RE Unit 1 - Believing in God

?

Religious Experience

The Numinous

  • may be filled with awarness that there is something greater than them.
  • if you feel the presence of something greater than you then you will beleive in God.

Conversion

  • commit themselves to God. 
  • Feel God is calling them

Miracles

  • measnthat God has acted on earth
  • Only explanation is God, making you beleive in him. 

Prayer

  • feels that God i listening to them
  • answereed prayer leads to a stronger belief in God
1 of 6

Unanswered Prayer

How it leads to disbelief

  • they may feel like God is not listening to them
  • thinking 'why do i bother' and give up, becoming agnostic or athiest
  • Christians are taught that God loves them and answers prayers.
  • Wonder why some peoples prayers are answered and not thiers.
  • No evidence of God listening or helping in anyway

An unanswered prayer can be explained

  • if you pray for selfish things
  • God has a different plan
  • Giving what we need rather than what we want
  • It is not what they expected
2 of 6

Design Argument

Evidence for design

  • Laws of science, DNA, Evoulstion, Beauty of Nature, Seasons, Tides

Agree

  • everything needs a designer
  • evidence of design
  • only possible designer would be God
  • appreciation of beauty
  • sceince can explain how things occur, but not why

Disagree

  • design flaws - volcanoes, natural disasters
  • sceince can explain the appreance of design
  • does not explain things like dinosaurs
  • only proves a designer, not God.
3 of 6

Causation

Evidence of causation

  • everything we do has a cause and effect 
  • there must be a first cause - God 

Disagree

  • God must have a caus, why should the process stop with God 
  • the process of causes goes back for eternitites 
  • even if there was a first cause, doesnt mean it was God
  • just ebcause everything in the universe needs a cause, does not mean the universe itself needs a cause and explanation
4 of 6

Evil and Suffering

Evil and suffering causes people to reject God:

  • If God is omnipotent, he must be able to remove evil and suffering from the world.
  • If God is omnibenevolent, he must want to remove all evil.
  • if God exists, there should be no evil
  • either God is not all good and powerful or he does not exist
  • an all loving and powerful God would not have created a world with flaws
5 of 6

Religious Upbringing

  • Christian parents are likely to have their children baptised, promising them to believe in God and be good Christians
  • Children will be taught about God
  • Children may go to a church school
  • parents teach their children to pray to God
  • Children will believe their parents
  • They will believe that God exists becasue their parents will not waste time praying to nothing.
6 of 6

Comments

No comments have yet been made

Similar Religious Studies resources:

See all Religious Studies resources »See all Believeing in God resources »