Believing in God- Summary of whole topic

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  • 1.1 Why do Christians believe in God?
    • The main features of a Christian family
      • Go to church
      • Pray together as a family
      • Celebrate religious festivals
      • Getting out into the community and helping people
      • Why can this lead to a belief in God?
        • You have God parents who support you and discuss their understanding of God
        • You grow up with Christian values
        • Because you follow the example your parents set
        • The parents might chose a church school so you are around other Christians and pray etc together
    • Believing in God
      • 1.2 Religious experience
        • Examples
          • Numinous, this is the feeling of something greater than you
          • Prayer, this is an attempt to contact God, usually through words
          • Miracle, this is something which seems to break a law of science and makes you think only God could have done it
          • Conversion, this is when your life is changed by giving yourself to God.
          • Why these could lead to a belief in god
            • The responses people believe they have recieve to their prayers leads them to a belief in God
            • When something happens against all the odds and  breaks a law of science people believe in God  because of it
            • Some people become so convinced God is real they commit themselves to God
            • For some the presence of something genuinely awesome is proof that God exsits
      • 1.3 Does TV affect people's attitudes to belief in God?
        • The genius of darwin
          • This could make you become an atheist as it is presented by an atheist and was also about the scientific not religious argument
        • Songs of praise
          • This could convert people to become Christians as it has hymn singing and worship
        • 1.5 The causation argument
          • Everything in life has a cause so so does the universe
          • This proves there is a God because someone or something had to cause it and so the only solution is God
          • This is a faulty argument because if God created the universe then what created God?
      • 1.4 The argument from design
        • The idea that everyone must have a designer if something is that inticate
        • Humanists say the argument from design doesn't prove there's a God because...
          • There isn't much order in the universe, it doesn't have a fixed design and the universe is expanding
          • Patterns in nature do not really point to any designer. Patterns are the result of millions of years of evolution not a planning intelligence
        • Why it suggests God exsits
          • Because some super-calculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom
          • The universe could not have been created like it is by chance the odds were far too smal
          • Because the sex-life of a bumble bee or the structure of the DNA are extremely complex
      • 1.6 What does science say about the origins of the world
        • 1. The big bang caused it
        • 3. The stars formed galaxies
        • 2. Gravity pulled matter together to form stars
        • 4. the stars exploded and formed the planets and the sun
        • This could prove God doesn't exist because it proves the causation and design argument wrong
      • 1.7 How do Christians respond to scientific theories about the origins of the world
        • The experience of the physical universe as we know it originated in the big bang but God is the one who upholds the world and keeps it in being
          • God didn't produce a ready made world he made a world able to make itself
        • The universe evolved itself without any active participation from God, then the world continues on its own the only way he participates is through people and their attitudes
      • 1.8 Anybody there?
        • Why people might say unanswered prayers prove there is no God
          • This could prove that God is not real because if he was and he is omnipotent and omni-benevolent then he would answer
      • 1.9 What explanations do Christians have for unanswered prayers?
        • God doesn't always answer the way we expect
        • God doesn't interfere in day-to-day matters. It is arrogant of us to think that God will do what we ask of him
        • Prayer works indirectly communicate-ing with God helps us to find answers within ourselves
        • Prayer is a test of faith and should be a test of God. Some people just give up without really trying.
      • 1.10 How can God exist if people suffer?
        • The difference between moral and natural evil
          • Moral evil are actions done by humans which cause suffering however natural evil are things which cause suffering but have nothing to do with humans
        • Reasons why evil and suffering could prove there is no God
          • God is omnicient (all knowing)
          • God is omni- benevolent (all loving)
          • God is omnipotent (all powerful)
          • If God is all these things then why can't he answer our prayers, this must mean he doesn't exist.
      • 1.11 What do Christians say about evil and suffering?
        • Reasons Christians give for the existence of evil and suffering
          • Evil and suffering is one of life's tests. How we react to it are what determines what will happen to us in the afterlife
          • Some Christians believe that in the story of Adam and Eve when they ate the apple that humanity is now punished because of this
          • Humans have free will and they use it to create moral evil, this is our fault
          • God has a bigger plan that we can't know or understand because we are only human

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