Believing in God Flashcards

1
Q

Who is someone who believes in God?

A

Theist

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2
Q

Who is someone who does not believe in God?

A

Atheist

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3
Q

Who is someone who doesn’t know what they believe?

A

Agnostic

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4
Q

Reasons to be theist (4)

A
  • Brought up to believe in God
  • Experienced god is some way (miracle,prayer)
  • The Design argument
  • The Causation argument
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5
Q

Reasons to be atheist (3)

A
  • No evidence that God exists
  • Science explains how the world began without God
  • Evil and suffering
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6
Q

Reasons to be agnostic

A

-No reliable evidence either way

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7
Q

Christian beliefs in God (4)

A
  • God created the world
  • Relationship with God
  • God answers prayers and can perform miracles
  • God gives meaning to life and helps to answer difficult questions
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8
Q

How would Christians describe God?

A
  • Omnipotent (all powerful)
  • Omniscient (all knowing)
  • Omni-benevolent (all loving)
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9
Q

How might baptising a child lead to a belief in God? (3)

A
  • From the beginning of their life they will be brought up with Christian beliefs.
  • Parents will act as role models and seem natural to believe in God
  • Child is likely to respect their parents and accept what they believe
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10
Q

How might parents teaching their child to be Christian lead to a belief in God?

A

Believe their parents

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11
Q

Parents will teach their children to pray to God. How might parents teaching their child to pray lead to a belief in God?

A

Believe that God exists because their parents would not waste their time praying to nothing

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12
Q

How might parents taking their children to worship in a church lead to a belief in God?

A

Seeing so many people worshipping God will make them believe that God exists

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13
Q

How might parents sending their children to a Church school lead to a belief in God?

A

Be taught that God exists when they go to Sunday school, or Church school, and will believe it because their teachers tell them it is true

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14
Q

Arguments for children being brought up in a religious family (4)

A
  • Give comfort and help them through difficulties and give them a secure basis for adulthood
  • Could change their beliefs as they get older
  • Parents should be allowed to raise their children how they choose
  • Bringing up a child in a non religious family is still deciding their beliefs for them
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15
Q

Arguments against children being brought up in a religious family (4)

A
  • Children should have a choice about whether they want to be a part of a religion
  • Lead to conflict in the family
  • Seen as brainwashing
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16
Q

4 examples of a religious experience

A
  • Numinous
  • Miracle
  • Prayer
  • Conversion
17
Q

What could lead someone to believe in God?

A

A religious experience because they feel like they have experienced God and is enough evidence for them that he exists

18
Q

Arguments for miracles (4)

A
  • Lots of reports of miracles happening
  • Some reported miracles that science can’t explain
  • Miracles happened in the Bible
  • God is omnipotent so he is capable of performing miracles
19
Q

Arguments against miracles (4)

A
  • Makes God look cruel for only helping some people and not everyone
  • Many reports of miracles have been proven to be fake
  • Scientific explanations for a lot of reported miracles
  • Most reports come from religious people. They might just want to see a miracle and be mistaken
20
Q

What is the Design argument?

A

World and universe were designed and made by God due to it appearing well ordered (law of gravity) and the world being beautiful. Also things in the world appear to have a purpose for which they were designed.

21
Q

Who made an analogy between the watch and the world?

A

William Paley

22
Q

Who was convinced of the existence of a designer by looking at his thumbprint?

A

Isaac Newton

23
Q

Reasons against the Design argument (3)

A
  • Not everything in the world is beautiful and orderly (wars, people who are blind) Why would an omni-benevolent God design and create this?
  • Theory of evolution can explain why things fulfil a purpose.
  • There is no evidence to say that things were definitely designed. The world could have been made by random chance (The Big Bang)
24
Q

What is the Causation argument?

A

Everything that happens has a cause

25
Q

Who argued that there has to have been a first cause which must be God?

A

St Thomas Aquinas

26
Q

Reasons against the Causation argument (4)

A
  • Makes claims that cannot possibly be proven to be true
  • Why does this cause have to be God?
  • God must have a cause
  • Science suggests an alternative theory for the cause of the universe (Big Bang) which has evidence to back it up
27
Q

What are the scientific explanations of the world? (2)

A
  • The Big Bang: how the world began and leads people to not believe in God
  • Evolution: put forward by Charles Darwin and suggests that God did not create life uniquely, but rather it evolved from one source
28
Q

What most Christians say about scientific explanations (4)

A
  • Compatible with believing in God
  • The Big Bang and Evolution are part of God’s plan
  • The Bible’s description of the creation of the world is not meant to be taken literally
  • Science tells us how the world came into being, but religion tells us why
29
Q

What Creationists (strong Christians) say about scientific explanations (2)

A
  • Reject the scientific explanations of the world
  • The Bible’s account of how the world was created is the literal truth. They believe the world was created by God in 6 days
30
Q

What are Christians responses to unanswered prayers? (4)

A
  • Doesn’t always answer prayers in the way you would expect
  • Sometime God’s answer is ‘No’
  • What they are praying for might not be part of God’s plan
  • God will not grant prayers that are selfish or against his will
31
Q

What would be an argument against God and the problem of evil and suffering?

A

God is thought to be omnipotent, omniscient and omni-benevolent so should be able to and want to stop evil and suffering, so both God and evil cannot exist at the same time and since we know evil does exist, God can’t exist

32
Q

What is Christians responses to evil and suffering? (5)

A
  • Result of human sin where humans have disobeyed God
  • Test from God, allowing them to become closer to God and be a stronger person
  • God gave people free will so evil and suffering is a result of the choice people make
  • Part of God’s plan and people should trust in God
  • Suffering allows people to follow Jesus’s example and do good work
33
Q

What are Christians responses to unanswered prayers?

A
  • God doesn’t always answer prayers in the way you would expect
  • Sometime God’s answer is ‘No’
  • What they are praying for might not be part of God’s plan
  • God will not grant prayers that are selfish or against his will (e.g praying to make your teacher ill)
34
Q

What would be an argument against God and the problem of evil and suffering?

A

God is thought to be omnipotent, omniscient and omni-benevolent so should be able to and want to stop evil and suffering. So both God and evil cannot exist at the same time and since we know evil does exist, God can’t exist

35
Q

What is Christians responses to evil and suffering?

A
  • Evil and suffering is a result of human sin where humans have disobeyed God
  • Evil and suffering is a test from God, allowing them to become closer to God and be a stronger person
  • When God created people he gave them free will so evil and suffering is a result of the choice people make
  • Evil and suffering is part of God’s plan and people should trust in God
  • Suffering allows people to follow Jesus’s example and do good work