EDEXCEL Religious Studies AS/A2: 6RS01, 6RS02, 6RS03, 6RS04 May/June 2016

I know! Sad. I only revised ontological from the two so I got pretty lucky I think.
I liked the religious language question too.

Haha, same! I was terrified because I'm terrible at religious experience. :s-smilie:

The religious language question was beautiful. Slapped a ton of quotes in there from Ayer (and Wittgenstein in part ii) and managed to use Mitchell, Hare, and Wisdom and Flew when I was writing about falsification. Even managed to get some religious language into the OA question. :biggrin:

Reply 301

ellie0497

20

Original post by AnnieGakusei

Haha, same! I was terrified because I'm terrible at religious experience. :s-smilie:

The religious language question was beautiful. Slapped a ton of quotes in there from Ayer (and Wittgenstein in part ii) and managed to use Mitchell, Hare, and Wisdom and Flew when I was writing about falsification. Even managed to get some religious language into the OA question. :biggrin:

I used Ayer, Wittgenstein (and a bit of Hume in the intro) for verification and Hare and Flew for falsification. I was going to use Mitchell but I wrongly assumed he is for AO2 so I left him out.
I used Ayer in the second part of the ontological argument too haha.

Reply 302

AnnieGakusei

17

Original post by ellie0497

I used Ayer, Wittgenstein (and a bit of Hume in the intro) for verification and Hare and Flew for falsification. I was going to use Mitchell but I wrongly assumed he is for AO2 so I left him out.
I used Ayer in the second part of the ontological argument too haha.

I used Mitchell, Hare and Wisdom as three ways of using falsification to see religious language. Hare and Wisdom (+Flew) are the two standard responses, with "bliks" and "dying the death of a thousand qualifications" respectively. Then I used Mitchell as an alternative view but he is a bit AO2-y. I just really wanted to use him in an essay lol. I also wrote about Hick's "eschatological verification" for VP.

Haha I didn't actually use Ayer but he might have been a good one to use. I made a bit of a stretch and used Flew to criticise Anselm's qualification of his original ideas (that God is actually necessary so Gaunilo's island doesn't work). I was clutching at straws a bit methinks. :biggrin:

Reply 303

Toto123

7

Original post by ellie0497

I used Ayer, Wittgenstein (and a bit of Hume in the intro) for verification and Hare and Flew for falsification. I was going to use Mitchell but I wrongly assumed he is for AO2 so I left him out.
I used Ayer in the second part of the ontological argument too haha.

I need help with witgenstein language games and what the falsification principle is by Anthony flew. Can you explain it to me? It's also very important for the implications.Thanks so much. I would really appreciate it

Reply 304

sophielauren1

1

Original post by AnnieGakusei

Same for me. I was so happy to see three absolute gifts of questions on the paper!

I feel really sorry for those people who didn't learn the ontological argument though, because religious experience didn't come up on the paper...

Religious experience did come up!? It was mixed in with critiques which I thought was so good, loads to write about!

Reply 305

sophielauren1

1

Original post by Toto123

I need help with witgenstein language games and what the falsification principle is by Anthony flew. Can you explain it to me? It's also very important for the implications.Thanks so much. I would really appreciate it

Contrary to what Wittgeinstein believed in his early work in "picture theory of language", Late Wittgensteins language games theory said that there are many different types of language eg. Mathematics, art, religion, all of which are meaningful within their context. He likened this to 'games', for example a cricket player plays by the rules of cricket, it would be meaningless for them to play according to the rules of chess. From this he concludes that religious language is meaningful to the believer in religious context.
The Falsification principle was developed my Anthony Flew due to the many weaknesses of the verification principle. He stated that because a religious believer refuses to give grounds to which their statements could be proven wrong or "falsified" their statements are meaningless. "die a death of a thousand qualifications"

Reply 306

username1964797

2

How are people revising for Unit 4??

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 307

AnnieGakusei

17

Original post by sophielauren1

Religious experience did come up!? It was mixed in with critiques which I thought was so good, loads to write about!

Wait it did? My bad lol. There wasn't a straight question on it though, and I didn't learn critiques so my eyes must have just skipped that question. :biggrin:

Reply 308

ellie0497

20

Original post by Toto123

I need help with witgenstein language games and what the falsification principle is by Anthony flew. Can you explain it to me? It's also very important for the implications.Thanks so much. I would really appreciate it

Wittgenstein's language game theory basically states that we have to know what 'game' our terms are participating in. Different language games (i.e. religion, science) have their own rules/grammar which vary in different forms of life/context. If you do not appreciate or participate in the language game, you are more likely to misunderstand what is being said. For example, if I explain an experiment to you and you said it isn't funny, I would assume you misunderstood. Therefore, thinkers like Ayer who are participating in the science language game would misunderstand the religious language game. (Wittgenstein's example; if you try to understand the statement "God exists" in the same way as the scientific statement "the platypus exists" you would fail to understand it).
Ayer' verification principle states that religious language is non-cognitive so cannot be verified empirically (true by observation), synthetically (true by confirmation) or analytically (true by definition) therefore, religious language is meaningless.
Flew's falsification principle was an add on/critique to the verification principle. Flew agreed with Ayer that for a statement to be meaningful it must reveal facts about the world however, he claimed that any positive claim we make also assumes that we deny its negation (e.g. saying school work is fun implies school work is not, not fun). Therefore, language can only be meaningful if we can conceive of some evidence which might count against it. However, the problem with 'God talk' is that it often implies that it cannot be falsified i.e. saying "God loves me in a mysterious way" and not allowing anyone to falsify your claim is meaningless as it implies God is just a mystery and gives no room for denial.

Reply 309

GeneratorXas

Unit 4 guys is it worth not revising Donovan

Reply 310

nitta_

1

Think that's too risky.. I'm going to focus on Ayer most, maybe sections 3 and 8 particularly as I think one of them might come up. But revise Westphal and Donovan too, just not worth the risk.

Reply 311

muctarrio97

Original post by GeneratorXas

Unit 4 guys is it worth not revising Donovan

It's most likely Ayer or Westphal would come up, but Edexcel are scumbags, so revise Donovan just in case

Reply 312

muctarrio97

Did any do New Testament for the unit 3 exam?

Reply 313

calbrad140

3

I was not taught the Ontological argument nor critiques of religious belief. Only Religious experience. yet there was only a 12 mark question for religious experience paired with an 18 marker for religious belief. Have we been hard done by? we were not old to revise the other topics or anything we only did religious experience. Is anyone else in the same position? I feel like my school have not taught me all the content they should have and I have therefore been put at a disadvantage.

Reply 314

calbrad140

3

Original post by kaytaylou

I think yours haven't taught you enough content. we got taught four philosophy (life after death, religious exp, religious Lang, atheism) and four ethics (religion and morality, theories, justice law and punishment, meta ethics) Edexcel often like merge two topics into one question so you're supposed to be taught a breadth in preparation I suppose. I'd deffo complain to your col

The R.E department don't understand what they've done wrong, in that they feel they've done nothing wrong. To be honest it doesn't suprise me, when we did Westphal I had to teach it because after 2 lessons of our teacher trying to it was clear she didn't understand it. Every time she would make a point she would look to me for a nod or shake of the head, after a while she was like do you want to teach it so I actually did, was quite fun.
How would I even go about complaining, our R.E department just got inspected by OFSTED as well and they credited the improvement for A-level, but they never watched our class.
Does anyone know anyone at Edexcel I could contact about this, just to like double check, my teachers believe you can answer the critique question like an experience question but I really don't understand how.

Also just for the record we also got taught language, and that was it for philosophy.
For ethics we did religion and Morality, NML, Virtue ethics and Deontology - which are all on one choice for the questions, so we had to do 2 philosophy questions

Reply 315

joshnewbs

2

I think Donovan will come up again. Here wasn't a straight question on religious experience in the unit 3 exam. Exam boards are clever, they're not stupid. They know how easy Ayer is and they know how hard Westphal is. They will put Donovan again I think because they know pupils will least expect it, that's just my opinion anyway.

Reply 316

ellie0497

20

Original post by joshnewbs

I think Donovan will come up again. Here wasn't a straight question on religious experience in the unit 3 exam. Exam boards are clever, they're not stupid. They know how easy Ayer is and they know how hard Westphal is. They will put Donovan again I think because they know pupils will least expect it, that's just my opinion anyway.

I hope Donovan doesn't come up... I would be so screwed

Reply 317

joshnewbs

2

Original post by ellie0497

I hope Donovan doesn't come up... I would be so screwed

I wouldn't worry. I'm just finishing Donovan and toy can basically apply everything you learnt in religious experience to it and verification / falsification principle to every para :smile:

it's not that hard, I still got to do the other two. If Westphal comes up I may aswell just leave lol unless it's para 1.

Reply 318

RaphaelleB

2

I really hope Westphal comes up. In spite of it being the 'hardest', I'm therefore best prepared for it. But then again, edexcel are knobs, I reckon they'd do Donovan again to screw us over, considering that's what they did for me in the Unit 3 exam :\

Reply 319

sophielauren1

1

I know someone who is taught by an ex examiner and he said that it will 1000% be Ayer and he is only teaching his class Ayer. All the other schools around me aren't teaching Donovan either

EDEXCEL Religious Studies AS/A2: 6RS01, 6RS02, 6RS03, 6RS04 May/June 2016

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