Optional Theme: Philosophy of Religion
What is tested
Essays assess arguments for and against religious belief, the nature of religious language, and the rationality of faith. Precision about which argument you are attacking matters more than breadth.
Core concepts
- Ontological: Anselm's "that than which nothing greater can be conceived"; Gaunilo's island; Descartes; Plantinga's modal version; Kant's objection that existence is not a real predicate.
- Cosmological: Aquinas's ways; the Kalam argument; Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason.
- Teleological: Paley's watchmaker; Hume's Philo on the weakness of the analogy; fine-tuning and Darwinian responses.
- Problem of evil: logical versus evidential forms (Rowe's fawn); free-will defence; Hick's soul-making theodicy.
- Language: Ayer's verificationism; Flew's falsification parable; Hare's blik; Wittgensteinian language games; analogy.
- Experience and miracles: James's four marks (ineffability, noetic quality, transiency, passivity); Otto's numinous; Hume on testimony.
Worked example
"Assess the evidential problem of evil." Reasoning: Rowe argues that intense, apparently pointless suffering makes belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good God improbable, not logically impossible. The theist replies that goods such as soul-making or free will may require such suffering, and that our epistemic limits prevent judgements of pointlessness. Evaluate: the sceptical theist response threatens to undermine all moral knowledge, while the soul-making defence struggles with animal suffering and the scale of harm. Conclude on which side carries the burden of proof.
Traps
Confusing the logical and evidential problems; treating Hume as an atheist rather than a critic of arguments; quoting James's marks without applying them; calling Ayer's verification principle self-refuting without explaining why.