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Considering I only have today and tomorrow to revise for it, I'm ****ting my pants. The only 2 topics that I revised for the ethics paper were free will and conscience which tend to crop up in the synoptic. I'm not revising religious/ethical language since it looks incredibly boring :biggrin:
Reply 2
Religious and ethical language is boring, but oh well. Omniscience is an easy one to do - i made some notes from an article, if anyone wants me to post them then I will.

Does anyone know exactly what the link between moral behaviour and life after death is? Obviously hell, the moral argument, but is there anything else?
Reply 3
Hey I thought we should help each other in this thread and throw in notes/essay plans on subjects we are not a sure about or need to know more on
Cpfoxhunt heres some stuff on morality and life and death that i thought of:
The general connection and possible question:
Do only religious people need to be moral because they belive in life after death?
(you will also need to think why non-religious people need to act moral)


why is the connection relevant -
Most religion either being Western e.g Christianity or Eastern - hindu belive that
A) There is an Afterlife
B) What we do in this life determines what will happen in the next (heaven or hell ro rincarnation etc)
So in theory it is very important for religious people to act morally as they will want to be rewarded after death rather then be punished or have less rewards
Counter - But isnt there reason fornon-religious people have reason to act moral as well?, religious people are just looking for reward, others argue that morailty help society or is part of just being nice to others (obviously write all this better im just throwing down general thoughts)

Part 1 why is morality necessary in connection to afterlife existing

Kant catagorical imperative - Imperative is inside all of us
We need to be virtuous/moral to achieve the summon bonum we do this by:
1)we should act in a way that we would want everyone else to act (e.g We are friendly because we want others to be friendly back)
2)We would want people to act this way at all times
Afterlife is necessary as we act moral to achieve a summon bonum, and this can only be achieved in a perfect world (afterlife) without evil/suffering impeding us.
Hick
We are moral because we want to know that we will be rewarded and also be statisfied by the fact that evil will be punished.
He talks of heroic acts and self sacrifice, we do these acts to be rewarded e.g. Endanger our own lives to save others because we are not scared of dying because we should be reward for it.
Therefore afterlife must exist because everyone naturally wants to help/save others.

Part 2 - why is morality necessary even if there is no afterlife
Humanist Argument - Dont need to be relgious or belive in heaven to be moral
Humans are sensitive and care for others - we treat others as we would like to be treated, it is part of our moral upbringing to form a peaceful society
Sociology - Look back at sociological argument if you can
bacially they are saying that we are moral for society to functions and so that everyone can live amongst one another, it is normal for us to be moral to others we dont need religion for morality

Extra - why we dont need to be moral for afterlife
Universalist argument - God is all-loving, God sends everyone to heaven
Have a little think about if this was true, would it be good or bad? arguments for both

Conclusion - basically talk about how both work and maybe give your own judgement if you want depding on the question

sorry for any spelling mistakes, thats my notes summed up and should be adaqeute for a 45 minute essay again depending on the question you may want to talk about each part with a different angle to the argument

Got anything useful for any other conenction subjects? Put them down..please!
Reply 4
Cheers for the links. Is it just me, or is this paper not so much about new philosophers and what they said about the link? So you wouldn't for example be able to quote ayer on the link between religious and ethical language, you would make the link yourself? The actual philosophers tend to come in on one side or another (religious or ethical?)

And some of the links are weak - surely the free will and problem of evil one is basically common sense boiling down to: if we don't have free will, evil is God's fault?

Some notes I made on omniscience as related to free will then.

Omniscience of God and Free Will.

Transcendent God (Out of time)

• Painting analogy: God sees our lives in the same way we see a painting. He is one or more ‘dimensions’ up, and sees all temporal events concurrently (as we would see a still image).
• Analogy of the mountain: God is as a man on a mountain, seeing all points of the road at once.
• God is therefore completely omniscient in the classical sense – he knows the future.
• YET free will is important morally, to allow us to love God.
• Therefore when we use the word ‘know’ of God, we do it analogically.
• His knowledge is of a different sort to ours (as would also be expected of a simple being).
• God’s knowledge is NOT CAUSAL (Boethius) – God knowing what we will do is caused by the fact that we freely choose to do it, in the same way that the man on the mountain seeing a winding road does not cause it to exist – its existence causes him to see it.
• However, this does open the door to a realist theory of the future – that as God can see it, it is potentially correct to say that such and such is a ‘future fact’
• This ignores the view that God may from his transcendent vantage point see all possible futures – a view which meshes nicely with Plantinga and quantum theory (Everitt many worlds view). A realist view of the future is not inevitable.

Predestination:
• Luther understood that Man’s free will was dictated by God or Satan, and that we could only change who our will was dictated by with the grace of God. ‘passively’ (Kenny)
• Whilst this solves the ‘problem’ of omniscience, most scholars agree that the consequent sacrifice of free will is too high a price to pay.
• We can seemingly direct our love too or from God – this view (shared by Calvinists as well as Luther) is too simplistic.

This leads to Eternal God.
• Eternal God is within time.
• He has a full view of the past, the present and the future which is predictable according to physical laws.
• If materialism holds, then he is also omnipotent. (Leibniz sufficiently powerful mathematician)
• If the ‘liberty of spontaneity’ holds (actions completely determined by upbringing, genes etc), and we are free to do what our determined nature wants us to, then omniscience also holds.
• If ‘liberty of indifference’ holds, then unless God directly influences the ‘moral self’, he cannot see the future.
• Perhaps he acts as a grandmaster – if we played a grandmaster at chess we would be sure to lose, but he would not have to know our moves before hand to be certain of this fact. (Geach “God is the supreme Grand Master&#8221:wink:
• God can predict that his will will eventually triumph.
• Yet how can he predict this? How can he manipulate anything without voiding free will? (see miracles and free will notes from last year)
• Everlasting god leads to anti realist statements in this case – no truth to be known until the actions take place.

Aretaic (Revisionary) view.
• Our freely undertaken actions shape our character.
• We must live with our character
• Our character shows on the outside and is visible to God.
• He can look at us to see our sin in us – he does not need to watch our every move, as everything that we do effects us. (Sutherland)
• We are responsible for our own character, and can become set in our habits – virtue and vice are habit forming, and it is easier to choose the path at the start. (Aristotle)
does anyone actually have any sample essays or anything 4 the connections paper?- i understand what i need 2 write about but i don't understand how to structure the essays! please help!!
Religious & ethical language is pretty boring but my teacher thinks it's the easiest to learn, due to how specific it is as a topic, & it didn't come up last year so chances are high that it may appear on Thursday!

Here's a sort of essay plan for stuff to include in an essay on religious & ethical language, sort of from the viewpoint of whether it is meaningful: (it'll be good revision for me to type this up!):

The meaning and function of ethical language is the focus of meta-ethics. can morals be proven like other facts or are they simply emotional responses?

If there is no agreement about the mening of ethical language then ethical debate is pointless. Religious language, the communication of ideas about God and faith, faces much the same problem.

Both ethical and religious language cause significant problems when it comes to their meaningfulness and the accuracy with which they communicate the concepts they are describing. attemps to define 'goodness' usually end up with us defining it in terms of something else e.g. the principle of utility "the greatest good for the greatest number". Similarly the religious believer is faced with problems when trying to define God nd trying to discern what is fact.

The Logical Positivists considered the defininition of a fact and believed that for religious language to be a fact it must be able to be proven factual just as literal statements are, by sense experience. David Hume, who held a conginitive viewpoint, agreed with this. he felt that religious language is therefore vapid and meaningless, because there is no sense experience to prove that the way we talk about belief and god is valid.

But The Verification Principle has come under much scrutiny, since, ironically, the theory itself can not be verified by sense experience, and thus the theory "dissolves in it's own acid".

Ayer tried to recitivy this by arguing for a weak form of the verification principle, stating that it was sufficient just to be able to know what sense experience could be used to make a statement probable, but this still poses a problem for religious language.

LP's attemted to slove problem by stating that VP is more of a recommendation than a fact, but the same could be said for religious language- a way of conveying truth but not literally.

Proponents in the belief that religious language is univocal believe that words about God have the same meaning when talking of other things- this lead to the Via Negativa, where we can understand what God is stating by what he isn't. but brian davies does not agree with this idea, stating that there are any number of things that we could say God is not, but this brings us no clear to discovering what he is.

So far these arguments fail to provide valid reasons for the use of religious language,

Thomas Aquinas recognised that there were difficulties when talking about religious language, he therefore considered it to be analogical rather than univocal or equivocal (which he believed brought God down to the level of mankind),

RL being analogical enables us to attribute meaning to God universally even though God's attributes cannot be compared to ours. This approach has an advantage in that we can show how language can be applied to God, it is a matter of the relationship between the human use and the religious use.

Anological language can be neccessary for both religion and morality because of the nature of both aspects of human life. we gain understanding of what is good and godly by comparision.

This also highlights the relationship between ethics and religion, if ethics is based on religion it may well use fundamental principles from religion- if not then will not be able to claim absolute universal authority.

A recent development in the argument, The Falsification Principle, considers that a statement is only true if there is evidence to count against it. This would mean that religious language is indeed meaningless because there is no solid evidence to prove or disprove it's vaildity.

Hare agreed that religious language may be non-cognitive, but he still saw religious statements to be meaningful, he regarded them as 'bliks' his term for unfalsifiable statements that still hold belief for the believer.

Paul Tillich advocated that symbols were the best way for us to know of God, we can use symbols to represent a higher divine entity, which would otherwise be unknown to us.

Ultimately whether religious language is meaningless comes down to the religious believer. Wittgenstein believed that we should focus on the individual believer and look at the use rather than meaning, He advocated that religious language is like a game and like all games it has its rules. None believers would not know the rules of a game and would therefore find all such talk meaningless. W's stance aims to protect the view of the religious believer from critque. Different religious belief systems have different rules therfore the meaningfulness of such language becomes a matter of individual interpretation. But this can of course present a problem with the communication of religious beliefs.

But what of ethical language? If our morals are based on a religious belief system then ethics does become meaningful to a religious believer. Ethical language thus faces much of the same problems as religious language.

Meta-ethics involves the study of trying to define the ethical language we use and offering explanations for its meaningfulness and vaility.

F.H Bradley advocates Ethical Naturalism- the belief that a statement could only be factual and have meaning if it can be verifed empirically like literal statements

But G.E Moore argues this would lead to Naturalistic Fallacy, and that an ethical statement is meaningful and factual because it is a available through intuition. he famously stated 'good is good and that is the end of the matter'. But this idea of an innate sense of good raises the question of why people still behave badly?

These two approaches offer cognitive explanations for ethical language, but subjective problems, as previously mentioned. Goodness not seen as an objective fact.

Emotivism, expressed by Ayer, attempts to incorporate emotions into ethics, incorporating our own attitudes/beliefs which is arguably much of what ethics is, thus making it more meaningful.

Ayer- when we state stealing is wrong we are simply saying 'boo' to stealing or 'yay' for other peoples property- goes no further than this.

Prescriptivsm incorporates this theory, but takes it further, claiming that we are 'prescribing' our beliefs to others.

But- many hold the view that ethics is more than simply approving/dissaproving an action, problems over whose presrcibed theory we should follow?

So- ethical and religious language both meaningful to individual believer but to the non-religious can be questionable. But arguably most of us do have an innate sense of what is right/wrong.



apologies for any typos, some of it is also more in note form.
Reply 7
I found this on an old thread and added some myself

FREE WILL AND THE PORBLEM OF EVIL

Intro - Is God responsible for evil in the world (problem of evil) or does the fact of Free will counter the problem of evil to no problem at all?

God is responsible for evil(not humans, not free will)

1) Nature of God- omnipotent, omni benevolent
[could prevent evil if all powerful, and would prevent evil if all loving]

2)Irenaean Theodicy- vale of soul making
[Evil is necessary to appreciate good]

3)Moral evil- in order for free will
[God is responsible for evil in that he gave us free will, but it must have been worth it]

4)Innocent suffering/Necessay suffering
[due to free will, which god gave us .: his fault]
[Necessay evil - Animal dies to feed other animals - God may have planned this - neccessary but still gods fault]

5)Hard determinists - God is responsible for everything, even hitler wasnt to blame


God isnt responsible for evil; (Humans Fault because of free will)

Probably good to make a intro here about free will, liberalist, indetermints to show you understand the AS content before the connections

1)Augustine
[evil doesn't exist, a privation of good]

2)Atheism
[No god, therefore no his fault]

3)Original Sin
[our fault, not gods]

4)Natural evil
[suggests determined world, therefore universal causation, therefore god isnt to blame]
[Augustine said Humans Created Disharmonies in the natural order]
(but...couldn't god prevent?)

5)Innocent Suffering
[random, therefore not gods fault]
holmeschapel1
does anyone actually have any sample essays or anything 4 the connections paper?- i understand what i need 2 write about but i don't understand how to structure the essays! please help!!



I've read the mark scheme for this paper and it is exactly the same as the mark scheme for the other two papers, except these questions are worth 60 marks rather than 45 each. In other words your answer can be structured the same was as on the other two papers, if you wish.

Hope that helps.
Reply 9
whats the psychology and sociology connection subject about? is it just how they both challenge religious belief like in the first paper but combined?
Reply 10
As far as I can tell, there's really no change at all - it would eem to be a pretty easy topic ...
Reply 11
I managed to source various synoptic connection sheets from a website that another user posted on here, i take no claim that these are mine, just want to share what i found
2 essays in how long? 2 hours?
Is that right?
I thought it was 2 essays in an hour and a half, 45 mins per Q, and you get a choice of 3 questions to choose from (oh yay) although personally I think that it should be 2 hours long for the amount of stuff we have to learn!
your right tis 45 mins per question so an hour and a half, but should be 2 in my opinion :smile:
I thought the other 2 papers ast week were going to be 2 from 3, but it was a choice from 4, thank God. So we might be lucky again.

1 hr 30 really isn't enough.

Anyway, do you think I can just not learn Sociology/psychology? Or is that too risky?
I think you should be ok with missing it out,
I personally won't have the time to go over psy/sociology, & it's my least favourite one to be honest, so I'll probably miss it out.
Reply 17
sadly it will only be from 3 choices. the other exams changed to four quite recently but sadly these ones haven't.
quite annoying as it means you can only really afford not to revise one of the links.

really cannot be arsed with general studies tomorrow, my uni doesn't accept it and it means i have to get up before midday which is never good. curse the teacher that said i should continue with it.
Right, Links.

I've just revised the link between Religious and ethical language. Free will, determinism, the omniscience of God, conscience and the problem of evil is fine. It all sort of bundles together

Missing out Sociology/Psychology.

What's left?

Free will and Life after death? I don't know if I could get an essay out of that, It's such an obvious answer. . .

What have I missed?
There are five topics:
1. the conscience or sense of moral resposibilty as possible existence of God
2. concept of free will and determinism and the relation between free will and the problem of evil
3. implications for ethics of the theories of psychology and sociology
4. relation between moral behaviour anf life after death
5. relation between ethical language and religious language

So far I have revised number one.... only four to go!!!! Keep going everyone!!!!