Lesson video

Hello, I'm Miss Kendrick, and welcome to this first lesson on "Our Matters of Life and Death" unit.

This unit is going to cover lots of different topics that are covered by lots of different exam boards.

And it's going to cover some sensitive issues, such as abortion and euthanasia, they're matters about life and death.

And it's also going to be looking at beliefs about the origins of the universe and the origins of humanity and the value of human and animal life.

In this lesson, we are going to be focusing on Christian beliefs about the origins of the universe.

And these beliefs are going to be really helpful because they're going to be threaded through all the other topics that we look at.

So, I'll be regularly referring to beliefs about creation in lessons about ethical topics such as abortion.

So that's what is going to be in this unit in general.

In this lesson, we're going to recap the Christian creation story.

We're going to look at different interpretations of this story from different types of Christians.

And we're also going to be looking at the scientific view of the origins of the universe.

And the question I'm wondering whether you've asked this at any point is, why investigate the origins of the universe? Why try and investigate where we've come from? Have you ever wondered why you're here, for example? And do you think, that knowing the origins of the universe helps to answer the question of humanity's purpose in the world.

Well, many people and especially religious people, such as Christians and Muslims will say that if humans understand where they come from, then that's going to give them ideas about their purpose in life.

Now Christians and Muslims would argue that they are in a world that was created by God.

And that God created humans with specific purpose.

Others who believe in scientific views and who aren't religious, they might believe that humans should make their own purpose, but they might believe that we are part of nature, part of our environments.

And therefore, they might say we've got a responsibility, to behave in certain ways towards other humans and towards creation.

The other thing I wondered is, I wonder what you think of intensive scale, when I talk about the universe, or what do you think of at all? Often when I refer to the universe, my students just tend to think about our solar system, the different planets that we're fairly familiar with, that go around our sun.

And our solar system itself, is pretty huge.

I mean, it takes about eight minutes for light to reach earth from the sun.

And that's quite a long time considering that we cannot observe light travelling at all with our human eyes.

And just to get a sense of how far away other planets in the solar system are, it takes about 43 minutes for light to reach Jupiter from the sun and five and a half hours to reach Pluto on the fringes of our solar system.

So that might give you a sense of the scale between earth and other planets within the solar system.

But that is just our solar system.

Now, if you look at the Milky Way, which is our galaxy, which is made up of about over a hundred billion stars, it takes 4.

3 years for light to reach us from our nearest star.

So, if that star suddenly disappeared, which I don't think stars just suddenly disappear, in scientific terms, but if it did, then it would take us 4.

3 years to know anything about it.

Or we're almost looking into the past when we look at that star.

Now, if you go outside of our Milky Way to our next galaxy, which is called the Andromeda Galaxy, our nearest neighbour, it takes a whooping 2.

5 million years for the light from that galaxy to reach us.

And that's our nearest neighbour out of a hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe.

And when I say the observable universe, that is what I mean, what we can see, because nobody knows quite how large the universe is.

Scientists believe that the universe is constantly expanding, that it could be infinite or it could have an edge, which might mean that if you travelled in one direction for long enough, you would eventually end up back where you started, a bit like if you are travelling around a globe or a sphere.

So, it's a bit of an understatement, to say the universe is big.

I wonder if you've ever looked at stars at night and felt incredibly small and insignificant.

Because in scientific terms, humanity really hasn't been around for very long.

But, Christians and Muslims would argue that despite the scale of the universe, humanity has a special place in it.

Because of their beliefs in a creator God, that loves and cares for humanity.

So, we are going to be exploring these ideas and more details.

And in these lesson like I said, we're going to be focusing on the Christian view.

And in the next lesson we'll be looking at Islamic views on the origins of the universe.

You are going to need a pen or pencil, a different coloured pen or pencil and some paper to get down your answers in this lesson.

And we are going to start by recapping the creation story from Christianity.

So, it might be that you have done the Christian beliefs unit, in which case you would've look at these beliefs about creation.

And that is why I'm doing a recap rather than telling it to you in full.

Now, in the "Bible" you can read the creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2, there's two creation stories, that have slightly different focuses.

And the one I'm going to recap for you now is from Genesis 1, which outlines six days of creation.

So, on the first day, God creates light.

He simply says, "Let there be light," and there is light.

And separation between light and darkness.

Next, we have God separating the water in the sea, from the water in the sky.

So we have the creation of the sky and sea, so that's day two.

And then we have a land being formed.

So the water being drawn into different places, so land can come up and we have plants on the land as well.

Day four, is for the creation of sun, moon and stars.

So they are created after life is created.

And these are to mark the seasons and the days of worship and the days of rest.

On day five, we have creation of fish and birds.

And we have the phrase that the water teem with living creatures.

This idea of abundant life, absolutely bursting up the oceans and bursting out of the sky.

And God says: "Up to this day so far, "that the world is good." And finally, we have day six in which land animals and humans are created.

And then the biblical account says that God rested on the seventh day.

So what you're going to do is, you're going to write down a brief outline of the creation story.

And you're going to have these pictures to help you.

And then we're going to look at how different Christians interpret this story in the "Bible".

We're going to start by looking at general approaches to how Christians might interpret the "Bible".

And then we're going to look at how these are applied to the creation story.

Now, as I give you these different views, I'm going to tell you them with just the side note, that there is a huge variety.

So, every Christian you meet is not going to neatly fit into one of these categories.

Another thing to be aware of, is these different interpretations, span different denominations.

So for example, in an Anglican Church, the Church of England church, you might find a Christian who's got quite fundamentalist views on the "Bible", and you might also find a Christian who's got liberal views on the "Bible".

So, these different groups are not denominations, they are ways of interpreting the "Bible", just to make life more confusing.

But that's the thing you want to be aware of.

It's not that Anglicans are fundamentalists and Baptist are liberal, you're going to find a variety.

Maybe in some denominations, you might find more of one type than the other, but it's not clean cut matter.

So, we're going to start by looking at fundamentalist Christians.

So fundamentalist Christians interpret the "Bible" literally.

So that means that they're going to believe it is meant word for word as it's written.

So for example, if I was to say, my legs feel like jelly, most of the time people would interpret that symbolically.

You know that my legs have not actually turned into jelly, but maybe I feel a bit wobbly, maybe I don't feel very well, or I'm just really tired.

Now, fundamentalist Christians, when they read things in the "Bible" they're going to take that literally.

So, in terms of the example of my legs turning into jelly, if someone was to say that literally they going to think, Oh my goodness, Miss Kendrick has genuinely been turning into jelly.

They're going to take it literally.

They believe the "Bible" is inerrant.

This means it has no mistakes in it because they believe it is the word of God.

And that means they also believe it's going to have more authority than science.

So, where science disagrees with the "Bible", they are going to say that the "Bible" is correct and the science is wrong.

So that is the fundamentalist way of interpreting the "Bible".

We, and that's again, there's got to be a scale within fundamentalism as well, but that is a fundamentalist view.

Next we have conservative Christians.

So, conservative Christianity is usually going to look at the historical context of the "Bible," and the different ways in which words in the "Bible" can be interpreted.

So for example, there are some verses in "The New Testament", which talk about women covering their heads.

Now, conservative Christians will interpret that in historical context, because in the context in which the "Bible" was written, it was modest for women to cover their heads.

That was the general practise of the culture.

So, it's essentially talking about women dressing appropriately.

And so they would say that, that means that women today in a country where it is not modest to wear head covering, they would say, "Well, they don't have to," but that they should dress modestly.

So, they shouldn't wear overly revealing clothing, for example.

And many conservative Christians would say that the "Bible" can work alongside science.

So they might say that the "Bible" was not meant to be a scientific textbook, but it was meant to teach people about God and things that God has done.

So they might agree with science more, than they will agree with science more than a lot of fundamentalist Christians.

Again, term conservative is very broad.

Conservatism in America, for example, will look very different to conservatism in the UK.

So again, just be aware of how broad these interpretations are.

And finally, we've got liberal Christians.

So, liberal Christians will interpret the "Bible" symbolically.

So they would say that lots of things in the "Bible" didn't necessarily happen, but, that they can tell a deeper truth about God, or about life or humanity.

So for example, if you know the story of "Tortoise and the Hare" which is a fable, it's all about not rushing, and slow and steady wins the race.

But we tell that story, no one thinks that there was a literal race between the tortoise and a hare.

We know that that story is just to tell you something symbolic, to teach you about slow and steady wins the race and not rushing.

So liberal Christians would interpret much of the "Bible" in this sense.

So that means some liberal Christians might not believe in the resurrection of Jesus, for example.

They might believe that the resurrection story is symbolic of beliefs about the afterlife, for example, rather than something that literally happened.

Again, there'll be a huge amount of variety.

But the thing to be aware of is that liberal Christians will accept scientific theories.

So they'll say scientific theories are correct.

As long as science agrees that they're correct and don't change them.

'Cause scientific theories do change over time, that's one thing to be aware of guys, it's not just set in stone, they are regularly updated.

And we have strong theories and maybe weaker theories as well.

But, liberal Christians would say the "Bible" does hold real truth and real value about the meaning of life.

So they would all say the "Bible" is true, but they're going to believe it's true in very different ways.

So these are the different interpretations.

So, you're going to have an opportunity to write down your definitions of these different views.

It is worth spending some time getting to know those definitions, either do something like look, cover, write, check, repeat, or just test yourself, so that you're not getting those different groups mixed up.

So fundamentalist views on creation.

Remember fundamentalist Christians interpret the "Bible" literally.

Say they believe "Bible" is the word of God and true in every respect.

And so this means they are going to believe that the "Bible" was created in six literal days.

They may also believe that the earth is not as old as scientists say.

So they're going to have some very different views on the origins of the universe.

And evidence for this will be, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and this evidence is going to be quite useful for all different views.

But you just need to explain how it's interpreted in different ways.

Conservative Christians, will believe that God created the universe.

However, they might say the word days are not literal 24 hours, but long periods of time, such as epochs.

So epoch just means long undefined period of time.

And this is because the word 'yom', which is the Hebrew word used in the creation story, can mean period of time as well as day.

So we see here, they're looking at the translation.

They might be looking at the historical context as well.

So, this means that they might accept theories like the Big Bang theory and scientific views on the creation of the universe.

They're going to say the key thing here is that, God made the universe, and they might argue that the creation story fits with science in some places.

So they're going to have a little bit of both going on here.

So what you're going to do now is pause the video and just answer some questions on fundamentalist and conservative interpretations of the creation story.

I hope you gotten okay with the arguments, great.

Those different views are really helpful for when you're writing evaluate questions.

So, you could state that view and then back up with some evidence when you're doing that back and forth argument.

So, it's always useful to see some of those different views.

Now, liberal views on creation.

So liberal Christians believe that the creation story is symbolic of God's creative omnipotence of his power.

They will accept scientific explanations for the origins of the universe.

So they might say, "Well, the creation story in Genesis, "it wasn't supposed be a textbook, "it wasn't supposed to teach people science.

"It is just showing the belief "that God created the universe." They might argue that the time at which it was written, the authors of the Genesis story, wouldn't have had any way to know more about the creation of the universe.

I mean they weren't there to see it, no one was there to see it.

So they might argue, well, that was like a myth or a story that expresses this belief that God created the universe.

So we're going to have a look at The Big Bang theory now.

So the Big Bang theory is the leading scientific theory about how the universe came into existence.

And it's based on observation of evidence.

Fun fact for you, that the Big Bang theory was actually developed by a Roman Catholic priest.

So, he saw it as a sort of neutral discovery.

He said, it didn't prove or disprove God, and many Christians are going to have that opinion because they are going to say that it can fit Christian belief.

Some atheist or humanist might say that it's evidence that the universe wasn't created by God as well.

So, we've got lots of different opinions on it.

But you just need to have a working understanding of what the Big Bang theory is and some evidence for it.

So is the scientific theory that the universe began 13.

8 billion years ago.

That is a timescale I definitely cannot get my head around.

Everything in the universe was once condensed into an incredibly small point.

And there's evidence that points to this theory, which is based on mathematical formulas and models.

Because no one could observe what happened 13.

8 billion years ago because humans were not around, all right? So this is all about looking, trying to look back in time based on the observation of the universe and using maths as well.

So we've got two main pieces of evidence for the Big Bang theory, and including 'red shift' and background radiation.

And scientists would say that, if they look at these different pieces of evidence, and if you were to sort of turn back the clock, as it were, then you would see that everything in the universe was once in a much smaller, incredibly dense point.

So, 'red shift' is evidence that all the stars and galaxies in the universe are all expanding, they are or moving outward.

And the evidence for this is called 'red shift'.

And this is where the wavelength of light pigment stretches, and so moves towards the red end of the spectrum.

So, this is evidence for an expanding universe.

This doesn't mean that when you look at stars at night with the naked eye, that they are red, but that scientists can see that light, this was the red end of the spectrum.

This is a little bit like, and hopefully no science teachers tell me off for saying this.

The Doppler effect, which is when a car goes past really, really fast, and the sound changes as it goes past you.

So you know how cars go and the sounds starts up high and then goes low.

And that is because of how the sound wavelengths change, when they're coming towards you in comparison to what they're like when they're going away from you.

And that's easier for us to hear when a car goes past really fast, then it's necessarily for us to see with lights with our naked eye.

So is similar to that, I hope.

And it is evidence that everything in the universe is expanding.

So the other piece of evidence is this Background radiation.

So, this is called cosmic background microwave radiation.

And scientists say that this was originally produced in the Big Bang, as high energy electromagnetic radiation.

Which is then stretched to be part of the microwave part of the electromagnetic spectrum, which you can detect very easily with telescopes from earth.

So if you don't understand anything I just said, and if you were to dig too deeply, then I would definitely send you to a science teacher.

All I'm saying is that scientists can see that there is this background radiation in the universe, and they can detect it really easily.

And they believe that this is a result of the sudden expansion of the Big Bang.

So that is two pieces of evidence, the Big Bang theory that you need to be aware of.

Just remember that these scientific theories are based on observation of the universe, and using reasoning based on that observation.

And so scientists, or non-religious people are going to say "Well, this has precedence, "this is more true than religious views." Because they will say, "Well, we can see the evidence now "if we investigate it." So, hopefully you've got a better understanding of the Big Bang theory.

I'm going to get you to pause your video, and see if you can write about it a little bit.

Just before I talk humanism.

I get this question a lot, what caused the Big Bang? Well, the thing is, scientists can't 100% know exactly what caused the Big Bang, because they can't really get the data to prove what happened, because we can't travel back in time and see it.

They are backtracking from evidence and data collected now, about the expanding universe.

So once we start looking at causes of the Big Bang, then it gets much more difficult to understand why it came to existence.

This is where some religious people would argue, that God must be the cause of the Big Bang.

So they would argue, it must have a cause.

But there are other scientific theories as well, such as the idea of an oscillating universe, the idea that, the universe is a tunnel itself, and it is in an eternal cycle of expansion and contraction and expansion and contraction.

So there'd be a Big Bang, and then the universe would expand, and then it would collapse in on itself due to entropy, which is what scientists believe will happen to our universe.

And then expand again.

So that is just answering that question: What caused the Big Bang? We're not sure.

What is humanism? So, in this unit, in all of the theme unit, you can include non religious views.

And so we're going to use humanism as an example of a non-religious approach to ethics and a non-religious understanding of the universe.

So humanists are non-religious, not all non-religious people are humanists.

So humanists are usually atheists.

That means that they believe God doesn't exist, but not all atheists are humanists.

Humanism has a particular focus on science in terms of understanding the universe.

They're going to say that science has a precedent in terms of understanding the world around us.

And they also have a particular focus on human happiness and welfare.

So when they look at ethics and things like that, their guide for deciding what's right or wrong, is going to say, "Well, we want to have human welfare "at the top of our priorities, "when we're making ethical decisions." And that means that many humanists will follow the ethical theory utilitarianism.

So in terms of ethics, many humanists, not necessarily all of them, will follow the ethical theory utilitarianism.

Now in simple terms, utilitarianism says that we should do the action that brings about the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

And they associate happiness with good.

And therefore in a ethical dilemma, they would argue that you should choose that action that's going to bring about the most happiness for the most people.

So for example, to apply utilitarianism, I'm going to tell you a classic thought experiment.

So this isn't a real situation, it is a made up one.

And thought experiments are designed to test these philosophies and see how they can be applied.

So this is called the trolley problem.

There's sorts of different variations to it, maybe you've heard of it before.

But in this situation, there is a runaway train and it's going down a track.

And there's a fork in the track.

And on one side, there is one person working on the railroad, and on the other, there are 10 people working.

Now in this scenario, they are not going to have time to get off the tracks to rescue themselves, and they will be killed by the train.

In the thought experiment, you cannot change the circumstances.

All you can do in this thought experiment, is choose which track the train goes down.

Do you save 10 people and sacrifice one person? Or do you sacrifice one person and save 10 people? Did I say that right? Do you sacrifice one person and save 10 people? Or do you sacrifice 10 people to save one person? And sometimes in this scenario, in this thought experiment, that one person is somebody that you know and love.

And so you have to make that choice, whether to lose that person you know, or let 10 people die.

Now utilitarianism would argue that you should sacrifice the one person, the person in the minority, and save the 10 people, because that would bring about most happiness for the most number of people.

Utilitarianism can be applied to many different situations.

And generally it's applied to the whole of society rather than an individual situation, although it can be used in both ways to an extent.

So when looking at ethical decisions, which we are going to be looking at later in this unit, many humanists will use utilitarianism.

So, that is an important introduction for you.

So based on what I have said, I am going to give you some questions to answer about humanism and utilitarianism.

Well done all for answering those, just a couple more points before we finish this lesson.

So just some key things to keep in mind.

Number one, we need to make sure we're referring to ways of interpreting the "Bible".

So if you're answering questions that ask about the origins of the universe, not the origins of humanity, the universe, you will want to talk about fundamentalist, conservative and liberal views, or just two, choose two of the three, depending on the question.

I've already said, there's a focus on the universe in origins of the universe questions.

In some examples, there are also questions asked about origins of humanity.

And if you talk about the origins of the universe in them or vice versa, then you will lose marks.

It's all about answering the specific question.

And these origin of the universe will link into beliefs about the treatment of the environment, which we're going to be looking at in a couple of lessons.

But if Christians believe that the universe has been created by God, then they're going to believe that they should treat it respectfully, because they have a responsibility.

Same thing for Muslims. Muslims, believe that they have stewards over creation and that they're going to be judged by Allah, on whether or not they have cared for his world.

So, there's going to be lots of links here.

Like I said, throughout this unit, we're going to be linking back to these beliefs about creation.

So before we finish this lesson, please answer the questions on the next slide.

Thank you so much for taking part in this lesson.

I hope you find it really interesting.

There are lots of different views about the origins of the universe.

I wonder which one you find most convincing, or whether you do sometimes look up at the stars at night and feel very, very small.

Well, what you've had in this lesson is some people's answers to those questions about the origins of the world.

It is a very interesting thing to look into.

Now you know those different views, and I hope that you can name which group has each view.

I'm going to get you to do the exit quiz.

So thank you again for all of your hard work.