TRUTHSEEKERS
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At St. Thomas', we warmly invite families and individuals to experience a true sense of community and belonging through our enriching sacramental rites of baptism, communion, and confirmation. Truthseekers for grades 6-12, is designed to engage and inspire, ensuring that spiritual growth is both fun and meaningful!
To explore all the exciting activities we have planned for the school year, be sure to visit this website for updates! Wishing everyone a joyful end-of-summer filled with blessings, and we can’t wait to see you back at St. Thomas', ready to dive into a new season of connection and growth! |
Find Each Week's Lesson Summary Below:
September 22, 2024
Today we picked back up on our discussion of the distinction of something being right or wrong due to cultural norms (e.g., removing shoes before entering a Japanese home) or something being intrinsically true (e.g., 2+2=4).
We then watched segments of the animated reading of the second chapter of Mere Christianity, addressing objections to the idea of universal moral truths. One of the examples C.S. Lewis used was the sometimes conflicting impulse to both run away and run towards a dangerous situation to help another person. Both of these impulses could reflect evolutionary instincts (the first is survival of the individual and the second is a communal survival), but Lewis holds that the feeling that we “ought” to help is a separate force representing the “Law of Nature” or truth as it relates to what is right and good.
He went on to challenge the logic that just because we were taught something by our parents, schools or even churches, it doesn’t follow what is taught is just a cultural practice or human convention and therefore not objectively true. Noted that driving on the right side of the street is a human convention, but math exists apart from human invention or design. Lewis argues that morality exists apart from human conventions. He notes that evidence for this can be seen in the fact that some societal or cultural practices are better (or worse) than others. For example, almost everyone would agree that the behaviors of leaders and people in Nazi Germany or Taliban-ruled Afghanistan are worse or just wrong compared to those in most other modern societies. If we say this, we must be appealing to a common standard of right and wrong.
For the second half of class, we connected what we learned with one of the students’ top questions: What is a soul? Do animals have souls? We talked about the high intelligence of certain animal species and learned about bonobos, an emotionally intelligent endangered primate that along with chimpanzees, are the closest living species relative to humans. Humans however, have a wider range of capabilities than even our closest animal relatives. Why? We began to discuss the idea of the human body, soul, and spirit. In our next class (10/6) we will continue our discussion and learn about a Hebrew word that was generally translated as “soul” in the Bible but might have a slightly different meaning from how we typically view it and tackle whether animals other than humans have souls.
Next week (9/29) we will be out of town and the class will have a special teacher with Father Ryan leading a fascinating discussion on angels.
September 15, 2024
This week we reviewed the concept of objective truth and then continued to discuss the first chapter of Mere Christianity. A reminder of the main theme of this foundational chapter:
Everyone has a shared sense of right and wrong that isn’t cultural and doesn’t need to be taught.
• There are objective truths
• Morality is an objective truth and universal
• This reality is a strong argument for a creator/God
This is a meaty/challenging Bible verse (like much of the letter to Romans!), but Paul summarizes the idea that Lewis calls the Law of Nature:
“For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.” Romans 2:13-15
A much more accessible idea, we talked about how Homer Simpson’s regular struggle with his shoulder angel and devil illustrates Lewis’ point that we know right/wrong but often do the wrong thing.
We then pivoted and discussed potential objections to the idea of objective morality. One is that our sense of right and wrong are really just a result of culture, societal conventions, and evolution. This mistake is in viewing it in a binary/all-or-nothing lens. Cultural norms and even laws certainly play a role in what we view as right or wrong (e.g., taking a hat off for the national anthem, driving on the right side of the street). We talked about how human herding can be part of this (see long lines for iPhone releases and Germans supporting the Nazi regime). On the other hand, there are certain things that have always been viewed as wrong across history and cultures.
Setting up next week’s discussion where Lewis addresses some common objections, we watched the “we found a witch, can we burn it?” scene from Monty Python’s Holy Grail. Beyond illustrating some hilarious logical fallacies, we will use this to help us understand Lewis’ use of witch burning as an example of something that was culturally acceptable in the 17th century but not now. We will start next week’s discussion with learning how he addresses this!
September 8, 2024
We kicked off our new semester with a recap of some of the big questions we covered last year and the role of logic, problem solving and an understanding of history in Christian apologetics. We also reviewed the importance of objective truth in our faith but also in society using Tiananmen Square and the Jewish holocaust as examples where the government (and others) have tried to use propaganda and the control of historic information to influence how large populations understand the truth (with a brief break to calculate the amount of sodium one of our chip-loving students consumed in the first half of class!).
We quickly recapped the top arguments for God’s existence before turning to one of our areas of focus for this semester. And if God exists, is Christianity our best explanation for his role in creation and relationship with people?
One of the ways we will explore this is to “read” together parts of C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity.” We reviewed a little of Lewis’ interesting biography (including why everyone called him Jack) and highlighted that the content of Mere Christianity was originally delivered to the British people during WWII as part of a radio program. We found a neat animated video series that recreates the radio addresses and accompanies this with hand drawn images to reinforce the message. Given all the background we covered, we only got through the first half of the first chapter/video that sets the stage for the rest of the book.
Lastly, the group voted on their top big questions they’d like to cover or revisit this semester so we will plan on covering the following in the coming weeks:
- What is a soul? Do animals besides humans have souls?
- Can people who have never heard of God go to heaven? What about cavemen? Aliens?
- Angels and Demons/Devil
- How to respond to the toughest arguments against God’s existence
Today we picked back up on our discussion of the distinction of something being right or wrong due to cultural norms (e.g., removing shoes before entering a Japanese home) or something being intrinsically true (e.g., 2+2=4).
We then watched segments of the animated reading of the second chapter of Mere Christianity, addressing objections to the idea of universal moral truths. One of the examples C.S. Lewis used was the sometimes conflicting impulse to both run away and run towards a dangerous situation to help another person. Both of these impulses could reflect evolutionary instincts (the first is survival of the individual and the second is a communal survival), but Lewis holds that the feeling that we “ought” to help is a separate force representing the “Law of Nature” or truth as it relates to what is right and good.
He went on to challenge the logic that just because we were taught something by our parents, schools or even churches, it doesn’t follow what is taught is just a cultural practice or human convention and therefore not objectively true. Noted that driving on the right side of the street is a human convention, but math exists apart from human invention or design. Lewis argues that morality exists apart from human conventions. He notes that evidence for this can be seen in the fact that some societal or cultural practices are better (or worse) than others. For example, almost everyone would agree that the behaviors of leaders and people in Nazi Germany or Taliban-ruled Afghanistan are worse or just wrong compared to those in most other modern societies. If we say this, we must be appealing to a common standard of right and wrong.
For the second half of class, we connected what we learned with one of the students’ top questions: What is a soul? Do animals have souls? We talked about the high intelligence of certain animal species and learned about bonobos, an emotionally intelligent endangered primate that along with chimpanzees, are the closest living species relative to humans. Humans however, have a wider range of capabilities than even our closest animal relatives. Why? We began to discuss the idea of the human body, soul, and spirit. In our next class (10/6) we will continue our discussion and learn about a Hebrew word that was generally translated as “soul” in the Bible but might have a slightly different meaning from how we typically view it and tackle whether animals other than humans have souls.
Next week (9/29) we will be out of town and the class will have a special teacher with Father Ryan leading a fascinating discussion on angels.
September 15, 2024
This week we reviewed the concept of objective truth and then continued to discuss the first chapter of Mere Christianity. A reminder of the main theme of this foundational chapter:
Everyone has a shared sense of right and wrong that isn’t cultural and doesn’t need to be taught.
• There are objective truths
• Morality is an objective truth and universal
• This reality is a strong argument for a creator/God
This is a meaty/challenging Bible verse (like much of the letter to Romans!), but Paul summarizes the idea that Lewis calls the Law of Nature:
“For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.” Romans 2:13-15
A much more accessible idea, we talked about how Homer Simpson’s regular struggle with his shoulder angel and devil illustrates Lewis’ point that we know right/wrong but often do the wrong thing.
We then pivoted and discussed potential objections to the idea of objective morality. One is that our sense of right and wrong are really just a result of culture, societal conventions, and evolution. This mistake is in viewing it in a binary/all-or-nothing lens. Cultural norms and even laws certainly play a role in what we view as right or wrong (e.g., taking a hat off for the national anthem, driving on the right side of the street). We talked about how human herding can be part of this (see long lines for iPhone releases and Germans supporting the Nazi regime). On the other hand, there are certain things that have always been viewed as wrong across history and cultures.
Setting up next week’s discussion where Lewis addresses some common objections, we watched the “we found a witch, can we burn it?” scene from Monty Python’s Holy Grail. Beyond illustrating some hilarious logical fallacies, we will use this to help us understand Lewis’ use of witch burning as an example of something that was culturally acceptable in the 17th century but not now. We will start next week’s discussion with learning how he addresses this!
September 8, 2024
We kicked off our new semester with a recap of some of the big questions we covered last year and the role of logic, problem solving and an understanding of history in Christian apologetics. We also reviewed the importance of objective truth in our faith but also in society using Tiananmen Square and the Jewish holocaust as examples where the government (and others) have tried to use propaganda and the control of historic information to influence how large populations understand the truth (with a brief break to calculate the amount of sodium one of our chip-loving students consumed in the first half of class!).
We quickly recapped the top arguments for God’s existence before turning to one of our areas of focus for this semester. And if God exists, is Christianity our best explanation for his role in creation and relationship with people?
One of the ways we will explore this is to “read” together parts of C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity.” We reviewed a little of Lewis’ interesting biography (including why everyone called him Jack) and highlighted that the content of Mere Christianity was originally delivered to the British people during WWII as part of a radio program. We found a neat animated video series that recreates the radio addresses and accompanies this with hand drawn images to reinforce the message. Given all the background we covered, we only got through the first half of the first chapter/video that sets the stage for the rest of the book.
Lastly, the group voted on their top big questions they’d like to cover or revisit this semester so we will plan on covering the following in the coming weeks:
- What is a soul? Do animals besides humans have souls?
- Can people who have never heard of God go to heaven? What about cavemen? Aliens?
- Angels and Demons/Devil
- How to respond to the toughest arguments against God’s existence
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St. Thomas Episcopal Church
1200 Snell Isle Blvd NE St. Petersburg, FL 33704 727-896-9641 office@stthomasstpete.org Sunday Worship Schedule 8:00am - Spoken Holy Eucharist, Rite II 10:00am - Choral Holy Eucharist, Rite II |
