Aqa A level Religious Studies

Hi! I’m self studying this course and was wondering is everything we need to know in the textbook/specification? Like for the design argument is all we need to know Hume/Paley or will i get marked down for including Tennant/Aquinas 5th way.
Thank you so much!

Hi! I’m self studying this course and was wondering is everything we need to know in the textbook/specification? Like for the design argument is all we need to know Hume/Paley or will i get marked down for including Tennant/Aquinas 5th way.
Thank you so much!

It's complicated because it depends on the exam question you get. If you get a 10 mark question asking you to examine Paley's design argument, then most of the marks will be for just doing that. You could mention Tennant perhaps, but for it to be relevant you'd have to show how tennant developed specitically Paley's ideas.

15 mark questions are more forgiving because you could show that Tennant/Aquinas5thway are more (or less) successful versions of the design argument than Paley's regarding overcoming criticisms.

Reading around the subject, doing extra reading etc is all great - but the important thing to understand is that you can only get asked questions about what is on the specification - and the questions can be specific and you need to be ready to answer a whole full question on the specific things mentioned on the spec.

The text book is not great in my opinion. It's way too long and a lot of the strengths/weaknesses are quite boring. I'm making my own set of notes but the AQA ones won't really be finished until the end of the summer holidays. You can find them here: https://alevelphilosophyandreligion.com/aqa-religious-studies/