Religious Studies
Religious Studies
Here are some activities and things to think about, to get you started. You could write about any of the ideas that interest you, to keep your skills up to scratch:
Scenario: I’m on school lunch duty and I see and hear a girl saying nasty things to another girl while they’re eating their shepherd’s pie.
Why is it OK, and my duty, to tell her off for being unkind?
Why is it not OK for me to tell her off for eating meat (I’m vegetarian)?
Which, if any, of our beliefs are ‘just a matter of personal preference’ and which, if any, refer to some kind of absolute fact?
Should we leave others to their ‘personal preference’ in matters of religious belief, or are some religious beliefs right and others wrong in an absolute sense?
Is there an ultimate truth, an absolute right and wrong, about religious truth claims?
At what point, if any, does one culture have the right to tell another ‘you’re doing it wrong’ over matters of religion and ethics?
To what extent, if at all, do people have an obligation to share their religious faith with others – or should we keep our beliefs to ourselves and try and respect the views of others even if we think they’ll miss out on going to heaven?
Activity 2
‘Visit’ the British museum online
https://britishmuseum.withgoogle.com
Explore the collections at the Horniman Museum
https://www.horniman.ac.uk/collections/explore-our-collections … and any other museums you can find online.
Questions:
How much can we tell about people’s beliefs, from the objects they leave behind?
What makes an object a ‘religious’ object, rather than just a special one?
Why do religious people have sacred objects – what function do they serve?
Become a geek about one of the objects that takes your interest – find out more about the culture it comes from, what the people believed and how the object was used, as well as which questions remain unanswered.
Activity 3
Watch this documentary, ‘Barra Boy’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhGX1YCsvAM
Do you think the story provides convincing evidence for reincarnation? Why, or why not?
What do you think counts as ‘convincing evidence’ for life after death (e.g. scripture, near death experiences, nothing)? What makes evidence convincing or unconvincing?
Read the accounts in the gospels of the resurrection of Jesus (you could use biblegateway.com)
Matthew 28:1 – 10
Mark 16: 1 – 8
Luke 24: 1 – 10
John 20: 1 – 18
Do you find these stories convincing? Why, or why not?
Do you think the stories contradict each other, or are they just told from different points of view, in your opinion? What might account for the differences and the similarities between the stories?
Activity 4
Get to know some of the philosophers you will meet during your A level course
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01f0vzr
(They are quite long and heavyweight, don’t worry if this activity isn’t for you)
Practice your note-making skills by pausing and writing a summary of what you’ve heard so far. Think about whether you agree with what the philosopher is saying.
Listen to whatever takes your interest. For RS, you could concentrate on the ones starred, or others from this list:
Plato’s Republic
** St Thomas Aquinas
**Augustine
The Ontological Argument
** The Soul
**Redemption
**Kant
**Relativism
**Utilitarianism
William James
Nietzsche
Al-Ghazali
**Duty
**Good and Evil
Altruism
**Feminism
**Evil
Empiricism
**David Hume
Logical Positivism
**Mill
A starting point for A level – reading, listening and watching
Summer reading/listening suggestions
Here are a list of things that you might want to think about having a look at over the summer as a way into the course. This list is not exhaustive, definitive or a must-read list, just some ideas that may help give you a flavour of the course. Anything else you find that interests you would be equally good as a way in!
The Panpsycast podcast - especially Ethical Theories and Plato. Made for A level students on relevant topics.
Unbelievable podcasts, Premier Christian radio - genuinely balanced debates mostly between Christians and non Christians, high profile scholars.
Websites:
‘IthinkthereforeIteach’ – really good blog by an RS teacher.
‘PhilosopherKings’ another RS A level
Take a look on BBC iplayer – there are always relevant programmes on there.
Unbelievable ‘The Big Conversation’ – similar to the radio show but you can watch the debate too! Really high profile and interesting scholars:
https://www.thebigconversation.show/
Reading:
· Jostein Gaarder - ‘Sophie's World’ (also a good book by the same author for Christmas (!) called ‘A Christmas Mystery’ – try reading it throughout advent if that takes your fancy, one chapter per day!
· Nicky Hansell - ‘The Sage Train’
· Julian Baggini - 'Without God is everything permitted? 20 big questions in Ethics.' In some places called ‘Ethics – 20 questions’
· Julian Baggini – ‘The Pig That Wants To Be Eaten: And 99 Other Thought Experiments’
· For Theology/DCT, anything by Alister McGrath! ‘Introduction to Christian Theology’ is very good
· Stephen Law – ‘The Philosophy Files’
· Neil Messer - ‘Christian Ethics’
This really is a starting point – if there is anything else in the bookstores that takes your fancy, give it a go and let us know what you find!
Religious Studies is a great subject to help you build a wide range of skills, including improving your skills as a writer, speaker and thinker.
Even though you haven’t been able to finish your Year 11 course this year, you can still practice and develop Religious Studies skills at home. You can read, watch and listen to interesting ideas and think about the opinions expressed. How far do they match your own views? What might someone say if they had a very different opinion? Keep up your writing skills by putting your ideas down on paper – try, if you can, to write by hand, just to keep up the practice so that your handwriting isn’t completely illegible by the time you go back to school.
Reading good quality writing is the best way of improving your own writing. As you read a good writer, you will gain a better understanding of the meanings of new words and the ways in which carefully chosen words and punctuation can add real emphasis to someone’s argument. Different writers express themselves in different ways, and by reading them you will develop your own ‘voice’. Reading also helps with more basic skills such as spelling, because if you see a word written down often enough, you will know when it ‘looks right’ when you write the same word yourself.
Thinking skills can be developed if you try to take a questioning attitude to the things you watch, hear and read. Do you agree with what’s being said? If you watch a film where people have different attitudes towards something, which do you agree with most, or least, and why?
Here are some different activities and exercises for you to try if you’re learning from home. In Religious Studies, some of the topics can be quite sensitive, so if the activity involves an issue that might make you upset, choose a different one. These times are already difficult enough; nobody wants you to be upset when there’s no teacher there to talk you through your feelings.
Reading activities
Here are some books and some online resources you could try, if you can get hold of them. Don’t worry if they’re not available or you can’t get on the computer for very long – you won’t be at a disadvantage.
Reading anything of good quality, even if it’s a novel or a book about an entirely different topic, is always helpful for improving your skills, because you are practising your comprehension skills as well as practising understanding different ways in which writers express their ideas. Your own writing will improve, the more you read.
These are just some ideas – you don’t have to choose any of these if you’d rather read something else, and there are so many good books in the world that this list could go on for ever, but it’s a start:
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky: a huge and important ‘classic’ book, which takes time and effort and is well worth both. Raises issues of God, evil, rivalry, loyalty…
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: another classic that should be on everyone’s ‘must read’ list
The Puzzle of… series by Peter Vardy: this series of non-fiction books is about issues in religion and philosophy, very readable and you don’t have to be an expert to enjoy them. You can dip in and out of different chapters rather than having to start at the beginning and work through to the end.
Candide by Voltaire: another ‘classic’, this one takes a philosophical view of people’s approaches to evil and natural disaster. It’s a great book but the topics might be too difficult for you to cope with in the current circumstances, so try it if you want to but save it for more stable times if you don’t.
Critical thinking skills
Here are a couple of activities to try, to start you off, and then a selection of other directions you might like to take.
Activity 1
This is the first episode of a documentary about attitudes towards homosexuality:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMPl25oraVc
This is the first episode of Stephen Fry’s series ‘Out There’, where he explores attitudes to homosexuality in different parts of the world.
Here are some questions to think about and/or write about. Try to support your answers with reasoning.
Do you think there is a ‘right’ attitude and a ‘wrong’ attitude towards homosexuality? What is it that makes these attitudes right or wrong?
Some people might argue that different cultures have different ideas about morality, and that these different cultural beliefs should be respected even if we don’t agree with them. Do you think we should always respect the beliefs and attitudes of cultures different from our own, or should we try to persuade them to adopt our own beliefs instead?
What do you think are the aims of this television series? Do you think they are good aims? Do you think this first episode is successful in achieving its aims?
What religious reasons do people sometimes give for opposing homosexual relationships? How would you support or oppose these views?
Activity 2
Watch this documentary, ‘The Boy who Lived Before’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhGX1YCsvAM
1. Do you think the story provides convincing evidence for reincarnation? Why, or why not?
2. What do you think counts as ‘convincing evidence’ for life after death (e.g. scripture, near death experiences, nothing)? What makes evidence convincing or unconvincing?
3. Read the accounts in the gospels of the resurrection of Jesus (you could use biblegateway.com if you don’t have a Bible at home).
Matthew 28:1–10
Mark 16:1–8
Luke 24:1–10
John 20:1–18
4. Do you find these stories convincing? Why, or why not?
5. Do you think the stories contradict each other, or are they just told from different points of view, in your opinion? What might account for the differences and the similarities between the stories?
Resources to help develop your thinking skills
Books
The Pig that wants to be Eaten by Julian Baggini
50 Philosophy Ideas you really need to know by Ben Dupré
Think by Simon Blackburn
The Blind Watchmaker, and/or The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
These suggestions are only a few of the very many available, so don’t worry if you can’t get hold of these specific titles.
Online resources
The Philosophy Man (thephilosophyman.com)
This website gives you lots of different ideas to think about. Some are for younger children but you could try the ‘brainsqueezers’. These are good if you don’t have too much time, or if you’re finding it difficult to settle to anything more concentrated.
The Philosophers’ Magazine (philosophersmag.com)
Try the games on this website, and read the commentaries that go with them. Lots to think about!
Some things to watch and think about
All kinds of films and series have philosophical and religious ideas in them, so follow your own interests! You could try these, or choose something else, but try and use them as a stimulus for thinking and writing, rather than just sitting in front of them:
The Good Place
The Matrix
Unorthodox
Twelve Angry Men
TED Talks
These are usually wonderful, with plenty to stimulate your questioning and reasoning skills. Some favourites:
Elizabeth Loftus – ‘How reliable is your memory?’
Dan Gilbert – ‘Why we make bad decisions’
Richard Dawkins – ‘Militant atheism’
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – ‘We should all be feminists’
Damon Horowitz – ‘Philosophy in prison’
There are loads of talks on here, so use the search engine to find topics that interest you. Practise note-taking; write notes as you listen, just as you would if you were listening to a real-life lecture, and practise the skill of jotting down key points at speed. Ask yourself questions when you get to the end: what were the speaker’s key messages? Do you agree with the speaker? What might someone who disagrees say, and what might their reasons be?
Research skills
There are all kinds of resources online and in books to help you, if you want to start to learn a little more about some of the philosophers you will meet in your A level course.
Activity 1
Use Wikipedia or a good encyclopaedia such as Britannica or the Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy as a starting point. Follow some of the links in the articles. You could do some research about:
Plato
Aristotle
Aquinas
Bentham
Mill
Hume
Kant
Practice using a range of sources to find out about a single person. When you have gathered together a range of information, try to synthesise it into a single piece of writing of your own.
Activity 2
The BBC has some great podcasts available:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01f0vzr
They are quite long and heavyweight, so don’t worry if this activity isn’t for you.
Practice your note-making skills by pausing and writing a summary of what you’ve heard so far. Think about whether you agree with what the philosopher is saying.
Listen to whatever takes your interest. For RS specifically, you could concentrate on the starred topics and then move onto others from this list:
Plato’s Republic
Augustine
The Soul
Kant
Utilitarianism
Nietzsche
Al-Ghazali
St Thomas Aquinas
The Ontological Argument
Redemption
Relativism
William James
Duty
Good and Evil
Altruism
Feminism
Evil
Empiricism
David Hume
Logical Positivism
Mill