A reasonable and philosophical individual would prefer disbelief of religion to belief.

Your task in the essay assignment will be to evaluate the following claim:

A reasonable and philosophical individual would prefer disbelief of religion to belief.
You must decide whether this statement is true or false, and in what relevant sense.
In order to establish this relevant sense, you should utilize one or several readings from our text Fifty Voices of Disbelief.
Broadly speaking, you should be aware of whether your evaluation of this claim rests on (a) moral (b) political (c) epistemological or other grounds (aesthetic, personal, etc).
A good essay will demonstrate your ability to characterize and evaluate the relative philosophical value of said grounds. An excellent essay, after establishing its main thesis, will speculate on the truth of a further claim:

Religion is, in essence, a system of beliefs.
Optional: You may choose to utilize, in addition to (or instead of) essays from 50 Voices of Disbelief, the religious memoir by James Baldwin “Letter from a Region in My Mind”.
Requirements

Your essay should be argumentative in form, and should make explicit reference to our course text in support of your conclusion. In the course of evaluating the above statement, you should demonstrate facility with your author(s) approach to religion, and should be able to express cogent support or criticism of the value of this approach. Remember that your goal should be to evaluate religion objectively, and you should not rely on personal opinion as evidence for the truth of your view. Furthermore, when evaluating your author’s argument you should pay specific attention to the manner of justification, that is, the grounds upon which their objection to religion rests.

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