The content for this paper helps students to explore some of the main contemporary philosophical issues and questions about religion, such as belief in God or the conviction that life has both meaning and purpose. It provides a relevant and challenging context for exploring the particular beliefs, values and practices that characterise religious communities. In turn, the paper provides a sound basis for understanding and reflecting on the contemporary influence of religion, the views of those who do not share a religious belief and the impact of these factors on people’s lives.
Students will engage with arguments and debates on religious and non-religious views of life, which focus on some key areas of controversy that shape modern views of the world, such as the problem of evil and suffering. Students will extend their understanding through engagement in debates on issues such as the value of evidence based on accounts of religious experience. They will analyse and evaluate particular viewpoints of thinkers who have contributed to these debates.
Students will extend the breadth and depth of their study by considering how religious ideas are expressed and communicated, and how they may differ from other contemporary ways of expressing beliefs about the world – for instance whether religious and scientific language is incompatible or complementary, whether ideas about life after death are tenable in or relevant to the modern world. As part of this process, students will study how ideas about the philosophy of religion have changed over time, and the most important influences on this process. They will use the writings of key scholars to explore differing viewpoints about the development of ideas in the philosophy of religion.
It is compulsory for students to compare the work of two named scholars, including a specific extract of their work. The list of extracts at the end of the paper must be studied by all students and this includes the work of two named scholars for comparison. These are published in the A Level Religious Studies Anthology: Paper 1 – Philosophy of Religion which will be on each school website. The context in which these texts could be studied is indicated by bracketed numbers in the detailed content, (1) for example. These extracts are not exclusive to the topic areas under which they appear; students will need to be able to apply these extracts across any suitable topic. This allows for a range of questions, including text or language specific, as well as thematic. In this paper, students will be required to study the ideas of key contributors in relation to specific content areas. These are indicated against each relevant sub-topic. Students will be required to use these ideas to support and underpin their knowledge and understanding. Overall, this study will enhance students’ capacity to deal with controversial issues about beliefs and values, to have confidence in their ability to express their ideas and to put forward their own beliefs and ideals supported by reasoned argument and evidence.
a) Inductive reasoning, a posteriori types of arguments, interpretation of experience.
b) Types of order and regularity, role of analogy, cumulative effect of evidence, anthropic principle, regularities of co-presence and regularities of succession.
c) Strengths and weaknesses of Design Arguments: probability rather than proof, alternative interpretations, including evolution and deism. Challenges to the argument.
d) Philosophical language and thought through significant concepts and the works of key thinkers, illustrated in issues in the philosophy of religion.
a) Inductive reasoning, a posteriori types of arguments.
b) Principle of sufficient reason, explanation, interpretation of experience, movement, cause and effect, contingency, infinite regress, first cause, necessary existence, Kalam version.
c) Strengths and weaknesses of Cosmological Arguments: probability rather than proof, brute fact, debates about infinite regress, necessary existence and God as a necessary being. Challenges to the argument.
d) Philosophical language and thought through significant concepts and the works of key thinkers, illustrated in issues in the philosophy of religion.
a) A priori compared to a posteriori types of arguments, deductive reasoning, not evidence based but understanding of concept ‘God’ as an analytic proposition.
b) Definitions of ‘God’, necessary existence, aseity.
c) Strengths and weaknesses of the Ontological Arguments: concept of proof compared to probability, debates about ‘existence’ and predicates. Challenges to the argument.
d) Philosophical language and thought through significant concepts and the works of key thinkers, illustrated in issues in the philosophy of religion.
a) Context of religious experience across religious traditions, range of definitions related to belief in God and/or ultimate reality, theistic and monistic views, ineffability, noetic, transience, passivity.
b) Types: conversion, prayer, meditation, mysticism, numinous. Relationship between religious experience and propositional and non-propositional revelation.
c) Alternative explanations, physiological and naturalistic interpretations, objectivist and subjectivist views.
a) Inductive reasoning based on evidence, the link between appearances, how things seem, how things really are and conclusions drawn from experience about reality and existence. Principles of testimony and credulity, the value and role of testimony to religious experience.
b) Strengths and weaknesses of religious experience as an argument for the existence of God: experiences influenced by the religious context of the believer, religious experiences interpreted as any other sensory experiences, complexity of interpretations, issues of probability and proof as relating to the argument, nature of God, including transcendent and immanent, limitations of language, lack of uniformity of experiences, refinements of and challenges to the argument.
The nature of the problem across a range of religious traditions, types of evil and suffering, moral and non-moral. The challenge to religious belief posed by the inconsistency of the nature of God and the evident existence of evil and suffering challenging belief in the existence of God.
a) Belief that creation was good; evil and suffering is a privation of good due to the fall of the angels and man because of the misuse of free will, soul-deciding, significance of reconciliation.
b) Belief that creation is a mix of good and evil linked to the vale of soul making theodicy, including free will defence, best of all possible worlds, epistemic distance, eschatological justification.
c) Process theodicy: God is not responsible for evil and suffering, but he is co-sufferer and cannot coerce the free will of human agents.
d) Strengths and weaknesses of theodicies and solutions: compatibility or otherwise with modern views about origins of life, nature of God, innocent suffering, hypothesis of life after death.
a) Analogy: via negativa, knowledge about God may be gained by what God is not like, univocal language and problems of anthropomorphism, equivocal language and problems of attribution, significance of proportional similarities and dissimilarities.
b) Symbol: types of symbol across a range of religious traditions, distinction between signs and symbols, symbols identifying and participating in a concept. Problems interpreting symbols and their limited application to a particular faith context.
a) Context of Logical Positivism and the Vienna Circle, analytic and synthetic statements, implications for the claim that religious language is meaningless; view that religious claims are false because nothing can count against them; ‘bliks’ as unfalsifiable ways of framing our interpretation of the world compared to beliefs that are significant articles of faith which may be significantly challenged but not easily abandoned.
b) Strengths and weakness of these approaches, including realist and anti-realist views and eschatological verification.
a) Critique of picture theory, functional uses of language in the context of a form of life. Non-cognitive interpretation of language and criteria of coherence in the relevant language game, highlights the distinctive character of religious language, significance of fideism in this context – language can only be understood in the context of faith.
a) Respective strengths and weaknesses of religious beliefs.
b) Alternative explanations, issues of probability and postmodern interpretations of religion.
c) Key terms, types of atheism and agnosticism.
a) The context of the writings of Russell and Copleston and the way these ideas are applied to issues in religion and belief, including the argument from contingency and religious experience.
a) Immortality of the soul: soul as non-physical and spiritual and continuing to exist after death of body.
b) Rebirth: belief there is no unchanging soul and importance of karma.
c) Reincarnation: transmigration of souls and importance of karma.
d) Replica theory: notion that one can die in one body and continue to live in a different body while being the same person, including after death.
e) Resurrection: belief that God will restore the dead in bodily form to eternal life.
a) Relationship between mind and body, including variations of dualism and monism.
b) Life after death linked to moral reasoning, near death experiences, debates related to role of evidence, religious language.
a) Methodologies with emphasis on observation, hypothesis and experiment, identifying connections and differences vis a vis religious belief and processes; miracles.
b) Creation themes and scientific cosmologies: Big Bang, steady state theories, intelligent design and irreducible complexity, creationism, cosmological constant, evolution, Gaia hypothesis.