RS OCR Essays

Does anybody know where I can get an essay marked for OCR RS?

Yeah post it here and I'll mark it. I've done the exam marking for OCR before.

Youre a life saver
Do religious experiences prove the existence of God? (40 marks)
It could be argued that religious experience is clear proof of God through observing the effects and qualities of the experience. On the other hand, this idea could be denied through the acceptance of the mystical events being of different origin (e.g., psychological or physiological) as thinkers such as Freud and Persinger would claim.
Throughout history, thousands of claims have been made to argue for religious experience in the eyes of God, but the validity of these claims can be tested in accordance with William James’ criteria. He argues that a religious experience can be validated as real if the event carries four certain qualities: noetic, knowledge was gained in the event, transcendent, it was temporary, passive, it happens beyond yourself and ineffable, we cannot use human language to describe it. If the event successfully obtains these four qualities, James’ provides confidence that this event was of divine origin. Arguably the most significant religious experience in Christian history meets this criterion: Saul on the road to Demarcus- he couldn’t explain his experience, it was finite, others could hear the voice and he gained knowledge that Jesus was the son of God. Although James’ argument seems valid due to the significant theological support, events such as these rely solely upon trust; it is possible for people to lie. For example, six teenagers in 1981 Yugoslavia claimed that they experienced the Virgin Mary explaining that the world needs more prayer, but this was denounced with scepticism by the Roman Catholic Church. Thus, demonstrating that although religious experience can be validated through the qualities of an event, the individual accounts are unreliable and susceptible to deceitfulness.
As a result, due to the lack of reliability of religious experiences, William of Ockham would argue that we should just accept the simplest conclusion. In the case of religious experience, it would be easier to accept physiological and psychological conclusions rather than divine arguments. Persinger developed a neurological explanation of religious experience through the ‘God helmet’. This is a device that manipulates our brain waves and consequently found through this manipulation that religious experience did occur. This argument was responded to by theologians claiming that the manipulation of brain waves is achieved through God’s omnipotence during religious experience. Overall, the neurological remains valid due to neurology’s objective and falsifiable methods that remain absent throughout religious experience. Karl Popper would mature this argument as he believes that falsifiability is a crucial element to a theory being accepted as fact. This adds validity to Persingers falsifiable argument, allowing religious experience to be more valid of a naturalistic origin rather than a theological origin.
Schleiermacher made a controversial argument defending religious experience as he believed that these events were self-authenticating and as a result, they require no testing to verify the claims. This argument is not accepted by the Roman Catholic Church as they argue that a religious experience must be tested for Biblical consistency. Furthermore, accepting all claims of religious experience could be dangerous as some have clear narcotic source and hallucinations that are inconsistent with the Bible. Thus, making Schleiermacher’s argument highly unsuccessful and could denounce the previously accepted Christian teaching if the church began to accept clear psychological hallucinations as dogma.
Modern psychology would argue that religious experience doesn’t prove the existence of God. Freud begins his argument like Marxist claims that “religion is the opium of the people”, Freud argued that humans have an innate fear of death, so they developed God as a solution to the fear of a finite life on our finite world. Additionally, he claimed that all adults seek an older masculine figure, explaining why we label God “the Father”. In combination Freud compares religious experience to a mirage in a desert; they are both wishful thinking. As a result, this argument claims that religious experience doesn’t prove the existence of God, it is simply wishful thinking of a Father figure and an infinite life. However, Freud comparing a religious experience to a mirage would be heavily criticised by James’ because he argues that the effect tells us the validity. A religious experience would change somebody’s lifestyle, religion and ethics whereas a mirage would have no long-term effects. This counter argument is highly effective due to the real-life case studies of religious experience. Nicky Cruz was a gangster in New York when he slapped a preacher for explaining that God loves him, over the next weeks he felt immense guilt and had a religious experience that ultimately made him convert to Christianity and spread the word of Christ. Therefore, using the understanding of Nicky Cruz’ life, we can make a distinction between religious experiences and mere hallucinations (mirages) which reduces the successfulness of Freuds argument. Thus, this develops the validity of the claims made by James and dismisses the possibility of a psychological explanation; implying that religious experiences do highlight the existence of a divine being.
Overall, there are clear criticisms to religious experiences being proof of the existence of God, however they aren’t fatal flaws to the argument as William James provides many successful counter claims that strengthens the argument for religious experience being for the existence of God. Despite this, the multiple claims argument makes it clear that religious experience isn’t truly proof of one individual God as these experiences occur universally in all religions. As a result, although theologians are successful in defending religious experience from scientific arguments, the arguments made do no prove the God of Christian theology due to the universal nature of these events.

I'm a fan of putting your thesis/conclusion/answer to the question at the end of your intro 'this essay will argue...'. It's not essential but it does help to start your line of argument straight away,
Good AO1 for James. Though you're not really bringing out his actual arguments for why he thought religious experiences were valid. He thought their cross-cultural similarities and life-changing effects was evidence that they came from a higher power.
I think you should find a better evaluation of James too. The fact that similar religious experiences happen in all different cultures all around the world is good evidence that at least they aren't all lies!
When using Ockham's razor - it's best to say "we can use Ockham's razor to draw conclusion X" - rather than saying Ockham himself would have made the argument. Ockham was actually religious so he'd be shocked at the way his argument is used in support of atheism! It's valid though, just not what he personally would have agreed with. I'm nit picking here a bit tbh.
Persinger is good, the counter is fine. Popper is ok - but you haven't properly explained how falsification supports Persinger over the argument that the God helmet could simply be revealing the mechanism by which God creates religious experiences. Are you thinking that the idea that God affects the brain is unfalsifiable, whereas Persinger's theory is falsifable because we could get more evidence which might disprove it? That would make sense - but you have to spell that out.
The Schliermacher part is ok - but quite short. Would be better to delete this and focus more on developing your other points.
You start by saying Freud is like Marx - but in what way? In that they both seek naturalistic explanations of religious experiences? Need to explain that.
The point about the mirage in the desert - that is not Freud's own example! It just illustrates his point.
The counter to Freud from James is good - though it's a little weird because you already countered James before!
I see that in your conclusion you offer one final counter - the multiple claims issue. Firstly, that criticism doesn't work against James because James is a pluralist. Secondly - don't do new arguments in the conclusion! They can't be properly evaluated if merely mentioned there - it comes across too much like an assertion without justification.
This would get like 30/40 - low A grade.
If you want more marks than that, you need to make sure your evaluations are more developed and more interesting in the ways I've suggested.
Your conclusion also needs to be better - properly summing up and following from your essay rather than turning things around with one final argument that isn't actually then evaluated.
See my notes for this topic here:
https://alevelphilosophyandreligion.com/ocr-religious-studies/ocr-philosophy/religious-experience/religious-experience-summary-notes/

I'm a fan of putting your thesis/conclusion/answer to the question at the end of your intro 'this essay will argue...'. It's not essential but it does help to start your line of argument straight away,
Good AO1 for James. Though you're not really bringing out his actual arguments for why he thought religious experiences were valid. He thought their cross-cultural similarities and life-changing effects was evidence that they came from a higher power.
I think you should find a better evaluation of James too. The fact that similar religious experiences happen in all different cultures all around the world is good evidence that at least they aren't all lies!
When using Ockham's razor - it's best to say "we can use Ockham's razor to draw conclusion X" - rather than saying Ockham himself would have made the argument. Ockham was actually religious so he'd be shocked at the way his argument is used in support of atheism! It's valid though, just not what he personally would have agreed with. I'm nit picking here a bit tbh.
Persinger is good, the counter is fine. Popper is ok - but you haven't properly explained how falsification supports Persinger over the argument that the God helmet could simply be revealing the mechanism by which God creates religious experiences. Are you thinking that the idea that God affects the brain is unfalsifiable, whereas Persinger's theory is falsifable because we could get more evidence which might disprove it? That would make sense - but you have to spell that out.
The Schliermacher part is ok - but quite short. Would be better to delete this and focus more on developing your other points.
You start by saying Freud is like Marx - but in what way? In that they both seek naturalistic explanations of religious experiences? Need to explain that.
The point about the mirage in the desert - that is not Freud's own example! It just illustrates his point.
The counter to Freud from James is good - though it's a little weird because you already countered James before!
I see that in your conclusion you offer one final counter - the multiple claims issue. Firstly, that criticism doesn't work against James because James is a pluralist. Secondly - don't do new arguments in the conclusion! They can't be properly evaluated if merely mentioned there - it comes across too much like an assertion without justification.
This would get like 30/40 - low A grade.
If you want more marks than that, you need to make sure your evaluations are more developed and more interesting in the ways I've suggested.
Your conclusion also needs to be better - properly summing up and following from your essay rather than turning things around with one final argument that isn't actually then evaluated.
See my notes for this topic here:
https://alevelphilosophyandreligion.com/ocr-religious-studies/ocr-philosophy/religious-experience/religious-experience-summary-notes/