Journal 5: Challenges to Faith
1)One paragraph summary of the key idea summarizing the major idea of the section.
This week the main idea was the challenges to Faith that we all face in our world today. The primary challenge to our Faith is atheism, or the belief that ther is no god. There are categories of atheists that include positive atheists, who make a conscious, deliberate decision that God does not exist. Then there are practical atheists, who only go to church and worship God for practical purposes. The frontrunners for this Atheist movement were Friedrich Nietz-sche and Thomas Hobbes. Nietzsche was a positive atheist who strongly believed that God did not exist and he is famous for saying "God is dead". He tried to show people that interest in God was getting smaller and smaller and tried to convince people that God did not exist by appealing to their emotions. Nietzsche was also a nihilist and did not believe that reason was capable of discovering truth. He was a strong believer in his theory of relative values, that some people are more important than others. However, he believed that inside of all human beings there is a will to power, or people have a desire to gain as much power as possible. Through this will to power he believed that all people are capable of great things, but most human beings ignore this will to power and are a waste. He believed that one day ther will be a human being who will be born with and awesome will to power and they will be called and Ubermensch, or Superman. Thomas Hobbes was a practical athiest, and he believed that all people will not amount to much at all, because we don't have free will. He said that because we do not have free will, then there is destiny or fate and nothing can stop this destiny from happening. He viewed all humans as equals, but also saw human beings as no different from animals because of our lack of free will. He was a big believer in materialism, or the belief that the only thing that exists is physical matter. Although he was an atheist he still saw religionas a good thing, because it kept people busy and peaceful. Another belief that is related to atheism is agnosticism. An agnostic is someone who is undecided about the existence of God, so it is more honorable to be an atheist than an agnostic, because it shows more courage.
2.)List and explain three of the most important ideas you want to remember from this week.
1)Objective morality and Relative morality- Objective morality is the idea that if god is absolute or unchanging, then his values and morals are unchanging along with those of the human race. Relative morality is the belief that was Nietzsche's idea and states that all morals and values are relative to time and depends on the culture they are in.
2.)The Stages of the History between science and the church- The first stage was called unreflective unity, which meant that the church and science got along with one another or was "hand in hand". Science seemed to look up to the church as a child does to a parent. This period existed during the middle ages. The second stage was called reflective disunity and referred to the time when science began to realize that the church was not all knowing and scientists long to find the truth about the world through their own methods. This period happened during the Renaissance in Europe. The third stage that continues to this day reflects the relationship between science and the today. Science realized that it could find out a lot but not everything they needed, because Faith was needed to answer some "why?" questions.
3.)The affect of the media- I want to remember the great affect that the media and advertising has on my morals and values. It seems that the media is influnencing many teenagers and tells them how to dress and how to act. Our society has become so materialistic that all our decisions that we make are based on material goods. An example of this is why do we go to school? For the learning or for the grades to make money?
3.)One or two good images that remind you of key ideas.
4.)One good question you should keep with you to ponder.
Does my Faith affect my decisions everyday, or do I just do what the media tells me to do?
5.)What should you try to do to make you a better person, a more faithful person, from this study?
To make myself a better person I need to try and not give so much to what the media wants me to do and start thinking for myself rather than have others think for me