3.1.1 Section A: Philosophy of religion
Students must develop knowledge and understanding of the following:
- the meaning and significance of the specified content
- the influence of these beliefs and teachings on individuals, communities and societies
- the cause and significance of similarities and differences in beliefs and teachings
- the approach of philosophy to the study of religion and belief.
The term ‘belief(s)’ includes religious beliefs and non-religious beliefs as appropriate.
They should be able to analyse and evaluate issues arising from the topics studied, and the views and arguments of the scholars prescribed for study.
Students should also be able to use specialist language and terminology appropriately.
Questions may be set that span more than one topic.
Arguments for the existence of God
Design
- Presentation: Paley’s analogical argument.
- Criticisms: Hume.
Ontological- Presentation: Anselm’s a priori argument.
- Criticisms: Gaunilo and Kant.
Cosmological
- Presentation: Aquinas' Way 3. The argument from contingency and necessity.
- Criticisms: Hume and Russell.
Students should study the basis of each argument in observation or in thought, the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments, their status as ‘proofs’, their value for religious faith and the relationship between reason and faith.
Evil and suffering
The problem of evil and suffering.
- The concepts of natural and moral evil.
- The logical and evidential problem of evil.
- Responses to the problem of evil and suffering.
- Hick’s soul making theodicy.
- The free will defence.
- Process theodicy as presented by Griffin.
- The strengths and weaknesses of each response.
Religious experience
The nature of religious experience.
- Visions: corporeal, imaginative and intellectual.
- Numinous experiences: Otto, an apprehension of the wholly other.
- Mystical experiences: William James; non sensuous and non-intellectual union with the divine as presented by Walter Stace.
Verifying religious experiences
- The challenges of verifying religious experiences.
- The challenges to religious experience from science.
- Religious responses to those challenges.
- Swinburne’s principles of credulity and testimony.
The influence of religious experiences and their value for religious faith.
Religious language
- The issue of whether religious language should be viewed cognitively or non-cognitively.
- The challenges of the verification and falsification principles to the meaningfulness of religious language.
- Responses to these challenges:
- eschatological verification with reference to Hick
- language as an expression of a Blik with reference to R.M.Hare
- religious language as a language game with reference to Wittgenstein.
- Other views of the nature of religious language:
- religious language as symbolic with reference to Tillich
- religious language as analogical with reference to Aquinas
- the Via Negativa.
- The strengths and weaknesses of the differing understandings of religious language.
Miracles
- Differing understandings of ‘miracle’
- realist and anti - realist views
- violation of natural law or natural event.
- Comparison of the key ideas of David Hume and Maurice Wiles on miracles.
- The significance of these views for religion.
Self, death and the afterlife
- The nature and existence of the soul ; Descartes' argument for the existence of the soul.
- The body/soul relationship.
- The possibility of continuing personal existence after death.
3.1.2 Section B: Ethics and religion
Students must develop knowledge and understanding of the following:
- the meaning and significance of the specified content
- the influence of these beliefs and teachings on individuals, communities and societies
- the cause and significance of similarities and differences in beliefs and teachings
- the approach of philosophy to the study of religion and belief.
The term ‘belief(s)’ includes religious beliefs and non-religious beliefs as appropriate.
They should be able to analyse and evaluate issues arising from the topics studied, and the views and arguments of the scholars prescribed for study.
Students should also be able to use specialist language and terminology appropriately.
Questions may be set that span more than one topic.
Normative ethical theories
- Deontological: natural moral law and the principle of double effect with reference to Aquinas; proportionalism.
- Teleological: situation ethics with reference to Fletcher.
- Character based: virtue ethics with reference to Aristotle.
- The differing approaches taken to moral decision making by these ethical theories.
- Their application to the issues of theft and lying.
- The strengths and weaknesses of these ways of making moral decisions.
The application of natural moral law, situation ethics and virtue ethics to:
- Issues of human life and death:
- embryo research; cloning; ‘designer’ babies
- abortion
- voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide
- capital punishment.
- Issues of non-human life and death:
- use of animals as food; intensive farming
- use of animals in scientific procedures; cloning
- blood sports
- animals as a source of organs for transplants.
Introduction to meta ethics: the meaning of right and wrong
- Divine Command Theory – right is what God commands, wrong is what God forbids.
- Naturalism: Utilitarianism – right is what causes pleasure, wrong is what causes pain.
- Non-naturalism: Intuitionism – moral values are self-evident.
- The strengths and weaknesses of these ideas.
Free will and moral responsibility
- The conditions of moral responsibility: free will; understanding the difference between right and wrong.
- The extent of moral responsibility: libertarianism, hard determinism, compatibilism.
- The relevance of moral responsibility to reward and punishment.
Conscience
- Differing ideas, religious and non-religious, about the nature of conscience.
- The role of conscience in making moral decisions with reference to:
- telling lies and breaking promises
- adultery.
- The value of conscience as a moral guide.
Bentham and Kant
- Comparison of the key ideas of Bentham and Kant about moral decision making.
- How far these two ethical theories are consistent with religious moral decision making.