Believing in God

Believing in God

Main Features of Catholic upbringing & how it may lead to belief in God
1. Parents teach their children to pray to God
  1. Catholics pray to God, so they will believe that God exists because their parents would not waste their time praying to nothing
2. Parents take their children to Mass where they learn to worship God.
  1. Seeing so many people worshipping God when they go to Mass will make them believe that God exists.
3. Parents teach their Children to Believe in God.
  1. Their Catholic parents will have told them about God and they will believe their parents.
4. Parents send their children to a Catholic school
  1. They will be taught that Good exists when they go to school, and will believe it because their teachers tell them its true.
How religious experience may lead to belief in God
1. Religious experience makes people feel that God is real, and so he must exist.
2. People experience God in the numinous, conversion, miracles and answered prayers.
3. Religious experience is something which makes people feel God's presence.
The argument from deisgn and belief in God
1. The universe seems to be designed due to plenty of evidence (laws of science such as gravity and magnetism; DNA being a blueprint for life, etc.)
2. Anything that is designed must have a designer
3. God must therefore exist because only God exist because only God could have designed the universe.
The argument from causation and belief in God
1. The way everything seems to have a cause makes people think that the universe must have a cause
2. The only possible cause for the universe is God
3. Therefore God must exist
Scientific exlanations of the world and agnosticism and atheism
1. Science says that matter is eternal and that the universe began when this matter exploded. the solar system came out of the explosion and the nature of the Earth allowed life to develop through evolution
How Catholics respond to scientific explanations of the world
1. Many Catholics accept the scientific explanations but believe they show that God created the universe through the Big Bang
2. Some Catholics believe that both science and the Bible are true because one of God's days could be billions of years.
Why unanswered prayers may lead to agnosticism or atheism
1. If people do not feel God's presence when they pray, or if people pray for good things, but their prayers are not answered, they may start to doubt God's existence.If God does not answer prayers, how do you know he exists?
How Catholics respond to unanswered prayers
1. if you pray for selfish things then he will let you fail so you word harder next time.
2. Your prayer may not be answered in the way you expect because God has different plans.
3. Just like a human parent, God may answer our prayers by giving us what we need rather than what we want.
4. Catholics believe that God loves people and so they believe God's love will answer their prayers in the best possible way, even though it may not look like a direct answer.
How evil and suffering cause people to question or reject belief in God
1. If God is omnipotent, he must be able to remove all evil and suffering from the world.
2. If God is omni-benevolent, he must want to remove evil and suffering from the world.
3. It follows that, if God exists. there should be no evil or suffering in the world.
4. As there is evil and suffering in the world, either God is not all-good and powerful or he does not exist.
How Catholics respond to the problem of evil and suffering
1. Praying for those in need.
2. Helping those who suffer.
3. Claiming that evil and suffering are the fault of humans misusing their free will.
4. Claiming that evil and suffereng are part of a test to prepare people for heaven.
5. Claiming that God has a reason for allowing evil and suffering, but humans are too limited to understand it.

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	Created by lydonniamh about 8 years ago