Optional theme 5: Philosophy of religion

Philosophy of religion focuses on some of the central concepts in religious traditions, raising fundamental questions about the nature of our existence. This optional theme explores philosophical questions about the nature and existence of God, the nature of religious language, and different aspects of religious experience and behaviour. It explores questions such as the following.

• Can God be defined?

• Can we prove the existence of a higher being through reasoning or experience?

• What is the nature and scope of religious language?

• Is spirituality possible without religion or belief in a higher being?

• Could religion be seen as a purely social phenomenon?

The first topic focuses on exploring the nature and existence of God, allowing for discussion of different beliefs about God, and different versions of theism such as monotheism and polytheism. It also looks at some of the attributes ascribed to God in different traditions, such as the traditional Judeo-Christian concept of God as omniscient and omnipotent. This topic also focuses on the question of whether we have reason to think that God does or does not exist, exploring some of the main arguments for and against the existence of God.

The second topic examines religious language and whether it is possible to talk about the infinite and divine in language used to talk about the finite and the human. The third topic explores different types of religious experience and behaviour such as meditation, prayer and near-death experiences. It also examines controversies over claims to have experienced the divine, providing the potential for interesting links to psychology and neuroscience.

This theme encourages engagement with a wide variety of different philosophical perspectives. For example, discussions on the nature of religious language could explore the way that religious language is used symbolically and metaphorically in the Sikh text the Guru Granth Sahib, or the suggestion that God can only be talked about in terms of what he is not by exploring Maimonides’ writing on the Via Negativa in his Guide for the Perplexed (1995).

Links to the core theme

This optional theme provides opportunities for links to the core theme by exploring questionssuch as whether religion can give meaning to human life or provide insight into what it is to behuman. It also allows for discussions of the contribution of religion to an understanding of the selfand the role of community in being human, for example, through discussion of the centrality of theconcept of Ummah in Islam.

Links to TOK

There are also links to TOK regarding faith as a way of knowing, including questions such as therelationship between faith and reason, and whether faith is essentially irrational. This theme also raises TOK questions about whether it is possible to know God, whether it is possible to use human language to describe the divine and how we decide between the competing claims of different systems of religious knowledge.

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