HKDSE ERS: Religion and Life

This compulsory domain, Religion and Life, examines ultimate questions: what counts as religion, whether belief in God is rational, why suffering exists, what a person is, and how religious convictions should shape decisions about birth and death. Questions reward accurate exposition of positions and, more heavily, evaluation applied to a concrete case rather than a list of theories.

Core concepts and rules

• Defining religion. Substantive definitions name the content (Tylor's "belief in spiritual beings"; Otto's numinous). Functional definitions name the work religion does (Durkheim's sacred/profane binding a society; Tillich's "ultimate concern"). Ninian Smart's seven dimensions - doctrinal, mythological, ethical, ritual, experiential, social, material - let you test whether Marxism or secular humanism counts as religious.
• Belief in God. Cosmological (Aquinas; Kalam), teleological (Paley's watch; fine-tuning), ontological (Anselm; Gaunilo's island; Kant: existence is not a predicate). Objections: infinite regress, Hume on causation, Darwinian selection displacing design.
• Suffering. The logical problem (Mackie) versus the evidential problem (Rowe). Theodicies: Augustine's privation and free will, Irenaeus/Hick's soul-making, Plantinga's free-will defence, process theodicy. Keep theodicy and defence distinct.
• Life-and-death ethics. Sanctity of life (imago Dei), quality of life, natural law's primary precepts and double effect, Bentham's hedonic calculus, Kant's formula of humanity, Buddhist ahimsa and the weight of intention (karma).

Worked example

A terminally ill patient in intractable pain requests a lethal injection.

1. Classify: active voluntary euthanasia; separate the moral question from the legal one.
2. Natural law: the precept of preserving life makes direct killing intrinsically wrong, yet double effect can permit proportionate sedation that foreseeably shortens life, if death is unintended.
3. Act utilitarianism: weigh relief of suffering against remaining goods and the social cost of eroding trust in doctors; rule utilitarianism may justify a legal ban.
4. Religious readings: Christian stewardship (life is God's gift, not absolute property); Buddhist compassion joined to the first precept.
5. Judgement: defend a criterion, e.g. autonomy bounded by protection of the vulnerable, and say what evidence would revise it.

Traps that cost marks

• Naming utilitarianism or natural law without applying it to the stated facts; the marks sit in the application.
• Confusing the logical and evidential problems of evil, so you answer an objection nobody posed.
• Calling Augustine's privation theory a "defence" when the question asks for a theodicy, or vice versa.
• Answering from "religion in general" when the question names a tradition (e.g. Christianity, Buddhism).
• Surveying views without stating a judgement or the criterion behind it.

Religion and Society

Religion and Society is an elective domain of HKDSE Ethics and Religious Studies. It asks what religion does in a society, how social forces reshape religion, and whether religious communities help or hinder cohesion, change and freedom. Answers are judged on whether you use sociological theories as tools of analysis on real institutions rather than recite them.

Core concepts and rules

• Founding theories. Durkheim: sacred/profane, collective effervescence, religion as society's self-worship. Marx: religion as superstructure and "opium", consolation under alienation. Freud: illusion and wish-fulfilment. Weber: the Protestant ethic, rationalisation, disenchantment. Berger: sacred canopy and plausibility structures. Bellah: civil religion.
• The secularisation debate. Classical secularisation theory (Wilson, Bruce) predicts decline through modernisation, pluralism and rationalisation; Stark and Bainbridge's religious-economy model predicts vitality where competition exists; Berger later spoke of desecularisation, and global Pentecostal growth is awkward for the classical thesis.
• Religion and politics. Theocracy versus the secular state; Catholic social teaching (Rerum Novarum, subsidiarity); liberation theology (Gutierrez, preferential option for the poor); fundamentalism (Marty; Almond and Appleby) as a reaction to modernity rather than a survival of tradition.
• Social change. Weber's elective affinity versus Marx's conservatism; abolitionism, the American civil rights movement (Black churches, Martin Luther King Jr.), Ambedkar's Dalit conversion.
• Hong Kong context. Basic Law Article 141 protects religious belief, and religious bodies run schools, hospitals and welfare services - evidence for functionalist and social-capital arguments.

Worked example

"Religion is always a conservative force." Assess.

1. Unpack "always": one counter-instance refutes the universal claim.
2. Case for: Durkheim's integrative function, Marx's legitimation of the status quo, established churches blessing the state.
3. Case against: Weber's Protestant ethic, liberation theology, the civil rights movement, Ambedkar.
4. Refine with Niebuhr's types: "Christ against culture" versus "Christ of culture" - the same tradition can be prophetic in one period and established in another.
5. Judgement: the outcome depends on whether the group is state-aligned or sectarian, so the claim is false as stated but identifies a real tendency.

Traps that cost marks

• Attributing to Weber the claim that Protestantism caused capitalism; he argued an elective affinity within a wider rationalisation process.
• Treating "opium of the people" as an insult rather than an analysis of consolation under alienation.
• Confusing secularisation (empirical decline) with secularism (a political ideology).
• Speaking of "religion" as a single actor; questions expect a named tradition or institution.
• Describing a theory without evaluating its explanatory power against evidence.

Religion and Science

Religion and Science is an elective domain of HKDSE Ethics and Religious Studies. It examines whether religious belief and scientific inquiry are rivals, what historical disputes actually turned on, and how far findings in cosmology, evolution and neuroscience constrain religious claims. Strong answers test models of the relationship against cases instead of asserting "harmony" or "warfare".

Core concepts and rules

• Models. Ian Barbour's typology - conflict, independence, dialogue, integration - is the standard framework; use it, then criticise it, since it treats both "religion" and "science" as monoliths and can mask real disagreements.
• Historical disputes. The Galileo affair (1633) turned on scriptural interpretation and authority as much as on astronomy; the Draper–White "warfare" narrative is widely criticised by historians as oversimplified.
• Creation and evolution. Young-earth and old-earth creationism, intelligent design (Behe's irreducible complexity; Kitzmiller v. Dover, 2005, held ID is not science), theistic evolution, Teilhard de Chardin's evolutionary theology.
• Cosmology. Big Bang and creatio ex nihilo (Aquinas: creation as dependence on God, not a temporal event); fine-tuning and the anthropic principle (Swinburne) against the multiverse reply.
• Miracles. Hume defines a miracle as a violation of a law of nature and rejects testimony for it; Swinburne replies with the principle of testimony. Ask whether laws are descriptive regularities or prescriptive necessities.
• Method. Popper's falsifiability and Kuhn's paradigms; methodological naturalism (a rule of inquiry) is not metaphysical naturalism (a claim about what exists).

Worked example

"Science and religion are bound to conflict." Assess.

1. Define the conflict model and give its strongest evidence: Galileo, Darwin, disputes over teaching creationism.
2. Test the evidence: these disputes are usually about interpretation and authority rather than data.
3. Present independence (Gould's NOMA) as one resolution, and note its cost - religion risks becoming untestable.
4. Present dialogue and integration (Polkinghorne, process theology), noting that many practising scientists are believers.
5. Judgement: conflict is contingent, not necessary, but where a religion makes empirical claims it must accept empirical scrutiny.

Traps that cost marks

• Asserting the warfare narrative as historical fact.
• Arguing "the Big Bang proves God", a gap argument vulnerable to future discovery.
• Equating methodological naturalism with atheism.
• Deploying Kuhn to claim science is merely subjective; his account is descriptive of normal science.
• Quoting Hume on miracles without stating what would count as a rebuttal.