This course prepares candidates for the AQA Religious Studies A Level syllabus
(2060), for examinations in
June 2012 and later years.
There are four units that comprise the A Level Religious Studies
course.
Unit 1 - Religion and Ethics 1
1. Utilitarianism
- The general principles of Utilitarianism: consequential or
teleological thinking in contrast to deontological thinking,
Bentham's Utilitarianism, Act Utilitarianism, the hedonic
calculus
- Mill's Utilitarianism, Rule Utilitarianism, quality over
quantity
- The application of Bentham's and Mill's principles to one
ethical issue of the candidate's choice apart from abortion and
euthanasia
2. Situation Ethics
- The general principles of Situation Ethics: the middle way
between legalism and antinomianism; the idea of situation;
conscience - what it is and what it is not; the emphasis on making
moral decisions rather than following rules
- Fletcher's six fundamental principles and the understanding of
Christian love
- Fletcher's four presumptions: pragmatism, contextual
relativism, positivism, personalism
- The application of Situation Ethics to one ethical issue of the
candidate's choice apart from abortion and euthanasia
3. Christian teaching on the nature and value of human
life
- Nature of humanity and the human condition: what it means to be
human
- Fatalism and free will: to what extent human beings are able to
influence their own life and destiny
- Equality and difference: religious teaching about equality with
particular reference to race, gender and disability
- The value of life: religious teachings about the value of life
with particular reference to the quality of life, self-sacrifice
and non-human life including the relative importance of human and
non-human life
4. Abortion and euthanasia
- Abortion: definitions for the start of human life, including:
potentiality, conception, primitive streak, viability, birth
- The value of potential and real life
- Mother's versus child's life, double effect
- Ethical issues involved in legislation about abortion
- Euthanasia: active or passive
- Ethical issues involved in legislation about euthanasia;
voluntary and involuntary; hospices and palliative care
- The right of humans to determine when to die
- Arguments for and against abortion and euthanasia with
reference to religious and ethical teachings
Unit 2 - Philosophy of Religion
1. The Cosmological argument
- The cosmological argument as proposed by Aquinas with
particular reference to: its basis in observation; the rejection of
infinite regress; God as the first mover and first cause, and as
the necessary being
- Differing understandings of the role of God in the argument:
God as the temporal first cause; God as the sustainer of motion,
causation and existence; God as the explanation of why there is
something rather than nothing
- Key criticisms of the argument relating to: the possibility of
infinite regress and the universe as a 'brute fact'; the fallacy of
composition; the identity of the necessary being as God and drawing
a conclusion that goes beyond the evidence
2. Religious experience
- The variety of religious experience: credit will be given for
reference to any relevant form of religious experience, but
candidates are expected to be familiar with the main
characteristics of visions, conversion and mystical
experiences
- The argument from religious experience for the existence of
God
- The challenges to religious experience from philosophy and
science
3. Psychology and religion
Freud
- Religion as a collective neurosis; as wish fulfilment and a
reaction against helplessness; and as a response to the Oedipus
complex and repressed guilt
Jung
- Religion as an expression of the collective unconscious; the
'god within'; the theory of archetypes: the shadow, the animus,
anima and the Self and the quest for integration
4. Atheism and postmodernism
- The rise of atheism and the death of God: reasons for the rise
of atheism with reference to science, empiricism, evil, the
rebellion against moral absolutes and awareness of other faiths;
meaning of the slogan 'God is dead'
- The nature of atheism: positive and negative atheism;
distinction from agnosticism
- Religious responses to atheism, including a postmodernist view
of religion. Key ideas in postmodernism: religions as cultural
constructs; no right or wrong religions; personal spiritual search,
the religious supermarket and the pick and mix approach; living
religion rather than intellectual faith
Unit 3 - Religion and Ethics
1. Libertarianism, free will and
determinism
- Free will: question of genetics and environment; free will
curtailed by volition; contracting into societies; conflict of free
wills
- Libertarianism: the personality and the moral self; the
conscience; the causally undetermined choice
- Determinism: the principle of causality; 'hard' determinism and
'soft' determinism; internal and external causation
- A religious perspective on libertarianism and determinism
2. Virtue Ethics
- Aristotle's view: happiness (eudaimonia), moral and
intellectual virtues, cardinal virtues and capital vices
- Modern Virtue Ethics: MacIntyre and Foot
- The application of Virtue Ethics to one issue of the
candidate's choice apart from issues in science and technology
3. Religious views on sexual behaviour and human
relationships
- Scripture-based ideas which are rooted in text
- Institutional-based ideas which have been developed by a
particular religious institution
- Individual-based ideas which will have been developed from
individual conscience or interpretation of
Scripture/institutional-based ideas
- Sexual behaviour outside marriage, including pleasure and
procreation
- Views on marriage as a sacred event or secular monogamy,
polygamy, polyandry, adultery
- Human relationships, respect and responsibility for others, the
abuse of power
- Concept of love (different styles: brotherly, physical,
Christian agapé), family and children
4. Science and technology
- Experimentation (animals and humans) and the role of ethics in
decision-making
- Inventions and the role of ethics in the control of their use
(e.g. nuclear inventions)
- Scientific and technological advances and decisions about who
benefits
- Human rights and the conflict with the use of technology, e.g.
surveillance, data storage, cyber crime
- A religious perspective on these issues in science and
technology
Unit 4 - Life, Death and Beyond
- Religious and secular perspectives on the nature and value of
human life
- Religious Nature: e.g. created by God, not perfect, redeemable,
dualistic; and/or non-theistic perspectives
- Religious Value: e.g. in the image of God, life is a gift from
God, highest element in creation; and/or non-theistic
perspectives
- Secular Nature: another animal, one aspect of evolution,
mortal
- Secular Value: responsible for preservation of environment,
each human is of equal value
- Eschatological and apocalyptic, religious and secular teaching
and attitudes can all be treated together as teaching and attitudes
towards the future, especially the end. Within a religious context
there are examples of teaching in scriptures; apocalyptic is often
associated with scripture in some hidden or coded form. Secular
interests in 'the end of the world' or time signs and indications
of when this might be
- Religious and secular ideas about the importance of the present
life and life after death
- Religious views often focused around judgement, either imposed
or self-imposed with idea that life on earth is a stage in human
existence. Secular view that there is only one life and that is on
earth, but this may not lead to egotistical view; view that life
after death does not give life on earth a purpose
- Beliefs about death and beyond, both religious and
non-religious.
- Death sometimes seen as the end; there is nothing beyond;
sometimes seen as the end of the present being but with elements
moving beyond death, a stage in the existence of a human - a rite
of passage
- Beyond, a spiritual world, a world which is in suspension
awaiting something, a parallel existence either bodily or not, an
existence with God; a transition back to another existence;
continuity of personal identity