Illiterate, Aliterate, Ignorant or Lazy? Examine, research, think and open your mind!

If you are illiterate you cannot read this. If you are alliterate you could read this but probably won't because you do not like to read. If you do not read anything or take the time to edit your work you are lazy or ignorant. If you write like you speak, your writing will sound hokey, colloquial and childish.

These are some of the things I notice when I read some of the Hubs here on HP. And some of the other things I see are logical fallacies, or examples with no critical thinking skills involved and lots of supposition. If you are going to write good Hubs that sound like you know what you are talking about do not make statements that are generalized. They remind me of straw houses that can be blown over by a quick north wind. Back your statements up with examples, proofs, not speculation.

There are also many Hubs here espousing religion and political viewpoints that are based upon faulty thinking. Had you grown up in another country, or another era you might see that you are a product of your upbringing and chose both because you were steeped in the ideas your parents taught you. Have you considered some of your own ideas? Have you taken the time to critically think and examine the other religions and political stances from an open minded viewpoint?

Here is an example of a logical fallacy used in an argument. If we argue from authority we might say that our forefathers would not like the way the country was being run, it is against all the things they stood for, etc.

The truth is our forefathers consisted of enlightened thinkers who utilized many of the French ideas in our founding documents. The men were Free Masons who believed in God, but also esoteric beliefs. Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin spent time in Paris with Voltaire, Rousseau and other philosophes of the day. These men, who were Diests were not Christian as many have erroneously reported. President James Madison was know to have written the following:

 "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." 

and in fact the Government voted in the Treaty of Tripoli in 1797 the following: 

"The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."

The key here is research. The issue is knowledge, which is attainable by reading, learning and critically examining your beliefs instead of merely accepting what you learned as a young person as an undisputed truth of ones entire lifetime.We are here to learn and grow and as such, we need to become "literate" and come out of the darkness of our ignorance so we can once again be the shining example of enlightenment to those around us, especially if we are writing something people take the time to read.