1. Presenting an argument: essay/polemic/diatribe
The most basic function of rhetoric remains unchanged over the centuries – to use all the available resources of language to put across the most convincing possible case for a given argument.
We see written examples of this in journalistic “opinion pieces,” in critical “reviews” praising or condemning someone else’s work, in pamphlets and books representing every shade of opinion. “Essays” that are often closer to creative rather than academic writing in their individuality and stylishness.
We’re predisposed, of course, to think that writing we agree with offers a “well-stated argument,” and to dismiss what we disagree with as a “rant” -- to see reason at work when we share the same views, and to see the tricks or techniques of rhetoric when we don’t. In fact, we all tend to rely on the same persuasive techniques when we want to be convincing – and more of these techniques belong to rhetoric than to logic.

2. Presenting an argument: essay/polemic/diatribe
topics
We need to remind ourselves here of the concept of the “topic” – those ready-made kinds of argument, which aren’t strictly logical, but which can be persuasive enough to work as rhetorical “proofs.”
Consider these examples, which might be used as “arguments” against legalised abortion:
“If an unwanted old person was killed, you’d call it murder” (analogy)
“Imagine if Stephen Hawking’s mother had been screened for potential motor neurone disease, and chosen to terminate…” (exemplum)
“I’m not anti-women, but I am pro-life” (definition of terms)
“You’re opposed to the death-penalty for murderers, and yet you support destroying innocent foetuses” (apparent contradiction)
“The Bible says: ‘Thou shalt not kill’” (appeal to authority)
“Studies show that 40-70% of foetuses are viable at 24 weeks” (statistical ‘proof’)

3. Presenting an argument: essay/polemic/diatribe
Consider these examples, which might be used as “arguments” against legalised abortion:
“If an unwanted old person was killed, you’d call it murder” (analogy)
“Imagine if Stephen Hawking’s mother had been screened for potential motor neurone disease, and chosen to terminate…” (exemplum)
“I’m not anti-women, but I am pro-life” (definition of terms)
“You’re opposed to the death-penalty for murderers, and yet you support destroying innocent foetuses” (apparent contradiction)
“The Bible says: ‘Thou shalt not kill’” (appeal to authority)
“Studies show that 40-70% of foetuses are viable at 24 weeks” (statistical ‘proof’)
Now consider how the same “topics” might be used as “arguments” against belief in any kind of God or religion:
analogy
exemplum
definition of terms
apparent contradiction
appeal to authority
statistical ‘proof’

4. Presenting an argument: essay/polemic/diatribe
These examples might be used as “arguments” against belief in any kind of God or religion:
analogy: “Believing in God is like believing in Father Christmas; you need to grow out of it.”
exemplum: “My grandmother was religious, until she saw my grandfather dying slowly of cancer.”
definition of terms: “Not believing in God isn’t ‘atheism;’ it’s ‘common sense’.”
apparent contradiction: “How can you believe that religion is good when it’s the cause of so much violence and war?”
appeal to authority: “Read Darwin, and you’ll see that everything around us comes into being by evolution, without any need for an act of Creation.”
statistical ‘proof’: “The countries with the highest levels of literacy and education are those with the lowest levels of religious observance.”
Now consider how these views might lead to “counter- arguments” by someone wishing to persuade us of the validity of belief in God or religion:

5. Presenting an argument: essay/polemic/diatribe
These examples might be used as “arguments” against belief in any kind of God or religion:
analogy: “Believing in God is like believing in Father Christmas; you need to grow out of it.”
exemplum: “My grandmother was religious, until she saw my grandfather dying slowly of cancer.”
definition of terms: “Having no God shouldn’t be called ‘atheism;’ it should be called ‘common sense’.”
apparent contradiction: “How can you believe that religion is good when it’s the cause of so much violence and war?”
appeal to authority: “Read Darwin, and you’ll see that everything around us comes into being by evolution, without any need for an act of Creation.”
statistical ‘proof’: “The countries with the highest levels of literacy and education are those with the lowest levels of religious observance.”
Now consider how these views might lead to “counter- arguments” by someone wishing to persuade us of the validity of belief in God or religion:
“The world might be a better place if more people kept hold of a childlike belief in good things.”
“But an atheistic view of cancer would see it as just the inevitable growth of cells, and not an emotional issue at all.”
“In the same way that believing in God shouldn’t be put in a category labelled ‘religion,’ when for some people it’s just the way they live their lives.”
“How can you believe that religion is bad when it’s been in the forefront of the fight against slavery, apartheid, famine and war?”
“Read the Bible carefully, and you’ll see how complex and thoughtful it is – and even how morally ambiguous much of the time.”
“More people in more cultures over human history have been religious than not – this huge majority shouldn’t be dismissed as stupid.”

6. Presenting an argument: essay/polemic/diatribe
Richard Dawkins, born in
Richard Dawkins, born in Kenya in 1941, educated in England, studied zoology at Oxford, taught in U.S. Published The Selfish Gene, a popularising work on genetics and evolution. Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, Founded the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, 2006.
Christopher Hitchens ( ), British-born, Oxford-educated journalist and polemicist. Moved to U.S.A. in 1981, became a U.S. citizen in Began as a Left-wing Trotskyist, highly critical of American foreign policy, becoming increasingly pro-American and anti-Islamist after 9/11. Supported the Bush invasion of Iraq in 2003.
We are going to consider the openings of two books published in 2006 and 2007, arguing passionately against religious belief.
One by Richard Dawkins, a writer whose background is in evolutionary science.
The other by Christopher Hitchens, a journalist who was known for his outspokenness on a range of subjects.
The timing of both books is important – since they appeared in the years following the 9/11 attacks in the U.S., when the emergence of fundamentalist/political Islamism had caused a number of people to question the influence of religion on world affairs.

7. Presenting an argument: essay/polemic/diatribe
The title of the book is the first thing the reader encounters:
The God Delusion. Chapter 1: ‘A deeply religious non-believer’
The boy lay prone in the grass, his chin resting on his hands.
God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Chapter 1: ‘Putting it mildly’
If the intended reader of this book should want to go beyond disagreement with its author and try to identify the sins and deformities that animated him to write it (and I have certainly noticed that those who publicly affirm charity and compassion and forgiveness are often inclined to take this course), then he or she will not just be quarrelling with the unknowable and ineffable creator who presumably opted to make me this way. They will be defiling the memory of a good, sincere, simple woman, of stable and decent faith, named Mrs. Jean Watts.

8. Presenting an argument: essay/polemic/diatribe
The opening chapter title is the next thing the reader reads:
The God Delusion. Chapter 1: ‘A deeply religious non-believer’
The boy lay prone in the grass, his chin resting on his hands.
God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Chapter 1: ‘Putting it mildly’
If the intended reader of this book should want to go beyond disagreement with its author and try to identify the sins and deformities that animated him to write it (and I have certainly noticed that those who publicly affirm charity and compassion and forgiveness are often inclined to take this course), then he or she will not just be quarrelling with the unknowable and ineffable creator who presumably opted to make me this way. They will be defiling the memory of a good, sincere, simple woman, of stable and decent faith, named Mrs. Jean Watts.

9. Presenting an argument: essay/polemic/diatribe
The opening sentence(s) are what comes next:
The God Delusion. Chapter 1: ‘A deeply religious non-believer’
The boy lay prone in the grass, his chin resting on his hands.
God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Chapter 1: ‘Putting it mildly’
If the intended reader of this book should want to go beyond disagreement with its author and try to identify the sins and deformities that animated him to write it (and I have certainly noticed that those who publicly affirm charity and compassion and forgiveness are often inclined to take this course), then he or she will not just be quarrelling with the unknowable and ineffable creator who presumably opted to make me this way. They will be defiling the memory of a good, sincere, simple woman, of stable and decent faith, named Mrs. Jean Watts.

10. Presenting an argument: essay/polemic/diatribe
Chapter 1: ‘A deeply religious non-believer’
The boy lay prone in the grass, his chin resting on his hands. He suddenly found himself overwhelmed by a heightened awareness of the tangled stems and roots, a forest in microcosm, a transfigured world of ants and beetles and even -- though he wouldn't have known the details at the time -- of soil bacteria by the billions, silently and invisibly shoring up the economy of the micro-world. Suddenly the micro-forest of the turf seemed to swell and become one with the universe, and with the rapt mind of the boy contemplating it. He interpreted the experience in religious terms and it led him eventually to the priesthood. He was ordained an Anglican priest and became a chaplain at my school, a teacher of whom I was fond. It is thanks to decent liberal clergymen like him that nobody could ever claim that I had religion forced down my throat.

11. Presenting an argument: essay/polemic/diatribe
Chapter 1: ‘A deeply religious non-believer’ (contd.)
In another time and place, that boy could have been me under the stars, dazzled by Orion, Cassiopeia and Ursa Major, tearful with the unheard music of the Milky Way, heady with the night scents of frangipani and trumpet flowers in an African garden. Why the same emotion should have led my chaplain in one direction and me in the other is not an easy question to answer. A quasi-mystical response to nature and the universe is common among scientists and rationalists. It has no connection with supernatural belief. In his boyhood at least, my chaplain was presumably not aware (nor was I) of the closing lines of The Origin of Species -- the famous 'entangled bank' passage, 'with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth'. Had he been, he would certainly have identified with it and, instead of the priesthood, might have been led to Darwin's view that all was 'produced by laws acting around us':
Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

12. Presenting an argument: essay/polemic/diatribe
Chapter 1: ‘Putting it mildly’
It was Mrs. Watts’s task, when I was a boy of about nine and attending a school on the edge of Dartmoor, in southwestern England, to instruct me in lessons about nature, and also about scripture. She would take me and my fellows on walks, in an especially lovely part of my beautiful country of birth, and teach us to tell the different birds, trees, and plants from one another. The amazing variety to be found in a hedgerow; the wonder of a clutch of eggs found in an intricate nest; the way that if the nettles stung your legs (we had to wear shorts) there would be a soothing dock leaf planted near to hand: all this has stayed in my mind…
However, there came a day when poor, dear Mrs. Watts overreached herself. Seeking ambitiously to fuse her two roles as nature instructor and Bible teacher, she said, “So you see, children, how powerful and generous God is. He has made all the trees and grass to be green, which is exactly the colour that is most restful to our eyes. Imagine if instead, the vegetation was all purple, or orange, how awful that would be.”

13. Presenting an argument: essay/polemic/diatribe
Chapter 1: ‘Putting it mildly’ (contd.)
And now behold what this pious old trout hath wrought. I liked Mrs. Watts: she was an affectionate and childless widow who had a friendly old sheepdog who really was named Rover, and she would invite us for sweets and treats after hours to her slightly ramshackle old house near the railway line. If Satan chose her to tempt me into error he was much more inventive than the subtle serpent in the Garden of Eden…
However, I was frankly appalled by what she said. My little ankle-strap sandals curled with embarrassment for her. At the age of nine I had not even a conception of the argument from design, or of Darwinian evolution as its rival, or of the relationship between photosynthesis and chlorophyll. The secrets of the genome were as hidden from me as they were, at that time, to everyone else. I had not then visited scenes of nature where almost everything was hideously indifferent or hostile to human life, if not life itself. I simply knew, almost as if I had privileged access to a higher authority, that my teacher had managed to get everything wrong in just two sentences. The eyes were adjusted to nature, and not the other way about.