1. While human reason demands a creator, Judaism was the first religion to teach this.
2. Only God can create in the truest sense. Humans can make something out of something else, only God can create something out of nothing. The book goes into some detail to explain how this explains and fits with what we learned in earlier sections.
3. God's role as creator has implications for us, and how we live, things we can know from this fact (God is our Creator) alone. a. God is the ultimate cause of all that we do. a. God has absolute authority over us, we have no right to complain about God's actions (or lack of action). a. God did not have to create us. a. We can trust God (because He must be good). a. God is "immanent." This means that is not infinitely remote (as the deists believe, but always present everywhere and every-when. We are never truly alone.
4. Even if evolution is true, it does not and cannot explain souls. Only Faith can explain them.
5. Primary (First) and Secondary Causes. a. God is the First cause of everything. a. God often works through secondary causes. a. This neither diminishes God nor His creation. In fact, it makes both greater. a. Praying to saints is an example of utilizing God's power via a secondary cause. This is done because God wants to work this way. See the prior bullet point.
6. Creation is a hierarchy, some things are both more important and more valuable than others. a. We can eat meat because we are not animals. a. The creation story in Genesis is intended to teach us the truth of this hierarchy.
7. God is creator of "all that is, seen and unseen" (Nicene Creed; CCC 325). a. Humans are a hybrid, we are physical bodies (seen) and spiritual souls (unseen). a. Angels are beings of pure spirit (unseen). a. Humans are the highest of the physical world and the lowest of the spiritual world.
8. Angels and Demons. a. In a sense, these are the same thing, they differ in that Angels chose to obey God, and demons chose to rebel against Him. a. In class we talked about the 9 choirs of angels, and their roles as secondary causes. a. The book briefly mentions the way demons tempt us. We went into more detail in class, both in how they act, and the limits of their power.
9. The book goes into great depth about the problem of evil, which has only briefly been covered in prior books. This is a concern only if it troubles you or your child. It is important that you (and your child) know that this can be explained and where to look to get reliable answers on this topic. - The catechism - the writings of the saints - other official teaching documents of the Church (including in a very small way the text book).