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OCR Synoptic A,AX,AY

Hey!! Does anyone have a comprehensive list of past questions? Theres only like 3 exam papers on the OCR website, so i was wondering if anyone had any further back? Like pre 2006?? Thanks!!

Also, is everyone as worried as me? What do you want to come up? I am hoping its ANYTHING but psychology and sociology, but they've come up the past 2 years so hopefully they'll skip it this year!!

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Reply 1

Chrisateen

Here you go

Specimen-

•

‘Sociologists have demonstrated that morality is formed by society and not by God.’ Discuss

•

To what extent can God be held responsible for humanity’s inclination to sin?

•

‘If there is no life after death, there is no point in behaving morally.’ Discuss.

2002-

•

“If our ethical behaviour is determined, there can be no possible answers to the problem of evil. Discuss.

•

“ The sense of moral responsibility we all share is firm evidence for the existence of a divine moral Law-giver.” Discuss.

•

“Both ethics and religion are invented as a means of holding society together.” Discuss

2003-

•

‘God creates us and knows in advance all the choices we will make; therefore we cannot be held responsible when we do wrong.’ Discuss

•

‘Eternal life in heaven does not explain or compensate for the unfairness of this world; only reincarnation can do that.’ Discuss

•

Discuss the view that religion and morality are no more than responses to the needs of society.

2004-

•

Discuss the claim that psychology has seriously undermined the idea that it is right to follow one’s conscience

•

How fair is the claim that moral language is meaningful, even if religious language is not?

•

“Belief in reward after death encourages people to perform the right actions for the wrong motives.’ Discuss.

2005-

•

To what extent can God be held responsible for moral evil?

•

‘Religious language and ethical language are both about facts’ discuss

•

‘The only point in behaving morally is to be rewarded after death.’ Discuss

I think the others are online including the mark scheme and examiners report for 2005 onwards

Reply 2

chriztina27

anyone know what percentage this module is? 15 or 20%?

Reply 3

amberstrudel

Oh wow, thanks, just what I was looking for!!! Also, i think it's 20%... its worth 120 marks.

Reply 4

ellie_1989

omg im seriously worried about this...ive just realised i dont know anything! also only 3 out of 6 questions were taught properly :/ **** teacher! any help anyone can give me like notes or anythin really would be most appreciated thanks!

Oh and also i have tonsilitus and am really poorly which doesnt help :frown:

i feel so sorry for myself lol!

Reply 5

Chrisateen

ellie_1989

i feel so sorry for myself lol!

what areas are you struggling with may be able to give you some teacher notes (thats if I know how to upload it on here :rolleyes:

)

Reply 6

hannah-mai

Chrisateen

what areas are you struggling with may be able to give you some teacher notes (thats if I know how to upload it on here :rolleyes:

)

I'd really like to take you up on that offer too, if it's not too much trouble - I feel so unprepared in this unit but need an overall A to get into uni :frown:

I'd especially love notes on anything to do with morality/being moral... Kant's moral argument etc. I know scarily little about Kant. Stuff on life after death would be amazing too. Thank you so much!

Reply 7

ellie_1989

Chrisateen

what areas are you struggling with may be able to give you some teacher notes (thats if I know how to upload it on here :rolleyes:

)

Well i think im ok with the Conscience as evidence for the existence of God: thats just all the different ideas on the conscience contrasted with the kant's moral argument right?

Free Will and Determinism and the Omniscience of God- i know the free will and determinism part but am confused as to what you contrast it with...so if you have anything on that please?

Free Will and the Problem of Evil- need help with this please, again i dont get what you put into the question.

The Implications of Sociology and Psychology for ethics- what goes into this? Frued's theory, jung's theory, Durkheim's theory, Weber's theory- is that all? :s-smilie:

The relation between Religious and Ethical Language- no idea about this one...again mainly what you put into it?

The relation between Moral Behaviour and Life after Death- and same for this!

You can see i really do need help lol...any would be great please! Thanks xxx

Reply 8

Aithne13

ellie_1989

This is what i have from the OCR Study Guide....

for the freewill and determinism - all that i know is that we will have to answer questions on whether an omniscient God removes all possibility for Human freedom? If God is all knowing then he knows everything about us - our genes, personalities, knowledge, etc...he creates the people around us who influence our decisions and if God knows all our choices before we make them, are we really acting freely. If God knows the fututre for every human being - that it has already beeen set out for us, then are we really free or are we just predestined/predetermined?

If God is not omniscient then he can not by definition, be the god of classical theism, and thus is he worthy of our worship?

Or are we determined? are all acts necessitiated by prior causes (kinda linked to the cosmological arguement - cause and effect) any idea of freedom is false. If this is true, why would God punish us for our sins, if it we did not freely choose our actions? Does sin even exist in such a case? Do we have any moral responsibility?

But people do have a sense of freedom, we consider ourselves to have choices, we decide on something, we are not told which decision to make. Libertarians believe that we are morally culpable for our actions. Suggesting that just because God knows the choices we make, it doesn't mean that he made them for us -- we were not pre-destined, he just knows all. We may well be affected by our physical bodies in some decisions - we can not fly - but we are free when it come to morality. Does God's fore-knowledge really take away our freedom?

Maybe God is limited to knowledge of the present and the past only, he has no knowledge of the future. This could be true of an immanent god, but not of a transcendent God.

Traditionally people are only seen as morally responsible for acts that they are free in choosing. Kant said that moral imperatives imply the possibility to do them 'ought implies can' - it is a choice. Freedom to choose makes us human, different from animals that are choose soley based on their instincts (as far as we know) - it gives us a sense of moral deliberation.

Augustine argued that we were created free to turn our will to God, but God knows when we turn away from him as well. He could have chosen not to create those thet would turn away from him, but that would hinder our freedom, we would not have the knowledge that we could turn away from God, as nobody would ever be created that would. It would also make him not all-loving, as it implies that he only loves those that he knows won't turn away from him, he doesn't even give the rest of us a chance to live.

If God has not willed us to do certain actions, only knows that we will do them, surely we are still morally responsible for them.

The problem of evil - horrendous actions and sufferings e.g. the holocaust, can be used to question whether God's decision to create was a moral one. Irenaeus argued that God created all humans imperfect, so that we can become perfect through 'soul makeing' in life. Is God responsible for our actions because he created us with the ability of wrongdoing, especially since God knows the extent to which our inevitable sin will be and yet does nothing?

Plato believed that it was possible for humans to seek out the good; Aquinas believed humans tend towards the good, and Kant argued that people have a sense of the moral law, we do the greatest good because this give us happiness, whilst doing wrong actions make us feel guilty.

And from the web...

Two types of freedom: Genuine freedom - Liberty of indifference. Our actions are not determined.
Freedom to act according to our nature - Liberty of Spontaneity. Our actions are determined by our natures.

Peter Greach - God is like a chess Grandmaster. We are free to choose any move on the board game without external constraints, but would know beyond reasonable doubt that we would eventually lose. The everlasting God cannot predict with absolute certainity, every move we make, but he knows that his ultimate purposes will trimph, just as the grandmaster knows that he will win. God's lack of knowledge does not take the world out of his control, we make free choices but we cannot compromise with his grand scheme. He cannot force our obedience, as this would not result in a loving realationsip with him. However, this is only the case if he is immanent, so believers either have to believe in free will, or believe that he is transcedent.

If he is transcendent, he must have pre-selected those that he will spend eternal life with. Also punishment for an immoral action does not bring about real justice, as no one can be really held accountable for their actions. If you believe in free will, you have to accept either that God's foreknowledge is not absolute or certain, or that human freedom is predetermined by human nature. Either way, human freedom in incompatible with the omniscient view of God from classical theism.

You need to know what Hick and Swinburne say on the matter, as well as Humanists and atheists.

Reply 9

Aithne13

ellie_1989

Well i think im ok with the Conscience as evidence for the existence of God: thats just all the different ideas on the conscience contrasted with the kant's moral argument right?

We were told that we need:
The moral argument
Conscience
Life after death
Aquinas' Fourth way
Christian view with Bible passages
Scientific/ evolution explanation for morality

Reply 10

Aithne13

In terms of the language one, my friend emailed me these notes:

Before the enlightenment:
=> Revelation/revealed truth - People believed in God, miracles. It was knowledge and recognised as such since a statement of faith can never be proven.
=> Copernicus and Galileo
=> fact/value/predicition/faith/theory
=> coherent truth
=> foundational beliefs

Enlightenment:
=> Kant - world of phenomena (empirical) and the noumena (metaphysical - beyond reason)
=> ignorance seen as evil, blamed this evil on religious and political leaders who claimed to be the special agents of God's revelation, in order to keep the common people ignorant.
=> human progress would only come through knowledge from the intellect or spiritual enlightenment, not blind obedience to authority.

After the enlightenment:
=> a posteriori knowledge
=> Newton and science
=> problematic for meta-ethics

Cognitive:
=> realist
=> corresponding truth
=> propostitional faith
=> objective
=> Flew - blik faith
=> i believe THAT god exists
=> Aquinas Analogy
=> Logical positivists - non-verifiable or falsifiable then it is nonsense
=> Bradley Naturalism - Plato/Aristotle
=> Moore Intutitionism, Naturalistic Fallacy - good is not reducible, good=yellow

Non-Cognitive:
=> set of beliefs that fit together
=> coherent truth
=> anti-realist
=> i believe IN god. - trust/faith/conviction/certainity
=> Aquinas Analogy
=> Wittgenstein - language games, usage not meaning, context
=> good/right/wrong = value judgements - cultural, relative
constructs
=> ayer
=> stevenson
=> Hare

Moral realism - good/bad are properties of situations and people. Right/wrong are properties of actions. some people give this up for relativism due to culture, but our tolerance of cultural differences seems to be very limited, with people still holding moral absolutes. Moral facts are objective facts. Goodness and badness is independednt of us - related to cognitive language. Example of Philosopher: Aristotle.

Moral anti-realsim - moral facts do not exist, until we say they do, they are dependent on us. Linked to non-cognitivism. Moral statements are subjective. Euthphyro dilemma. Subjectivism - Values are products of conscious desire, the stronger the desire the greater the value. What we desire is that which is good. Example of Philosopher: Hume.

You need to know the different types of religious language/ ethical language and normative ethics.

Aims:
=> Religious language is about trying to talk about God. This is problematic because God is not factual and can not be empirically tested, there is noetic knowledge of God. Kant - we can't go from the phenomenal world to the noumenal world. God needs faith, he goes beyond the limits of reason.
=> Ethical language - evaluate our actions. What do we mean when we say good/bad/right/wrong/moral/immoral? Is this obejcetive or subjective?

Language:
=> Relgious language is used for God and other religious topics e.g. experience. But is done through common language.
1.) Aquinas - equivocal/univocal/via negativa/via postiva/analogy
2.) Religious language is often paradoxical - does this make it meaningless?
3.) talks about god in human terms
=> ethical language - words are difficult to define. several kinds of language:
1.) meta-ethics - meaning of language
2.) descriptive - tells us what is
3.) Prescriptive - tells us what we should do

You need to be able to discuss whether they are meaningful. Ayer can be used to criticise the meaning of both languages.

Reply 11

amberstrudel

Thanks!!! These notes are ace

Reply 12

Aithne13

amberstrudel

Thanks!!! These notes are ace

i have more. i will put them up later. when my brain feels less dead.

Reply 13

Aithne13

Conscience and the moral argument

I am assuming most people know what the moral argument is, but a quick summary is:
1.) there is a universal moral law
2.) this implies that there is an universal moral lawgiver
3.) Therefore, God must exist.

Problems with the moral argument:1.) why does there have to be a moral law? Morals are culturally and historically relative. But when we say something is moral, we are not merely stating it, we are trying to prescribe it to others (see Prescriptive ethics - Hare). We need laws, without this we would live in anarchy.
2.) Herd instinct - morality could be part of our physical nature - survival of the fittest - Darwin and Dawkins - but if this were true, then wouldn't our strongest impulse always be moral? We try to preserve the self, even when sacrifice is the moral thing to do.
3.) Social Convention? Morality is learnt through society. But if this is true then what makes the morality learnt in Nazi Germany any worse than the morality learnt through Jesus? We can not say that a society has improved if the standards which we measure it by are set by society.
4.) is it something we just impose upon ourselves? Would you need moral laws if you lived alone on an island? Morality is useless if it based on one's own terms - there would be no real punishment or justice for immorality because they come from the same person and can be changed when they become inconvenient. (Think celeb rehab)

Evolution: Darwin's survival theory
=> - 'do unto others....' in the hope that they will do the same. those who do so are more likely to survive. But is this really morality, as it is done for self-benefit? it is low-level morality, and could just be enlightened self-interest.
=> treat those who are special to you as you would like to be treated. Help the family, those in your tribe/community and you and your community will survive
=> treat everyone how you would like to be treated. The Golden Rule of society - altruism

However, doing the last two has the problem that doing things for others, even members of your own family can burden the individuals and reduce your chance of survival.

However, helping ones family may mean that you do not have so many offspring, but as a group, your collctive family will have more offspring who will carry the genes of the self-sacrificing individual. The genes that make people behave morally are thus not eliminated through natrural selection, as they will do well in competition with people who do not help their relatives. From Dawkins The selfish gene (not word-to word).

But then why do we sometimes reject our own tribe's reaction to another group. E.g. the Iraq war opposition. We are more likely to care for people in our own community/family than outsiders, but we do not ignore them. But this could be explained, since when we used to live in tribes, the only people we met (most of the time) were our family, thus we learned to help all those we met and thus through natural selection, this tendency spread, so that we treat both other humans and animals well.

However, in this case 'morality' has a purpose, and thus can not be seen as categorical as it serves as a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Aquinas: Fourth way: Argument from Gradation of Being
1.)There is a gradation to be found in things: some are better or worse than others.
2.)Predications of degree require reference to the “uttermost” case (e.g., a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest).
3.)The maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus.
4.)Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.

In other words: There must be an absolute good/bad which we can judge everything else by, and the absolute for good is God. Think Plato - God is a yardstick. This is considered his weakest argument as there is not reason to why this 'yardstick' needs to represent absolute goodness. Cultural and historical relativity decide what is good, e.g. murder. In times of war, not so bad; satti in India not bad; street murder bad pretty much everywhere; etc... Social norms and values are subjective (link to sociology).

Christian sources of morality (ABC):
1.) Authority
2.) Bible
3.) Conscience

Christians make moral decisions based on:
1.) The bible
2.) the Church
3.) the Holy Spirit

Key things you need to know:
=> God created us in imago dei with freedom and responsibility
=> human sin (genesis 3) leads to corruption if freedom
=> how should we be moral?
=> eschatology justification - second coming - we all have to be nice little people in preparation for entering the kingdom of god.
=> The trinity - God, Jesus (both God and man) and the Holy Spirit (life-giving force, guidance)
=> OT - Judaic religion; decalogue at Mt. Sinai - authority of law about man's relationship with God and man's relationship with others -- they are apoditic and negative
=> NT - Jesus came not to abolish the law, but to fulfil it. Sermon on the mount

But you will need to remember the different conscience, biblical quotes, etc...
That's all i have... sorry. Hope it helps.

Reply 14

hannah-mai

Aithne13, thank you so much for your notes! They're so clear and useful :smile:

I just came across the tutor2u website which looks to be really helpful for this unit, but none of the links seem to work :frown:

It it the same for everyone, or just my stupid computer? http://tutor2u.net/re/a2_unit2791.htm < I really want to be able to look at the omniscience of God in relation to determinism bit...

Reply 15

ellie_1989

Thanks everyone for your help....im still confused but slightly clearer. The prob im having is the notes uve mentioned ive never heard of some of them before :s-smilie:

hmmm my teacher was CRAP! xxx

Reply 16

zizi90

you know with the psych ans socio part for the synoptic, what do you link it with? like im struggling to see how its synoptic, it just seems to be phiolosophy to me.

Reply 17

whatwhywhen100

The questions for socio/psych will be whether morality/ethics stem from God (i.e.god given conscience) OR the mind/society (freud etc - also Piaget)

So you're mixing socio/psych with the conscience with is ethics

hope that helps

Reply 18

tiger90

hannah-mai

Aithne13, thank you so much for your notes! They're so clear and useful :smile:

I just came across the tutor2u website which looks to be really helpful for this unit, but none of the links seem to work :frown:

It it the same for everyone, or just my stupid computer? http://tutor2u.net/re/a2_unit2791.htm < I really want to be able to look at the omniscience of God in relation to determinism bit...

those notes have been down for a couple of months unfortunately...i used them so much for AS and they were really helpful..i was really annoyed when i found that they had been taken off so i couldn't use them for A2 :frown:

i'm getting quite panicked about synoptic now!my teacher didn't even teach us anything...just basically told us to revise the stuff from the 2 years and make our own links between topics!arghhh

Reply 19

chriztina27

rep if anyone can answer this...
is there a philosopher/theory that argues there is life after death but that you don't have to be good in this life? like a logical theory for life after death that doesn't necessarily require a belief in a judging God..