Life and Death

• Environmental sustainability


  Ensuring that the demands placed on natural resources can be met without reducing capacity to allow all people and other species of animals, as well as plant life, to live well, now and in the future
• Euthanasia


  From Greek, eu 'good' and thanatos 'death'. Sometimes referred to as 'mercy killing'. The act of killing or permitting the death of a person who is suffering from a serious illness
• Evolution


  The process by which different living creatures are believed to have developed from earlier less complex forms during the history of the earth
• Abortion


  When a pregnancy is ended so that it does not result in the birth of a child
• Quality of life


  The extent to which life is meaningful and pleasurable
• Sanctity of life


  The belief that life is precious, or sacred. For many religious believers, only human life holds this special status
• Soul


  The spiritual aspect of a being, that which connects someone to God. The soul is often regarded as non-physical and as living on after physical death, in an afterlife
• Overview


  • Creation - the idea that the universe was planned and brought into being by a divine power (for example God)
  • Karma - the energy stored in your soul reflecting good and bad deeds
• In the eighteenth century William Paley taught that there was evidence of God as designer of the universe. In the twenty-first century, Richard Dawkins argues that the world's apparent design is an illusion.
• The chapter then looks at religious teachings about stewardship, dominion and environmental sustainability. How should we treat the earth? Should we treat its resources as if we are borrowing them or as if they are ours to keep?
• The final topic is about the afterlife. Traditionally the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) teach that, at the end of time, God will come in judgement, raising the righteous to eternal life and casting the wicked into hell. However, the Eastern religions teach that the next life depends on our actions and that our karma will determine what form we are re-born into.
• Today, there is a growing movement in Britain which rejects beliefs about the afterlife, preferring to say that we only live once and that death is the end.
• This section concludes by exploring the way in which death and funeral rituals reflect people's beliefs about the afterlife.
• Life: chance or God's plan?

  • Most religious believers say that there is a divine mind behind all life
  • Atheists and humanists believe that life is a result of blind chance
• Psalm 139:13,16: 'For you created my inmost being you knit me together in my mother's womb... Your eyes saw my unformed body, all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be'
• Jacques Monod: 'Man at last knows that he is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe, out of which he emerged only by chance. Neither his destiny nor his duty have been written down'
• Richard Dawkins: 'Natural selection... has no purpose in mind it has no vision, no foresight'
• The way religious people understand their creation stories today varies enormously. Creationists take a literalist view of the Bible. They say that creation stories describe literal, historical events, whereas liberal Christians say that they are myths which carry deep, symbolic meaning.
• However, as more and more evidence built up in the fields of geology and biology it became clear that the earth is far older than had previously been understood.
• It was Charles Darwin who was the first person to show convincingly that life had arisen through the slow, natural process of evolution and therefore the earth must be many millions of years old.
• Evolution


  The process by which different living creatures are believed to have developed from earlier, less complex forms during the history of the earth
• Daniel C. Dennett: 'Evolution is the single best idea anyone has ever had'
• Evolution by natural selection

  The idea that the species that flourish are those which are best suited to their environment
• In the twentieth century scientists began to look beyond the earth to space for an explanation of how the world was created, but it was not until 1965 that the Big Bang theory became the accepted explanation for the origin of the universe.
• In 1859 Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species. This controversial book set out his Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, explaining how living creatures have evolved through a process of gradual change over millions of years.
• On the Galapagos Islands, off the coast of South America, Darwin had observed birds (finches) on the different islands. He noticed that different types of finches lived on different islands.
• His theory suggests that characteristics like these happened by chance as natural variety in an animal's offspring (just like you might be brown eyed and your brother might be blue eyed). However, sometimes these characteristics were actually very useful, so long pointed beaks gave those finches an advantage in eating the cactus.
• This became known as the 'survival of the fittest'. Darwin put forward the idea that this process had repeated itself over and over again, over very long periods of time, leading to completely new species of animals emerging.
• Today, there are many religious believers who welcome Darwin's theories. Liberal Christians accept the idea that science can teach us things that the writers of the Bible had no understanding of.
• However, some Evangelical Christians and many mainstream Muslims see Darwinian evolution as an attack on their beliefs. Evolution implies that life has developed by chance, whereas religious scriptures (for example the Bible, the Torah and the Qur'an) teach that God is the creator.
• Charles Darwin, 1879: 'It seems to me abound to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist and an evolutionist... I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God'
• In 1965 cosmologists published conclusive evidence to show that the universe did in fact have a beginning. This theory, that time and space began around 15 billion years ago, became known as the Big Bang theory.
• Cosmology


  The study of the origins of the universe
• Stephen Hawking


  • One of the physicists who have made the biggest contributions to the field of cosmology for over half a century
  • He has been confined to a wheelchair for much of his adult life, suffering from motor neurone disease that is slowly paralyzing him
  • For many years now he has only been able to speak with the aid of a computerized voice synthesizer
  • In the late 1960s his ground-breaking research showed that, at the birth of the universe, the cosmos must have emerged from a singularity
  • His studies demonstrated that the universe may look as if it is static, but it is actually expanding at an astonishing rate and that this expansion can be traced back to an initial event the Big Bang
• Big Bang theory


  The universe began from a 'singularity', an infinitely tiny point that was infinitely hot and infinitely dense and, as it expanded, sub-atomic particles and then atoms began to appear, leading to the formation of stars and planets
• Most physicists believe that the universe will continue expanding for countless billions of years to come, becoming bigger and colder.
• The evidence for the Big Bang theory comes from the discovery of background radiation, which is thought to be left over from the initial expansion at the start of the universe. This can be detected with powerful telescopes.
• Religious reactions to the Big Bang theory

  • Liberal Christians, Jews and Muslims find no problem in accepting the Big Bang theory
  • Religious creationists are very critical of these ideas, as it contradicts the truth that God has formed all life through his own power
• Liberal interpretation


  Believing that the stories in the holy books should be understood more like parables or symbolic stories, and are true because they carry real meaning, even if they don't refer to actual historical events
• Genesis 1:1-2:3


  1. God created the earth over six days from the creation of earth and sky through the making of the sun, stars, plants, animals and then finally human beings

  2. Humans are the peak of God's creation, made in his image, giving them a unique status as God's stewards of the earth

  3. On the seventh day God rested