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Jacob Greene
Mrs. Thomas
UWRT 1102-004
22 February 2016
Inquiry Proposal: A New, Inexperienced World
First Draft Reflection: Upon writing this paper, I found that it was a lot
more difficult to write than I had initially presumed. I believe my lack of prior
knowledge of the subject puts me at a significant setback in writing this
paper, because people who read this will want to learn about what it is that I
intend to prove. I believe my thesis is also too vague at the moment, and
needs to be focused further. With the broader topic, it makes it harder to
pinpoint what I plan on proving. My ideas dont seem to flow really well in
this paper, due to the fact I am not really sure what my main focus is.
Hopefully, after discussion with my peers, I can come to a better
understanding of a more concise topic, in which a reader will be much more
interested in learning about.
Second Draft Reflection Before Writing: After having a conference with
my peers and professor, I learned that my previous reflection was fairly true.
My topic was very general in the first draft and needed to be more
centralized and specific, with a more specific focus. Ideas such as focusing
more on religion or more on the supernatural was an option, as opposed to
trying to focus on both. I think that I intend to write about religion as a
phenomenon, stated by the professor as an option, and focus even further

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into the afterlife aspects of religion. Questions such as where does the idea
of an afterlife come from and why do people believe in separate afterlives
will hopefully be the majority of my paper.
Second Draft Reflection After Writing: After finishing the second draft, I
feel much more confident in my topic of choice, with a much more concise
focus on the afterlife. Since the afterlife does involve a supernatural aspect,
it may be possible to include that part in the actual paper, but after writing
this paper, I feel much better about what I plan to prove going forward. I also
feel as if my ideas flow better and that what I intend to prove is much easier
to pick out. There are still several questions I wish to answer, but all of them
seem to fall into the category of the afterlife.
Have you ever wondered if there really is an afterlife? If an afterlife
does in fact exist, are there certain paths someone can take, defined by
their good and evil qualities, such as a heaven and hell? Why do we
choose to worship the thing we worship? Do we know if these supernatural
beings actually exist? Is there scientific proof of their existence somewhere?
Where do religious beliefs originate from?
There are many religious beliefs around the world, such as Christianity,
Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Atheism, Hinduism, along with many, many
others. Most religions have their own image of what the afterlife looks like,
and how anyone following their own religion will go to that state of being.
Most religions even divide themselves into two separate afterlives; One
afterlife involves an evil slant, while the other consists of a much purer,

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good viewpoint. Many religions even have a supernatural god that looks
over the entire side of one afterlife, typically being the focus a religion
worships. With all of this said, is there actually any evidence that religious
afterlives and their rulers exist?
These ideas are all things that are very vague and have not really been
proven. Most religions are based primarily on stories told by other people,
along with individual impulses and theories people believe in. So why believe
that it really exists? This is a question, along with all of the questions stated
above, that really make me wonder why people believe what they believe.
Recently, in the past few months, I have begun to take interest in my own
religion. I am a practicing catholic who believes in the Christian God.
Although I do believe he exists, Im not really sure what evidence there is to
prove it. Although my belief in the realism of a God most likely will not
change, I am still really interested in learning about why I believe in what I
believe, in addition to why other people chose to believe what they believe.
The afterlife is something very interesting to me, because Im not quite sure
where the idea comes from and why people choose to believe in several
different religious afterlives, leading me to my thesis: Why do we believe in
an afterlife, and do they really exist?
In order to understand what an afterlife is, first we need to understand
where the ideas come from and why people believe in them. The afterlife is a
religious belief, in which supports the idea that after life on Earth, there is an
alternate place in which we live out the rest of our unnatural life.

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Because there is no documentation to prove the existence of an afterlife,
every human being has their own perception of what the afterlife may be
like. This leads many of us to be categorized into a variety of religions.
Although afterlives are only a small part of religious beliefs within a bigger
pallet of ideas, it is a part that many think is super important. Depending on
the standards your religion practices often times determines what the
afterlife may be like. Afterlives are very different from person to person and
can even be very different from religion to religion. Some may believe that
there is no afterlife; After your life on Earth ends, you are simply dead, and
that is the end. Other religions focus mainly on their afterlife, and that it is
the main goal that has priority over our lives on Earth. Although both
spectrums are definitely a possibility, is one possibility better than another?
Again, with such a small amount of scientific proof, it is very difficult to tell if
an afterlife actually exists, let alone a correct one, but from analyzing real
life phenomenon and experiences, it may bring some evidence that may
support one above another.
I believe this inquiry is fairly significant to those who truly want to learn
about religion. Many people who worship a god of some sort, including
myself, do not know the whole entirety about the beginnings and reasoning
behind their own beliefs. Therefore, I intend to provide factual information
pertaining to how religion became something prevalent in society, and how it
has developed from that point to where it is now. I do understand that this
topic is very controversial to many people, as do a lot of writings about

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religious beliefs, but I intend to keep as much of my own personal bias out of
this paper as possible, while still giving my own insight and ideas about the
facts. I do not want to make anyone feel as if I am leaning toward any one
position as a correct position to be in, simply because people will believe
what they will, and their own beliefs and experiences should not be
tampered with. Hopefully once this paper is fabricated to its entirety, the
readers will be more familiar with the concepts of the afterlife and all that it
encompasses, along with how it became an idea upheld for many centuries.
There are many places that you can go to in order to learn about the
afterlife. Since it is something that is so hard to prove, there is a lot of
discussion and controversy involving why people believe it exists and why
others believe it is a joke. Therefore, it will take a lot of research to find
reliable, well written sources that provide the type of quality fit to insert into
a scholarly paper, but if the proper steps are made, it is definitely possible. It
is a very controversial topic, and with controversy come a lot of debate.
Finding information about religions and their afterlives should not be a
difficult task by any means. Although I personally dont know much about the
topic of afterlife, I am excited to learn just as much as any other person who
reads this paper will. Again, a lot of quality research will have to be made to
ensure that it touches every single part of religion, and to make sure there is
a somewhat minimalistic amount of bias within the paper.
I hope that after my research is completed, I can show the reader how
much the world really does know about afterlives. Although my factual

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knowledge about them may be lacking, the origination and practices of
religion have a lot of information that may be linked to proving something
about them. Hopefully, we all can learn how we perceive these afterlives,
and how they affect our notions of the world we know now, as well as the
world we wish to be in after we are removed from the Earth.