World Religion

Directions: Respond to the assignment below. Be as clear as possible with your responses. Offer specific illustrations from the textbook and artwork to support your assertions. This paper is worth 50 points and should be 3-5 double-spaced pages in length. Lesson 5 is very significant as it presents how three major religions in the world – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – began. How humans view their spiritual world constitutes a major theme of this course. Through your exposure to the foundations of these religions, how would you say that they are connected in this view? Please consider their fundamental tenets, literature, artistic representations, and historical perspectives when answering this question and use these as supporting material for your argument. To start, you should briefly describe the religions in your introduction and try to find areas of similarities and/or differences, depending on what viewpoint you want to take. Consider how followers of these religions view their spiritual world, which may even carry over into how they view the material one, touching upon a second major theme for this course. Try to incorporate these course themes into your prose. You may certainly draw upon any other spiritual viewpoints presented in the earlier lessons as support for or components of your topic as well. There are many options for artistic illustrations, and composing this paper will encourage you to go back through the text and select different examples. NOTE: An important suggestion for this assignment would be to avoid “profiling” each religion in your body paragraphs. Students tend to want to examine each religion separately in the paper when the topic is asking that you juxtapose them. Instead of grouping your information into a report format comprised of mainly facts about each religion, select three (or more) areas whereby you find the religions are similar OR different, and place the religions side by side in analysis as you discuss each component in subsequent body paragraphs. This suggestion is meant to guide you as you structure your ideas. Remember that an essay should be a combination of facts and opinions all working together to prove a thesis statement.