Harry Potter might have supernatural topics, but the stories themselves are perfectly normal things in the natural world. Adam and Eve were fairly easily dismissed from the list: they were a man and woman, so not supernatural. Jesus was a little more difficult because we first had to clarify exactly what was meant (more definition!) by the name Jesus, but once clear that Christians think of him not only as a man but also as a god, we could decide that he did indeed belong on our list of examples of supernatural entities. And then there is the question of sin, which we left undetermined.

Since there was a unanimous agreement amongst the students, I did not raise the issue when we brainstorming examples of religions; however, as Wikipedia points out in "Buddhism", with plenty of supporting examples, there is in fact some controversy "on the question of whether or not Buddhism should be considered a religion" (2013, sect. 8.1, Is Buddhism a religion?). So, does Buddhism belong on our list of religions or not?

I also cut short our productive discussion of the noun image before we had actually written up a final definition - I thought that what we had was good enough to enable us to move on and brainstorm religious images, and images of magic. But as with so many seemingly ordinary words that we have all been using regularly for years (vocabulary, formal, etc.), our understanding of the word image is also in need of some clarification.

Finally, there is the general topic we have been discussing throughout chapter 1 of Quest these past weeks: culture. In a chapter titled "Cultural Anthropology" (Hartmann & Blass, 2007, pp. 3 - 43), just what does, and does not, the adjective cultural mean? Is, for example, wearing jeans Thai culture? Yes or No?

As we have already seen, the academic writing assignment for chapter 1 of Quest is to write a paragraph of definition (Part 5, pp. 38 - 43). We are going to revise this slightly. The academic writing assignment, assignment 6, is to answer one of the following questions in a short essay. As we saw when I tried to write up as a paragraph of definition our 40+ minutes discussion to arrive at a definition of the common word vocabulary, one paragraph did not make a very attractive answer: it was much too long and really needed to be split into two paragraphs (Filicietti, 2013). And once we have two paragraphs, it makes a lot more sense to add an introduction and a conclusion so that we have a full essay, albeit a short one. So that is what we are going to write, rather than Hartmann and Blass's solitary paragraph.

Academic writing exercise 
revised version of Quest, chapter 1, Part 5. = assignment 6
Answer one of the following questions in a short essay. Two, or perhaps three, body paragraphs should be enough. You might be able to write a good answer with only one body paragraph, but that seems unlikely to me.

Questions to choose from: 

1. Does sin belong on our brainstormed list of such entities? Is sin a supernatural entity?  
2. Should we include Buddhism on a list of religions? Is it a religion? 
3. We can certainly imagine them, but can we have an image of sound? 
4. Cultures are made up of many elements. Is wearing jeans Thai culture?  
5. Can a single word be a vocabulary? (I want to use this as an example. It is not an available choice.)

Now, you can: choose your topic, which is given in the question; get ideas about it, which might need a bit of time and perhaps a very little research; organize those ideas using the different techniques for defining a term that Hartmann and Blass list on page 40 (2007), perhaps also some etymology; and then write a first draft of your essay.

These questions all depend on the definition of a key term. The facts are relatively straight forward and are probably not controversial or in dispute. It is the different definitions of the key terms that cause the controversy. Consequently, the most important, and likely the most challenging, part of the body of your essay is supporting your preferred definition of the controversial term, and negating (correcting the misunderstandings) in opposing definitions. For example, in question 5, what is required is a strong definition of the word vocabulary, for which I needed two full paragraphs of definition (Filicietti, 2013). With that definition in place, we can apply it to the the specific situation the question asks us to answer. I will do this in an essay this evening (but I'm not guaranteeing a time).

You've probably already noticed that the questions are all Yes/No questions. You do have to take a stand and say "yes" or "no". But if you send me a one word answer, your grade might not be very high.

__________

Reference

Buddhism. (2013, August 14). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 00:16, August 20, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Buddhism&oldid=568530289

Filicietti, P. [Peter F AUA]. (2013, July 30). I know that word: What does vocabulary mean?. Class Blog - AEP at AUA. Retrieved August 20, 2013 from http://peteraep.blogspot.com/2013/07/i-know-that-word-what-does-vocabulary.html

Hartmann, P. & Blass, L. (2007). Quest 3 Reading and Writing (2nd. ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.