Writing and developing a thesis statement is an important part of a writing process. The following is a proposed thesis statement for my argumentative piece based on a template laid out in Bruce Ballenger's The Curious Researcher

Based on research pertaining to the validity and scientific nature of the intelligent design theory, evidence suggests that a broader spectrum of theoretical teaching in public schools is a more effective educational system in its creation and cultivation of student's world views.

Writing is about creating a conversation with an audience. With regards to intelligent design, the following is an example of information that would be covered in my research paper and how it would relate to a conversation with the audience. For this blog our audience will go by the name of Dave.

Dave		Kevin
What’s the big idea about this topic? Why should I care?		The debate over the origins of the earth are extremely important because choosing which side you might sit on will have a big impact on your worldview and understanding of life. Today science argues that the world came to be through a state of evolution and chance and that any other belief is foolish because it cannot be proven scientifically. For this reason there is a very big call for only the theory of evolution to be taught in public schools. The problem is that science cannot truly prove evolution any better than it can prove creationism or intelligent design. For this reason, I believe that children should be taught the theory of intelligent design in public schools and be allowed to make a decision on which they accept for themselves.
What is the importance of a worldview?		Our worldview effect affects our beliefs on metaphysical matters including morals, social issues and supernatural beliefs. Most people understand intelligent design to be a “toned-down” version of creationism and a way of allowing God to be taught in schools, but, although an understanding of God is a very important factor for intelligent design, it is about more than that.
What is the difference between intelligent design and creationism?		Intelligent design is a broad theory which, in essence, encompasses a number of other theories including creationism. Creationism is based on the belief that God created the earth in seven days as laid out in the Genesis account. Intelligent design, on the other hand, is a scientific research based theory which believes that a number of things in science point to the fact that the natural world must have had a designer with a higher form of intelligence. It does not necessarily teach creationism.
Should Darwinism and evolution still be taught in schools along with intelligent design?		As a Christian, it can become easy to wish that only intelligent design was allowed to be taught, or even better, if only creationism was allowed, but the issue today is not necessarily about which theory is correct. The issue is rather that Darwinism and evolution are taught to be fact while creationism and Intelligent Design are taught to be completely incorrect. The argument is that we should be teaching students about both options, including the idea that neither can be argued as more evident than the other, and allowing them to make up their own minds.

In conclusion, intelligent design should be taught in public schools because of the fact that it relates to a students worldview and merits as much legitimacy as any Darwinist or evolutionist theory.

I decided to change the topic of the research paper that I will be doing to explore the question: Should intelligent design be taught in public school classrooms?

With this in mind I am following an exercise laid out in Bruce Ballangers, The Curious Researcher, which makes use of general, web-based search engines to explore a topic further.
I personally felt that Google and Yahoo! were extremely popular and almost acted as default browsers for most people, and so I chose to use the less popular options of Ask.com, Bing and Lycos.
My search inputs were:

• Intelligent design in public schools
• Intelligent design vs. Creationism
• intelligent design vs. Darwinism

These are some of the better sources I found through these various searches:

Ask.com

 - "Intelligent Design and Science Education." Intelligent Design and Science Education. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Nov. 2013.

Using Ask.com I came to the Discovery Institutes website for intelligent design, intelligentdesign.org, and found their link to the public school policy that is currently in place regarding this theory. The website is a secular site yet it supports the idea of teaching ID in public schools. It gives a lot of information on the current system and the attitude of most science departments is the public school system. The Discovery Institute is one of the leading forces tempting to get ID education incorporated into the schools system and I believe that they are a credible source.

Bing

 - Engber, Daniel. "Creationism vs. Intelligent Design." Slate Magazine. N.p., 10 May 2005. Web. 04 Nov. 2013.

Using Bing I found an article published by Slate Magazine on the difference between creationism and Intelligent Design. The article was fairly informative and laid out the basic differences between the two theories. it is unbiased and I believe that the information and publisher are credible.

 - Petrescu, Anna. "Intelligent Design Versus Creationism." Articlesbase.com. Articlesbase.com, 24 Mar. 2010. Web. 04 Nov. 2013.

I also found an article published in Articlesbase which addresses the same topic, Creationism versus Intelligent Design. This article was a more in depth than the previous one and gave more information, making a more significant argument. Again I found that the author was a credible source.

Lycos

 - "The Origin of Avian Flight: Comparing Explanations from Darwinism and Intelligent Design."Evolution News & Views. N.p., 11 Apr. 2013. Web. 04 Nov. 2013.

Using Lycos I found an interesting article published in Evolution News and Views on the comparative views of the origins of a birds ability to fly between the theories of Darwinism and Intelligent Design. The article was biased and one sided, as I would have expected, examining points made by ID theorists and simply writing them off because of their status under Intelligent Design. It did however offer some good insight into the Darwinian view which I believe will be helpful and, regarding Darwinism, I believe that this publisher is a credible source.

I think that this technique is helpful because it certainly can turn up some good research information.I found that Bing was very easy to use and navigate and that it brought up the greatest number of useful sites whereas Lycos was harder to use and rendered far less useful hits.

Overall, I am please with the results I got.

Setting up a research proposal is an important step in planning for a research assignment.
This research proposal is based on the topic: The Purpose of Sport from a Biblical Worldview.

1.) Inquiry question:

What is the purpose of sport within society and a personal athlete form a Biblical perspective and worldview?

2.) Primary Purpose:

Exploration possibilities:
- Does sport affect more than simply the athletes taking part in it?
- What personal impact can playing a competitive team sport have on an athlete?
- Does playing sport please God?
- Does playing sport in a certain manner please God, and is God disappointed if we do not play in that way?
- Does exertion of effort within a sport please God in a greater way?

Possible hypothesis:
The purpose of playing a competitive team sport is found solely in the possible benefit of the enjoyment of the athlete involved.

3.) Opinions, beliefs and ideas prior to research:

I believe that playing a sport has very little effect of society except to heighten enjoyment within those playing. Having played competitive soccer for many years if have found that my achievements have little benefit to anyone other than myself, and that my only purposeful benefit, aside form fitness and health, is enjoyment. As a Christian I have been perplexed by this idea because I could not give a rational answer as to how my ability to play sport was glorifying to God. Playing soccer at Bible college, I was often told that when I chose not play as hard and as well as I could, I was not being a good steward of my talent and thus I was not truly glorifying God, and I simply cannot accept this. I do not believe that God is less glorified when I don't play as well as i possibly can. I would therefore like to explore what the purpose of playing sport is, particularly within a Christian worldview.

The Curious Researcher by Bruce Ballenger looks at a technique of brainstorming for the purpose of finding a topic of interest. This technique involves 3 steps:

1.) Creating various list of random ideas according to a number of categories. For this exercise I have chosen four of these categories: History, Jobs, Technologies and Places.
These lists are meant to be made spontaneously, simply writing whatever comes to mind.

History	Technologies	Jobs	Hobbies
World War 1	Ipod	Professional Athlete	Sport
World War 2	Iphone	Lawyer	Model-building
The Holocaust	Internet	Astronaut	Chess
Apartheid	Facebook	Intelligence officer	Language learning
Ancient Greece	Twitter	Athletic Coach	Weight lifting
Roman Empire	Laptops	Pastor	Napping
British Colonization	Netflix	Priest	Dancing
Protestant Reformation	Bluetooth	Monk	Fantasy Sport
Cold War	Wi-Fi	Doctor	Reading
Space Race	Aeroplane	Counsellor	Singing
Christian Crusades	Toaster	Chef	Surfing
Rwanda Genocide	Microwave	Psychologist	Hiking
Sudanese War	Toilet	Police officer	Car restoration
Russian Revolution	Pen	Fire fighter	Stamp collecting
Ancient Religion	Printing Press	President	Antiquing
Aristotle	Telograph	Factory labourer
Roman Gladiators	MP3	Journalist
Ancient China	Integrated Circuit	Politician
Japanese Samurai	Electricity	Librarian
Trojan War		Educator
Napoleon’s Conquests		Film Director
Hitler
The Nazi’s
The Berlin Wall
Anglo-Boer War
Discovery of gold

2.) Review the lists and select one point that you believe can be researched.
I have chosen the idea of Sport as a hobby.

3.) This topic creates a number of questions for me:

1. Is there a meaningful purpose behind professional athletics?
2. How should Christians respond to professional athletics?
3. How should Christians respond to sport in general?
4. Is there too much money invested in sport?
5. Does sport contribute to its players in a beneficial way?
6. Is professional sport actually fun for its athletes?
7. Does professionalism subtract from the enjoyment?
8. How seriously should non-professional athletes take their sport?
9. Should every competitive athlete strive to be professional?
10. Are professional athletes born or made?
11. Can God be glorified through sport.
12. Is God disappointed when talented athletes don't use their athletic ability as much as they can?
13. Does God have a say on the outcome of a sports event?
14. Is sport a good platform for evangelism?
15. How seriously should sport be taken?
16. Does sport contribute to society?
17. Is talent a in sport a real thing?

I feel that sport is an interesting topic because i find that its purposefulness is questionable.

Fastwriting

The Curious Researcher, by Bruce Ballenger is a very insightful book in exploiring techniques and styles of research-based writing. One of the techniques they encourage is called fastwriting. This is basically spontaneous writing, spewing whatever comes to mind onto a page for a set amount of time, in this case 3 minutes, and ensuring that you simply do not stop until that time is up. This encourages thinking through your writing as opposed to simply having it thought out before you even start. So... I'm gonna lay out two fastwrites as responses to two different statements brought up in The Curious Researcher.

The first statement: You're writing mostly for the instructor.
Time: 3 minutes

"Writing is a tricky thing because it can be used for so many different reasons. It is necessary for just about everything we do in life. We we study we need to write in order to respond to what we have learnt and display to our professors or examiners that we we have grasped an understanding of what they are teaching. The opposite side of this is that as, learners we need to be able to read what others have written for us. So writing can be for responding as well as educating. As students we generally find that when we write it is for the purpose of pleasing our professors or fulfilling requirement, but I believe that this is a little bit of a problem, because writing should be far more significant than this. Writing should be for the benefit of the writer as much as it is for the benefit of the reader. we should be able to find enjoyment in our writing in such a way that writing an essay to fulfill a requirement set out by an instructor is something far more meaningful than simply fulfilling that requirement or receiving a grade: it should also create a sense of happiness and enjoyment for us as we write."

The second statement: Pretty much everything you read in textbooks is true.
Time: 3 minutes

"Going through school I obviously trusted everything I learnt from a textbook. The teachers had set it, meaning that they thought it was pretty good, plus it was written by geniuses in their field. Subjects like physics, biology and chemistry were an absolute given. who was I to argue with the writers in these fields. When I got to college, however, and started studying something I was actually passionate about (Theology) I realized that there are some textbooks out there that are not very good. In fact there are some that are simply awful. Some of them talk about things that are simply untrue and some just miss the point in certain areas, but it became pretty tricky to know which writers, and which textbooks were actually worth looking at. My only guess is that this is not simply the case for the theological field. I'm guessing that many different fields have the same problem, I was just never knowledgeable enough to notice it."

Fastwriting is actually a pretty easy thing and I'm quite impressed with the way it encourages thinking throughout the process.