Tapestry of Faith: Riddle and Mystery: A Program on the Big Questions for Grade 6

Leader Resource 1: Questions about Tomorrow

1. The human effect is more important than the butterfly effect.

2. Humans have more control over what happens tomorrow than God does.

(Leader: If you agree with this statement, you may be a humanist. Humanism is the idea that humans play the most important role in deciding what the future will be like. About half of all Unitarian Universalists say they are Humanists.)

3. Our own quotidian decisions control our cosmic futures.

(Leader: This is another Humanist idea.)

4. What I do today is unimportant, because 100 years from now, nobody will know the difference.

5. Unitarian Universalists should think more about the future than they do about the past.

(Leader: Is the present more important than the past or the future?)

6. Quotidian me can help save the cosmic world.

7. People working in groups can do more to help the world than individuals can.

8. If you believe in God, you can stop worrying about your own actions.

9. We can all stop worrying about tomorrow because our government will solve all the problems.

10. I like the idea of Humanism.

11. (Optional question) I know what "eschatology" means.

(Leader: Eschatology is the part of theology (or religious thought) that talks about how the world and the human race may end. Some religions say that life as we know it will end with the second coming of Christ in some sort of judgment day. Although such beliefs are very interesting, most UUs have very different ideas. We say that what happens in the future will depend mostly on people, not a great event ordered by God. Here is Humanism again.)