Judaeo-Christian ideas about God

To understand and explain the two different creation storiesTo be able to compare the similarities and differences between themTo compare the Judaeo-Christian ideas about God with that of the Prime Mover

What is a creator

• Come up with your own definition of a creator

• someone who makes things• Someone who invents new things• Someone who designs things• Someone who produces great artistic works

The apostles creed ‘I believe in God the Father, creator of Heaven and Earth’

Activity

• Read and summarise the story of Creation in Chapter 1 of Genesis

• Read and summarise the story in Chapter 2 of genesis

• Compare the two stories. Create a table the outlines the similarities and differences between the two

What questions does the creation story raise for you

• In your teams, come up with questions that this can raise for you. We will discuss the best questions.

Different interpretations:• Young Earth Creationists

– Earth 6-8000 years old– Bible literally true– Will not allow for scientific explanation

• Theistic Evolution– God worked with science to create the universe– The story of Genesis is not a literal interpretation, eg the term days means

period of time– This fits with the idea that the creation story is a myth – what matters is the

message of the creation story, not whether it is literally true or not.– The Genesis story seems to have adopted ideas from Psalm 104 (it is

believed this was written long before the Genesis account)– The seven day creation story may have developed ideas from the Canaanite

creation myth (an area of modern day Syria)

Most importantly for us….

• Dates do not matter – whether it was 6,000 or 4.5 billion years ago, Aquinas points out, the belief in god as Creator is concerned with God causing the universe to exist and continuing to cause it to exist. While people are interested in the question of how the world began, this is NOT what calling God the Creator is concerned about.

It is the WHY, not the HOW that we are concerned with.

Creation ex nihilo or Craftsman

• Many people believe that God created the world out of nothing and there are parts of the Bible that hint to this. However, from what we have learned today, is this necessarily true – what does Genesis say?

Create your own Creation Story

• Choose either Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 and create your own story, using our trusty playdoh. Take freezeframe photos of each of the stages. Use Coloured paper to make your backdrops.

Comparison

• Go back to your comparison between the Judaeo Christian God and The Prime Mover. Can you add the following words

• Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Omniscient, Transcendent, Imminent, Anthropomorphic, deism, theism, Personal and Impersonal to the different areas of your venn diagram.

Let’s go outside.

• Let’s go for a wander. Why do you think looking at the natural world makes people think that there is a God?