Believing in God

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Believing in God

• To consider how people claim to experience God
  and whether it leads to, or supports, a belief in
  God.

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How do people experience God?

• Through a religious upbringing
• Through religious experiences
• Through experience / appearance of the world

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Cause and Effect

• Every cause has an effect and any effect has a
  cause
• E.g. I failed to do my homework be cause the
  effect was!

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Causation and Belief in God

• Causation- the idea that everything has been
  caused (started off) by something else

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Infinite regress!

• infinite having no limits in time
• regress movement in a backward direction
• Infinite regress going back in time without end

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St. Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica, 1270

• He argued that the most important piece of
  evidence that proves God exists is the existence
  of the universe itself!
• Science tells us that everything has an
  explanation so there must be an explanation for
  the universe

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Something cannot come out of nothing!

• Aquinas said that some- thing could not come out
  of nothing
• He said the universe must have come from something

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Argument for Causation

• Everything has a cause
• Nothing can cause itself because to do so it
  would have to exist before it existed
• Therefore everything in the universe must have a
  cause
• An infinite regress of causes is impossible
  because something must have started it off
• Therefore there must be an uncaused cause which
  is eternal and which has no cause. This is what
  people understand to be God.

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The explanation

• If we accept an infinite regress of causes the
  universe is eternal has always existed and it
  cannot be explained
• But science and experience tell us that
  everything has an explanation
• Therefore it is reasonable to assume the universe
  has an explanation
• The only explanation of the universe would be an
  uncaused cause which can only be God.
• Therefore it is reasonable to assume God exists

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Everything is moving or changing..

• Tasks
• a. Using bullet points write the step by step
  arguments for causation
• b. Using principles from the argument for
  causation write out the argument based on motion
  beginning with the statement above.
• c. Explain the explanation that supports these
  arguments.

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The Unmoved Mover

• Whatever is moving or changing is being moved or
  changed by something else e.g. a snooker ball is
  moved by another snooker ball that is moved by a
  snooker cue etc. . .
• An infinite regress of movers and changers is
  impossible because something must have started it
  off.
• Therefore there must be an unmoved mover
  something which moves everything else without
  being moved itself
• The unmoved mover is what people understand to be
  God