Believing in God. Christianity only. Section 1.1.
Word List
AgnosticismAtheismFree WillConversionMiracleDesignMoral evilNatural evilNuminousOmni-benevolentOmnipotentOmniscientPrayer-
Not being sure whether God exists.
Believing that God does not exist.
The idea that human beings are free to make their own choices.
When your life is changed by giving yourself to God.
Something which seems to break a law of science and makes you think
only God could have done it.
When things are connected and seem to have a purpose e.g. the eye is
designed for seeing.
Actions done by humans which cause suffering.
Things which cause suffering but have nothing to do with human’s e.g.
earthquakes.
The feeling of the presence of something greater than you.
The belief that God is all good.
The belief that God is all powerful.
The belief that God knows everything that has happened and
everything that is going to happen.
An attempt to contact God, usually through words.
1.1 The main features of a Christian upbringing.
 You would be baptised/christened. As part of this sacrament, the
parents will promise to bring up their children as Christians and so
encourage them to believe in God.
 You would be taught to pray to God
 Taken to Church
 Go to Sunday school and be taught about God and Christianity.
 May be sent to a church school and therefore taught in a
Christian environment.
 Encouraged to be confirmed, this will involve lessons from the
minister about God and Christianity.
 As part of confirmation there may be a religious experience, as
you feel the presence of God through the prayer, vows and
laying on of hands.
How a religious upbringing may lead to or support belief in God.
If you have had a religious upbringing, belief in God will appear natural to you because:
 Your parents will have told you about God as part of their
promises to bring you up as a Christian and young children
believe what their parents tell them.
 Praying will make the children believe that God exists because
he listens to their prayers.
 Going to Church and seeing so many people praying to God and
worshipping God is likely to make them think that God must
exist.
 Sunday school will support this belief.
 Attendance at a Church school will have a similar effect, as
God will be a normal feature of school life.
 Confirmation lessons will then support all these beliefs.
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1.2 Religious Experience.
Religious experience is an event that people feel gives them direct contact with God. You
need to know four types of religious experience: numinous, conversion, miracle, and prayer.
Numinous. The feeling of the presence of something greater than you. This is the
feeling you might get when you enter a great religious building or even a beautiful
place, see a beautiful view or a butterfly’s wing, a feeling of awe and wonder, a
feeling that there is something greater than you, which you can only call God.
This may lead a person to believe in God because the experience will make them feel
that God is real.
Conversion. The feeling that there is something inside you wanting you to change your
life and be more committed to your religion. They may say they have been ‘saved’ or
‘born again’. Enough to make a person change from being agnostic or atheist to being a
theist. This will lead them to believe in God because they will feel that God is calling
them to do something for him.
Miracles - Something which seems to break a law of science and makes you think only God
could have done it. Jesus was renowned for his miracles; they are amazing events, which cannot
be explained by the laws of nature. People claim that miracles still occur, a healing at Lourdes
for example. Miracles can lead to belief in God because, if a miracle has really happened, it
means that God has acted on earth. If an atheist or agnostic witnesses a miracle, their first
reaction will be to look for a natural explanation, if they cannot find one it might lead them to
believe in God. If a miracle happens, then the people witnessing the miracle will feel they have
direct contact with God. Miracles are said to show God’s presence and power.
Prayer. An attempt to contact God usually through words. All religious believers think
that they can contact God through prayer. These prayers may be formal prayers
offered in worship. They may also be informal where a believer makes their own prayer
to God in their own private place. A belief that your prayers have been answered. If a
person feels that God is listening then they are likely to believe that God exists. If an
agnostic or atheist decided to pray, maybe for a sick loved one to recover and the
prayer was answered this may well lead to a belief in God.
Any religious believer who has any form of religious experience will find that the
experience supports their belief in God and makes it stronger because they now have
more direct evidence for God’s existence.
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Looking for Proof of God!
1.3 The argument from design and belief in God.
Design and purpose. William Paley. 1743-1805. - Teleological argument.
Just as a watch has obviously been designed by someone, the world shows so much
evidence of design and purpose that it must have been designed by a designer = GOD.
Nowadays people who favour this belief would give examples such as the way DNA are so
carefully structured that a tiny fertilised human egg (almost invisible to the human eye) is
the blueprint for an adult human being.
Also the way in which the Big Bang (the cosmic explosion, which many scientists believe,
was the beginning of the universe) was so designed, that human life was bound to evolve
and complex life forms develop from simple ones.
Other people believe that their whole experience of life makes them believe that life has
a purpose. There must be a reason for us being here – life must have a purpose. It is
therefore in looking for a purpose in life that many people turn to religion and are led to
believe in God.
People against this belief would say that the universe is not designed or ordered, it is
simply the result of one of natures many throws with the atoms = chance not design.
How the appearance of design may lead to, or support belief in God.
 Anything that has been designed needs a designer.
 Laws of science, DNA, evolution, beauties of nature are seen as evidence for design.
 If the world has been designed, there must be a designer.
 The only possible designer is therefore God.
Therefore if someone is unsure about God the appearance of design may lead them to
believe in God.
How the appearance of design may not lead to belief in God.
 What about volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, diseases? Can these really be part
of design?
 The evidence for design can be explained by science.
 The argument does not refer to the existence of dinosaurs which must have been
part of design, but no one thinks they could have been part of a design plan for the
world.
 The argument only proves that the universe has a designer, not God. The designer
could be many gods, an evil God, or a God who uses this universe as a trial run so
that he could create a better one.
1.4 The argument from causation and belief in God.
Causation. St Thomas Aquinas 1224-1274. – Cosmological argument.
The universe cannot have simply come from nothing; the universe was caused to exist.
There must have been a first cause, which St Thomas said is God. He would explain the Big
Bang by saying that it was caused.
Science has developed through looking at causes and effects and in particular looking for
single causes of effects. . The idea that everything has an explanation, things do not just
happen. If everything in the universe has an explanation, it is reasonable to believe that
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the universe itself needs an explanation, and the only possible explanation of the universe
is God.
Whatever we do has an effect. If I do my homework, I will please my parents and /or
teachers. If I do not do my homework, I will annoy my parents and/or teachers.
The argument for causation in the world goes something like this.
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If we look at things in the world we see that they have a cause; for example ice is
caused by the temperature falling and water becoming solid at below O degrees C.
Anything caused to exist must be caused to exist by something else.
In any causal chain there has to be a beginning. To have ice you have to have water.
The only possible first cause of the universe is God, therefore God must exist.
How causation may not lead to or support belief in God.
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Why should the cause stop at God?
A better explanation may be that it makes just as much sense to believe that the
chain reaction of causes stretches endlessly backwards and has no beginning at all.
Even if the First Cause were to exist it would not have to be God, it could be any
sort of creator.
1.5 Scientific explanations of the origins of the world.
Science explains how the world came into being in this way:
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Matter is eternal it can neither be created nor destroyed, only changed.
About fifteen billion years ago, the matter of the universe became so compressed
that it produced a huge explosion = the big bang.
As the matter of the universe flew away from the explosion, the forces of gravity
and other laws of science joins some of the matter into stars and, about 5 billion
years ago, the solar system was formed.
The combination of gases on the earth’s surface produced primitive life forms, like
amoeba.
The genetic structure of these life forms produces changes. (mutations).
Any change that is better suited to living in the environment will survive and
reproduce.
Over millions of years new life forms were produced until eventually about 2.5
million years ago, humans evolved.
Evidence for the Big Bang.
The main evidence is called the RED SHIFT effect where light from other galaxies gives
evidence that the world is expanding.
Evidence for evolution.
The evidence for the theory of evolution is the fossil record and the similarities between
life forms being discovered through genetic research.
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How scientific explanations of the world may lead to agnosticism or atheism.
Science can explain where the world came from and where humans came from without any
mention of God. This may lead some people to be agnostic, that is they are unsure whether
there is God or not. Other people may be led to become atheists and be sure there is no
God.
1.6 How one religion responds to scientific explanations of
the world.
There are three Christian responses to scientific explanations of the world.
Response One.
Many Christians believe that the scientific explanation proves that God created the
universe because:
 The Big Bang had to be at exactly the right moment for it to work.
 There had to be scientific laws created by God.
 Life on earth requires carbon which could not have happened by chance, so God
must have ensured it happened.
Response Two.
Some Christians believe that science is wrong and the Bible is right. They claim that all
the evidence there is of the Big Bang and evolution can be explained by the effects of
Noah’s flood and the Apparent Age Theory.
The Apparent Age Theory claims that if you accept the Bible view, then when Adam was
made the earth was six days old, but to Adam it would have looked billions of years old,
because trees would have been created with rings showing them hundreds of years old; the
Grand Canyon would have looked 2 billion years old when it was one second old. This is
often called Creationism.
Response Three.
Some Christians believe that both the scientific explanations and the Bible are correct.
They claim that the main points of the Bible story fit with science. One of God’s days
could be millions or billions of years. They claim that Genesis 1:3 ‘god said, “Let there be
light”, is a direct reference to the Big Bang and that the order in which God creates life
as described in Genesis –plants, trees, birds, animals, humans – is the same order as
described in the theory of evolution for the development of the species.
1.7 Why unanswered prayers may lead some people to
agnosticism or atheism.
Answered prayers may lead people to feel closer to God. However unanswered prayers may
make people feel that either they are not praying correctly or there is no God listening to
them. If prayers continue to be unanswered, especially if the person believes they are
praying for good things like the end of wars, or the end of a terrible drought in a
developing country, then the unanswered prayers become evidence that God does not
exist. In other words, the feeling that no one is listening to their prayers leads them to
agnosticism, or even atheism.
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1.8 How one religion responds to the problem of unanswered
prayers.
Most Christians believe that God answers all prayers and that what seem to be unanswered
prayers can be explained in many different ways.
 If what you pray for is selfish.
 If what you pray for is personal, God may have different plans.
 God may be answering prayers by giving us what we need rather than what we want,
just like a parent with a child.
 God should be trusted to answer prayers in the best possible way, even although it
might not look like a direct answer.
 God answers prayers for the long term good, even though God’s way may be different
from the expected one.
1.9 Evil and suffering.
Loads of bad things happen in the world. People suffer from terrible illnesses and die in
pain. Some people commit horrible crimes and other people suffer as a result.
Evil can be either Human made (moral evil) or natural.
NATURAL EVIL.
1) This kind of evil, and the suffering that
comes with it, is caused by the world in
which we live and is no one’s fault.
2) This includes things like floods, earthquakes
and hurricanes.
3) However many natural disasters may have
been caused by human interference in the
natural world, raising the question of
whether that makes those events human
made.
HUMAN-MADE (OR MORAL) EVIL.
1) This is when suffering is brought
about by the cruel actions of people.
2) This includes things like murder,
war, rape and torture.
3) The person causing the evil is able
to make a choice about what is
morally right or wrong.
Evil and suffering are linked together because evil is wrong, and most people think it is
wrong for people to suffer. Usually evil causes suffering.
The question for people who believe in an all-knowing (omniscient), all-loving (benevolent),
and all-powerful (omnipotent) God, is how can this evil exist in a world that God supposedly
created?
This problem has been called the problem of evil or the problem of suffering.
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1.9 Why evil and suffering may lead some people not to
believe in God.
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Some people cannot believe that a good God would have designed a world with
natural evils in it, such as floods, earthquakes etc. They find it easier to believe
that these features are a result of the earth evolving by accident from the Big
Bang and so they question or reject God’s existence.
Some people cannot believe in a God who allows humans to cause so much evil
and suffering when he could stop it if he wanted to.
Philosophers express the problem in this way:
If God is omnipotent (all-powerful), he must be able to remove evil and
suffering from the world.
 If God is omni-benevolent (all-good), he must want to remove evil and
suffering from the world because they cause so much unhappiness.
 If God is omniscient (all-knowing) he must have known all the evil and
suffering that would come from creating the universe in the way he did.
 It therefore follows that, if God exists, there would be no evil or suffering
in the world.
 So either God is not omnipotent, or God is not omni-benevolent, or not
omniscient or God does not exist.
For these reasons people may believe that God does not exist (atheist) or at
the least question the existence of God. (agnostic).
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1.10 How one religion responds to the problem of evil and
suffering.
There are several Christian responses to the problem of evil and suffering, and most
Christians would combine at least two.
Response One.
Christians believe that God wants them to help those who suffer. Jesus healed the sick,
fed the hungry, challenged those who were evil and even raised the dead.
Christians believe that the reasons for suffering may be against human comprehension but
they should fight against evil and suffering.
Response Two.
Many Christians say that evil and suffering is not the fault of God but comes about because God
gave humans free will.
Response Three.
Some Christians see evil and suffering as part of a plan in which those who suffer will be rewarded
by eternal paradise after they die. If people are to improve they need to face evil and suffering in
order to become good, kind and loving.
Response Four.
Some Christians claim that God has a reason for not using his power to remove evil and suffering,
but humans cannot understand; instead they should just trust that God has his reasons.
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1.11 How two television or radio programmes about religion
may affect a person’s attitude to belief in God.
For each of your 2 programmes, you need to make notes on the following:
1. Write a summary of the programme.
2. Decide which parts of the programme might have encouraged belief in God in some
people and write down four reasons (using evidence from the programme) for this.
3. Decide which parts of the programme might have encouraged some people not to
believe in God and write down four reasons (using evidence from the programme)
for this.
4. Decide what effect the programme had on your own attitude to belief in God and
write down four reasons for this.
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