Critical Essay Essay, Research Paper
Critical View Essay
As Mr. Darrow explains in this essay an agnostic is simply one who doubts, one who questions things and possesses a quality of skepticism. Darrow explains that the fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. He says “The fear of god is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom.”
Mr. Darrow argues the one cannot believe in a force excepting a force that pervades matter and is not an individual entity. According to him, something real needs to be seen, touched, and experienced for it to be considered credible.
Concerning the origin of the creation, Mr Darrow expresses the thought of God creating things, how did god come about? He proposes an idea of a higher power than god himself. Also he denies that God could create matter and was coextensive with matter. As to the question of the origin of things, he says “Man can only doubt and guess.”
Mr. Darrow also expresses his thoughts on the credibility of the Bible. He says these sixty six books, all written by different authors contain all sorts of contradictory concepts of life, morals, and origins of things. He also says that God must have told them all something different. He also states later in the essay that the bible was written by men of little education. “How can a rational person believe the Bible is anything but a human document” he asks.
A famous quote came to my mind while I was reading this essay ” Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man is entitled to be wrong in his fact.” In this essay Mr. Darrow writes a very thought provoking argument for his opinion, unfortunately he didn’t prove himself with facts. He says “God doesn’t exists because he cannot be seen” That would be like saying that the wind didn’t exist or air, or any gases, molecules, atoms or germs. Such feeling as love, hate, and sorrow would not exist either because they cannot be seen. He doesn’t prove his opinion very well with any facts he just says it isn’t possible, without thinking of any examples.
Mr. Darrow also attacks the idea of creation and existence of God. He brings about the point of higher power than God, but who would have created that higher power. He never offers a alternate plan to how the world came about, only denies the idea of constantly existing God who created it. So his opinion is just bases on what he thinks not facts. He also contradicts himself when he says “One can only doubt and guess as to how the world came about.” How can you base your opinion on a guess that you doubt? Once again we see that his opinions are not based on facts.
The third area Mr. Darrow speaks about is the idea of the authenticity and credibility of the Bible. He says the bible has contradictions on the concepts, but doesn’t offer any examples. If you had forty-four sports writers write an essay on a certain issue, no doubt you would have fourty-four different opinions and thoughts. While the Bibles forty-four authors, for whom the most part never met each other, all wrote about the same issues and all accounts were almost exactly the same. Mr Darrow later states that the bible was written by uneducated men, who had no knowledge of science, and little knowledge of life. Yet, he later states of how Moses wrote a full account of creation, talking about the earth and the universe. Talk about contradicting yourself in the same paragraph, he isn’t even consistent with his own opinions.
Mr. Darrows argument is one that was very though out and effective. Until I read this essay from a critical point of view, I didn’t realize how many errors there were concerning the authenticity of his opinions. His opinions were very convincing, but with little study one can see they were dead wrong.