Philosophy of Religion | Edexcel A-Level Religious Studies (9RS0)

Philosophy of Religion

187 questions
15 subtopics
Paper 1: Philosophy of Religion
Paper 1

Paper 1.

The arguments for and against God's existence, the problem of evil and the theodicies offered in reply, how religious language can mean anything at all, and what if anything survives death.

Sample questions from Philosophy of Religion

Answer each one closed book first, then open the answer.

Life After Death

What is transmigration of souls?

Show the answer
The doctrine that the soul moves between bodies across successive lives, carrying its identity with it.

The 15 subtopics

One subtopic is one session. Work down the list.

Subtopic	What it covers	Questions
The Design Argument	Recall questions on the design argument as inductive and a posteriori, Paley's watch and his two kinds of design, analogy and regularity, the anthropic principle, Swinburne's cumulative case, Hume's objections, evolution by natural selection and the problem of deism.	14
The Cosmological Argument	Recall questions on Aquinas's arguments from motion, causation and contingency, his rejection of an endless series, the principle of sufficient reason, the Kalam version, the objections of Hume and Kant, the brute fact reply and the fallacy of composition.	13
The Ontological Argument	Recall questions on the argument as a priori and analytic, Anselm's two formulations, the definition of God and aseity, Gaunilo's island, Kant on existence as a predicate, Russell's account of existence, and proof against probability.	12
The Nature of Religious Experience	Recall questions on defining religious experience, theistic and monistic accounts, James's four marks of mysticism, Otto's numinous, conversion, prayer and meditation, propositional and non-propositional revelation, and physiological, naturalistic, objectivist and subjectivist interpretations.	11
Religious Experience as an Argument for the Existence of God	Recall questions on Swinburne's principles of credulity and testimony, Hick's experiencing-as, Persinger's temporal lobe research, Dawkins' case against the argument, and the objections from conflicting traditions, divine transcendence and the limits of language.	12
The Problem of Evil and Suffering	Recall questions on the inconsistent triad, moral and non-moral evil, the logical and evidential forms of the problem, Mackie's Evil and Omnipotence and his rejection of the free will defence, Hume's case from needless suffering, and whether evil makes belief irrational.	13
Theodicies and Solutions to the Problem of Suffering	Recall questions on the Augustinian and Irenaean theodicies, Hick's soul-making, process theodicy, and the free will defence.	14
Analogy and Symbol	Recall questions on the via negativa, univocal and equivocal language, Aquinas's analogy of attribution and of proportionality, Tillich's distinction between sign and symbol, symbols across religious traditions, and the problems of treating religious language as symbolic.	12
Verification and Falsification	Recall questions on the Vienna Circle and logical positivism, Ayer's principle, Flew's parable and the replies of Hare and Mitchell.	14
Language Games	Recall questions on Wittgenstein's abandonment of the picture theory, language games and forms of life, religious language as non-cognitive, D Phillips on religious belief, and the charge of fideism.	9
Critiques of Religious Belief: Atheism and Agnosticism	Recall questions on the varieties of atheism and agnosticism, Dawkins' scientific case against God and his account of religion and morality, Westphal on the atheists of suspicion Freud, Marx and Nietzsche, postmodern approaches, and the probability debate.	12
Russell and Copleston	Recall questions on the 1948 debate, the dispute over sufficient reason and brute fact, and the argument from religious experience within it.	11
Life After Death	Recall questions on resurrection and immortality of the soul, reincarnation and transmigration, Hick's replica theory, and karma.	16
Mind, Body and the Evidence for Survival	Recall questions on substance dualism and Ryle's objection, property dualism and monism, Plato and Aristotle on the soul, the moral argument for a world to come, near-death experiences, and the problems of evidence and language for survival.	10
Religion and Science	Recall questions on scientific method, the conflict, independence and dialogue models, miracles and Hume's argument, the Big Bang and steady state theories, irreducible complexity and creationism, the cosmological constant, Darwin and Dawkins on evolution, and the Gaia hypothesis.	14

Philosophy of Religion is 187 of the 1,694 questions in the guide.Get the guide, £8

How the guide is worked

Answering a question from memory stores it far better than reading the answer again. The guide runs that as a fixed procedure on one subtopic at a time, about twenty minutes a session.

Step 1 · Closed book
Cover the answers. Work through one subtopic and write down what you can. Leave blanks where you have nothing.
Step 2 · Open book
Go back to the top. Read each printed answer and write it out in full, including the ones you had right.
Step 3 · Closed book again
Same questions, same order, from memory. The gap between pass one and pass three is the session result.

Read the full method, the return schedule and the research behind it.