Omnipotent Deity Atheist Agnostic Omnibenevolent Polytheist Analogy Impersonal Theist Omniscient Trinity Myth Personal Monotheist Holy spirit Omnipresent

List five reasons in your book as to why someone might believe in God. LO: What are the Ontological and Cosmological arguments and how do Christians use them to prove God’s existence List five reasons in your book as to why someone might believe in God.

These are quite tricky to get your head around at first! ALL (E GRADE): Will be able to summarise the Cosmological and Ontological Arguments  MOST (C GRADE): Will be able to explain the Cosmological and Ontological Arguments using examples and provide two counter arguments to them both SOME (A GRADE): Will be able to evaluate the Ontological Argument using arguments from Anselm and Kant. Will be able to assess the Cosmological In pairs you will be given a philosophical argument for the existence of God. These are quite tricky to get your head around at first! You will have five minutes to read through your argument and try to understand how it works. Then you need to try and teach it to your partner. Cosmological Argument Ontological Argument LO: To examine the reasons Christians give for believing in God (Ontological and Cosmological)

Can you think of any counter-arguments? ALL (E GRADE): Will be able to summarise the Cosmological and Ontological Arguments  MOST (C GRADE): Will be able to explain the Cosmological and Ontological Arguments using examples and provide two counter arguments to them both SOME (A GRADE): Will be able to evaluate the Ontological Argument using arguments from Anselm and Kant. Will be able to assess the Cosmological Who can explain the Cosmological Argument using these pictures? St. Thomas Aquinas argued that something cannot come from nothing. Therefore the universe must have a cause – something or someone must have brought it into existence. Someone or something must have started the chain of events. Only God could be the first cause, back to which every event can be traced (like the ‘domino effect’). Can you think of any counter-arguments? Why does it have to be God as opposed to something else that created the world? Some scientists argue that it is possible to create something from nothing! ‘The universe is just there, and that’s all there is to say.’ Bertrand Russell LO: To examine the reasons Christians give for believing in God (Ontological and Cosmological)

ALL (E GRADE): Will be able to summarise the Cosmological and Ontological Arguments  MOST (C GRADE): Will be able to explain the Cosmological and Ontological Arguments using examples and provide two counter arguments to them both SOME (A GRADE): Will be able to evaluate the Ontological Argument using arguments from Anselm and Kant. Will be able to assess the Cosmological Who can use this picture to help them explain the Ontological Argument? LO: To examine the reasons Christians give for believing in God (Ontological and Cosmological)

Just because you can think of something doesn’t mean it exists. (Kant) ALL (E GRADE): Will be able to summarise the Cosmological and Ontological Arguments  MOST (C GRADE): Will be able to explain the Cosmological and Ontological Arguments using examples and provide two counter arguments to them both SOME (A GRADE): Will be able to evaluate the Ontological Argument using arguments from Anselm and Kant. Will be able to assess the Cosmological The Ontological Argument is a linguistic argument (based on logic & language). Who is the greatest? ‘God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived.’ God is the greatest, most perfect thing you can ever imagine. He must exist otherwise you couldn’t produce this description. If God is perfect in every way, He must exist in reality. If He existed only in the mind we could imagine a more perfect God – one that existed in the mind and in reality. Therefore, God exists! Can you think of any counter-arguments? Just because you can think of something doesn’t mean it exists. (Kant) God is believed by many to be beyond human understanding and thinking so how could anyone be able to imagine Him? LO: To examine the reasons Christians give for believing in God (Ontological and Cosmological)

‘The Ontological and Cosmological Arguments prove that God exists’. Give your own opinion to the above statement. It is perfectly acceptable to reject the arguments and still believe in God! Whether you support or reject the arguments you must explain why.

Plenary – which picture / word goes with each argument? First Cause