Section 1 - Belief In God Flashcards
What is a numinous experience and where may you get one?
When you experience something greater than you. You could get it when you see a beautiful place in nature. It is transcendent which means that God is existent in the material world.
What is a conversion experience
When you have an experience of God so great that people change their lives and commit themselves to God in a special way. It is a regenerative experience as you feel like you have been born again.
What is a miracle experience?
An experience that breaks the laws of nature/science and the only explanation is God.
What is a prayer?
An attempt to contact God usually through words. An answered prayer is likely to support belief in God?
Will a numinous, conversion, miracle or prayer support belief in God and why?
Numinous - Yes. Feel that God is real
Conversion - Yes. As you feel you have had contact with God
Miracle - Yes. As God has acted on earth and that person has been in the presence of God.
Prayer - Yes if the prayer is answered. You believe God is listening to you.
What is design?
That anything with a complex mechanism has been designed for a purpose and that there is a plan which working parts are following
What is the evidence for design?
DNA - Blueprint for all living life.
Evolution - Shows how complex everything is
Laws of science - the universe works according to laws such as gravity and electricity. Complex things are working together.
Why may design lead to belief in God?
Anything designed needs a designer and this designer must be God. If the world is designed it needs a designer.
Why may design not lead to belief in God?
All evidence for God is explained by science with little mention of God.
It doesn’t mention dinosaurs or extinction which could be a lack of design.
Why does the designer have to be God? And if he is, is he good or bad?
What is causation?
The belief that one thing causes another and everything has a cause. But infinite regress means that there must be an uncaused cause which is God.
Explain the cosmological argument
That any effect has a cause as nothing can cause itself to exist. Any effect has a cause so the universe and people need a cause and there must be an uncaused cause.
Why may people disagree with the cosmological argument?
Why does the cause process have to stop at God?
Could it be a different creator which isn’t God?
The argument contradicts itself.
What are the scientific explanations which could lead to agnostic/atheism?
State theory - the world came to being this way
Matter is eternal and it can’t be created or destroyed.
Big Bang - matter flew away and formed stars and eventually our solar system.
Gases on earth lead to primitive life and with mutations and natural selection led evolution.
Red shift effect shows universe is expanding
Why may scientific explanations lead to agnostic/atheism
Science explains how the world was formed with no mention of God. If God created the world, surely he would be the only expansion. Some people only want one explanation. Science or God?
Why may unanswered prayers lead to atheism/agnosticism?
Not feeling gods presence and that you’re praying to nothing and nothing is listening to you
Unanswered prayers reject existence in God
Linked to problems of evil (moral or natural)
What are the features of a Christian upbringing?
Have their children baptised - at the service to raise their children as good Christians
Teach their children to pray and believe in God
Take children to church for services and often to Sunday schools
