This document provides information and materials for a lesson on exploring concepts of God and religion. It includes key words, discussion prompts, and videos related to whether God exists and why some people believe while others do not. Students are asked to consider different perspectives on God's existence, define what God means to them personally, and respond to an article from a comedian expressing his desire to believe in God.

1. DNA:
• Stick in your big
picture sheet for
the new ‘Looking
for meaning’ unit
• Find and write
down definitions
for as many of
the key words as
you can.
Looking for meaning
1. Belief in God
2. What is God
3. Experiencing God
4. Finding God
5. Christians, Muslims and God
6. Christianity and death
7. Islam and death
Key words:
God Symbolism Lord Redeemer Pilgrimage Vocation
Community Awe Revelation Akhirah Funeral theist
atheist Allah Resurrection Belief Trinity Bible Quran
freewill religion omnipotent omniscient Omni-benevolent
miracle prayer judgement afterlife secular agnostic

2. Believing in God/Allah
Learning intentions:
1. To explore the
concept of whether
God exists?
2. To discuss and
evaluate points both
in favour and against
the idea of God.
Success criteria:
•To be able to put
forward a personal
opinion and support it
with reasons.

3. Key words for today!
• Theist
• Agnostic
• Atheist
Theist- some one who definitely believes in a god
Agnostic- some one who is unsure and wants more evidence
before they decide
Atheist- some one who definitely thinks there is no god or divine

4. What is God to you?
• You have one minute to complete you own personal definition of God
•God is.....

5. What about God?
Around the room are several different statements and responses about
the existence of God
In your pairs you need to move to each one and add:
•What you think.
•What someone who disagrees with you might
say.
•What some who are religious might say.

6. •Pick one of the statements you looked at and give
two well explained reasons why a religious believer
might agree or disagree with it.
“God must exist
Millions of people
can’t all be wrong!”
“If there was a loving and
caring God then He wouldn’t
let things like floods and
suffering happen”
Some thing must have
created the universe,
you can’t get something
from nothing. So God
must be real
God is about as
believable as dragons
and unicorns there’s no
evidence.
Science can
explain
everything we
don’t need God.
God tells us how to live a
good life.
“ I believe in what I
can experience and
I've not
experienced God
so why should
Believe in Him?”

7. Why do some people believe in God
and others don’t?
Why believe in God? Why not believe in God?
Use page 70-71 to help you fill in the table

8. Why believe in God? Why not believe in God?
Upbringing Upbringing
Education Education
Personal choice Personal choice
A sense of purpose Not any evidence for God
Belief that there is more to the world
than we know
Belief that science tell us all we need to
know
Believe it gives people a good way to
live
Observation of the natural world
Observation of the natural world Questioning the nature of God

9. Why have God?
Richard Dawkins
• In the clip think about the points
Dawkins is making?
• What does he think of religion?
• Do you agree with anything he is
saying? Give reasons for your
answer.

10. Marcus’ story
• Marcus Brigstock is a well known
comedian,
• He also has a few things to say
about belief.
• Pay close attention to his article
as you will be writing a response
to it.
• The article is addressed To God.

11. “I find myself, a 38 year old
married man with two children,
loving my job, reasonably content
most of the time, with periods of
ecstasy and spells of gloom, and
yet for reasons both explicable and
inexplicable I wish I could find a
God to believe in. It ought to be
simple – decide to believe, stop
being a smart-arse, find a church,
temple, mosque, woodland ritual,
statue of a thing, special book or
ritualistic dance, and get stuck in. I
know a great number of people far
cleverer than me who believe in
God without any trouble at all. So
why can’t I?
Though I seek to express myself
through comedy a lot of the time,
there are some things I’m deadly
serious about, and the desire for a
workable and available Deity in my
life is one of them...
I wish there was a God. I wish for
that God to exist now and for all
time. I wish to be fully conscious of
God and more importantly for Him
to be fully conscious of me. I wish
for God to be powerful, infinitely
wise, kind, loving, fair....”

12. Responding to Marcus
•Now you are going to imagine that you
are God or at least someone in charge of
his post. (No offence intended to
anybody!)
•You are going to write a response to
Marcus’s article

14. Writing your response
• Things to consider
• What is Marcus’ problem?
• Is he right to blame God?
• What can he do?
• What advice would you give
him?
• Where else could he go for
advice?
• Does he have anything good in
his life as well as bad?
• Sentence starters:
• Dear Marcus
• I think that you are right/wrong
to blame God....because....
• I think that you
should....because....
• You could also......
• Somewhere else you could look
for meaning is....

15. Peer assess
(what, went, well and even better if)
• Read your partner’s work
and mark it with your
purple pen!
• Write two things they did
well and one thing they
could improve for next
time.

16. Home work
Find some evidence to support todays
lesson- gather quotes from the
Bible/Quran/Hadith or religious
teachings.