Hello my fellow Drazaniens,


I am reporting to you from planet Earth and I must say that I am disappointed thus far in my findings. Coming from the planet of Drazania, where we take pride in our rainbow-colored people, this planet Earth seems to have focused their attention on religion. There seem to be a division between the believers and non-believers.

While here on Earth, I am here in a region called North America and the people here seem to be very separated on many issues, but religion seems to be a main point of interest. During my observation of this thing called region, it seems that some of these humans believe in a being called God and he has a son called Jesus and there is also a Holy Spirit. These three is referred to as the Holy Trinity. They also believe in this book called the Bible and if they follow this Bible and everything in it that once they die they will go to this place beyond the sky called Heaven.

I also observed that there are those humans who do not believe in this Holy Trinity, and believe that there is only one God and nothing more. I was also reading a quote by a gentleman named Roger William’s who believe in the separation of the church and state. He was quoted as saying, “All civil states, with their officers of justice, in their respective constitutions and administrations, are proved essentially civil, and therefore not judges, governors, or defenders of the spiritual, or Christian, state and worship” (Williams). He believed that issue concerning the state should not be brought into the religion arena. Not everyone seemed to have agreed with him. John Winthrop believed that church was needed for such matters.

 Then I was reading a discussion board of messages and I came across the topic of a lady named Mary Rowlandson. She appeared to have a very strong faith and religious beliefs. She wrote a passage about her life called The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. Mrs. Rowlandson claimed to have been captured by the Native Americans and endured 11 weeks of captivity before her release. During her captivity she characterized her captives as being a group of uncivilized animals who terrorized and killed her people for no apparent reasons.  Her religion seems to have played a role in abduction and release. A student, Matthew Scroggins, and I had a discussion regarding a post in which he stated from Mrs. Rowlandson’s writing regarding this thing called faith in a God who no one has seen. Matthew quoted Mrs. Rowlandson, "Then also I took my Bible to read, but I found no comfort here neither, which many times I was wont to find. So easy a thing it is with God to dry up the streams of Scripture comfort from us. Yet I can  say, that in all my sorrows and afflictions, God  did not leave me to have my impatience work  towards Himself, as if His ways were  unrighteous. But I knew that He laid upon me less than I deserved.” I guess this was needed in the writing according to Matthew’s instructor because he stated, “A religious confessional is one of the purposes of the captivity narrative” (Creel) .

And as if all of this wasn’t enough, I discovered that there are those who believe in the Enlightenment Theory. I was asked to read some of Thomas Paine’s work and his views on this thing called the Bible and its laws. He had a difference of opinion regarding the universe, Jesus and these other theories. I guess many people confused Paine’s Deist beliefs (Deism is a natural religion. " Deists believe in the existence of God, on purely rational grounds, without any reliance on revealed religion or religious authority or holy text. Because of this, Deism is quite different from religions like Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The latter are based on revelations from God to prophet(s). Then there is Atheists (an absence of belief in the existence of a god, a goddess, gods, goddesses, or combination of supernatural entities." (www. religioustolerance.org).

 Paine believed in the separation of church and state. Paine declared that, “nature was the only form of divine revelation, for God had clearly established a uniform, immutable and eternal order throughout creation.”(Paine) "He also rejected Christianity, denied that the Bible was the revealed word of God, condemned many of the Old Testament stories as immoral and claimed that the Gospels were marred by discrepancies." Through my observation, I began to learn that these humans were learning this thing called religion in many different ways, and that each group is defining religion as something different. Like Paine there was a gentleman named Benjamin Franklin who was raised very religious but he too made statements that more than indicated that he was very much into the Enlightenment theory. Franklin stated, “So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do” (Franklin 36).

Lastly, I was given a poem by Phyllis Wheatley called On Being Brought from Africa to America.  She is a slave from a place called Africa and she is speaking of this thing called Enlightenment. Ryan Widuch and I had a difference of opinions regarding this poem. Wheatley states, “some view our sable race with scornful eye" (l.5). Ryan seems to think that it is an allusion and I believe it to be a metaphor. But , believe that Wheatley shows her thoughts of enlightenment when she states,  “Taught my benighted soul to understand/That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too (ll. 2-3). One of the ideologies of the deists is that Jesus might be believed as “a philosopher, teacher and healer, but not as the Son of God” (Creel).

Drazaniens, I find these humans here on Earth to be very interesting.  Even though there are many different beliefs regarding this thing called religion and God, there is a one thing that they all agree. And that is there is a thing or being named God.

Additional resources:

www.ushistory.org/paine