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Edexcel RS - foundations exam - 14th May 2015

I have been looking at past paper questions for the foundations exam and last year situation ethics was missed out and the year before that religion and morality was missed out. Do you think that this year, utilitarianism will be left out?:s-smilie::frown::confused::eek:

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i flipping hope not. I'm repeating this, so i need to do well aaagh :frown:

I've looked at all the past papers too, and basically all of them have had Util on them. I don't think they'll leave it out, but they might possibly combine Util and religion and morality (e.g. 'to what extent does utilitarianism contribute to an understanding of religion and morality' blah blah...), that's what my RE teacher has been discussing with me.

I'm absolutely terrified. šŸ˜„
Is this exam am or pm?
Reply 3
Can they combine design with cosmological?
As I've only learnt design
I'm really hoping for situation ethics to come up this year. How many ethical theories are people revising?
I thought they could only combine Util and Situation Ethics??
Reply 5
Original post by Dahir123
Is this exam am or pm?


Am
Do you know if we can combine part i. and part ii. into one 'mini essay'?
I have mainly revised situation so hopefully it comes up and utilitarianism doesnt:frown:
Reply 8
So scared for this. All of my teachers are saying util will defo come up because it does every year, but surely that makes it less likely to come up this year? can they combine any of the 'pairs'? we haven't done miracles, so that's out. i'm planning on design, util and evil and suffering. but what else do you think i should revise? maybe cosmo and situation? but i'm pretty weak on situation ethics and i find religion and morality so hard. help!!
anyone doing the cosmological argument?
Original post by Nandosfood
Do you know if we can combine part i. and part ii. into one 'mini essay'?

nah you can't I don't think, Part 1 is A01 and part 2 is A02, two separate marking points
Original post by jasmin_bhim
nah you can't I don't think, Part 1 is A01 and part 2 is A02, two separate marking points


My teacher lets us do it and he marks them. As long as you combine and answer the two it's fine (according to him) I don't know of anyone else on here who does that though so I'm a bit worried!
Original post by jasmin_bhim
anyone doing the cosmological argument?



Yep, cosmological, problem of evil and situation ethics / utilitarianism.

I am really hoping that situation ethics will come up as a question on its own, because the trend of the last few papers suggests that this will happen.. plus I just like situation ethics more


Anyone else doing situation ethics, do you think I should go into detail about the four presuppositions of the theory? Pragmatism, relativism, positivism, etc... or is that wasting time? I don't knowwww
Original post by TomWeller
Yep, cosmological, problem of evil and situation ethics / utilitarianism.

I am really hoping that situation ethics will come up as a question on its own, because the trend of the last few papers suggests that this will happen.. plus I just like situation ethics more


Anyone else doing situation ethics, do you think I should go into detail about the four presuppositions of the theory? Pragmatism, relativism, positivism, etc... or is that wasting time? I don't knowwww


I'm just explaining what they all are briefly, then giving a real-life example of pragmatism. Do we have to mention the controversy of Bishop Robinson in the church and legalism, antinomianism etc as it seems a bit waffly to me?? :s-smilie:
Original post by jasmin_bhim
I'm just explaining what they all are briefly, then giving a real-life example of pragmatism. Do we have to mention the controversy of Bishop Robinson in the church and legalism, antinomianism etc as it seems a bit waffly to me?? :s-smilie:


That's a good idea, I might just put in a sentence about each of them?

I put in one quote from Bishop Robinson: ā€œthere is no one ethical system that can claim to be Christianā€, but have left out all the antinomianism stuff, yeah it does seem a bit too waffly :/

What about those 'six fundamental principles' like 'love is the only norm', 'love decides there and then'... etc..? Not sure if worth mentioning or not
Original post by TomWeller
That's a good idea, I might just put in a sentence about each of them?

I put in one quote from Bishop Robinson: ā€œthere is no one ethical system that can claim to be Christianā€, but have left out all the antinomianism stuff, yeah it does seem a bit too waffly :/

What about those 'six fundamental principles' like 'love is the only norm', 'love decides there and then'... etc..? Not sure if worth mentioning or not


I only explained one and gave one of Fletcher's illustarations
Miracles, Situation Ethics, Sexual Ethics and War and Peace over here :smile:
Reply 17
Do you think they will combine cosmological with design?
My teacher said they could but if they did, how could their be another option for question 1?
[About philosophy and ethics]

My teacher put together a list of the topics covered by each exam since Jan09 - which is, as far as I'm aware, the year our syllabus started being taught. The only two topics which occasionally haven't featured are:
- Religion and Morality
- Situation Ethics
Otherwise, all of the other topics have come up consistently, every single year.

Someone said that 2015 will be the final exam paper made on this syllabus (can anyone confirm?), so it hardly seems like the time to shake things up.

They've never asked us to cover more than one topic in a single essay. (Even those odd "Sit Eth/Util" questions asked you to choose only one to talk about.)

My teachers never suggested we'd have to combine topics for a single essay - it never even went through my mind. I'll still revise a couple of extra topics, in case there's a particularly horrible question, but other than that, everything points to this exam paper being business as usual.

Good luck everyone! Should be fine. :smile:
Original post by ktk15
Do you think they will combine cosmological with design?
My teacher said they could but if they did, how could their be another option for question 1?


I really doubt it, if they did so many people would be disadvantaged.. I'm pretty sure you only need to learn one or the other :smile:

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