1. Welcome to a taster session in: A Level Religious Studies
Miss Evans

2. What will I study for A Level Religious Studies?
Does the problem of evil disprove God?
Can you still be a Christian and commit murder?
Is ‘faith’ a sufficient reason to believe in God?
Developments in Christian thought
Philosophy
What is real?
Was Jesus really divine?
Is there such a thing as the soul?
How do we know God exists?
Will everyone go to heaven?
Ethics
At the end of Year 13 students will have three exams based on each topic and will answer three questions in each
Questions will be a mix of content from Year 12 and Year 13 – every year is important as there are no AS papers
Questions are essay style questions which are mainly about evaluation (loosely link to 6 mark question in Edexcel paper)
What does it mean to do good?
Are some acts always wrong?
Would you kill one person to save a hundred people?
Does morality depend on the situation?

3. Meta-ethics seeks to answer deep questions such as what words like good and bad, right and wrong actually mean
Ethics
Normative ethics tries to establish what is right and what is wrong by proposing systems for working out how human beings should behave and why
Aim of today’s session:
To understand the different branches of normative ethics
To discover what is important to you when making moral decisions: the act itself or the consequence of an act?
Some systems focus on the act itself, others focus on the consequences or both and some ethical systems focus on the person
What do students think of when they think of ethics? Introduce times they may have heard of ethics e.g. ‘ethical dilemma’ ‘this goes against medical ethics’
Explain meta-ethics and normative-ethics
Introduce aim for this session is for students to understand the different branch of ethics and work out what is more important for them when making moral decisions – the act or the consequence

4. Let’s test your ethics…
What do you think about the prisoner’s actions?
What did you decide to do?
What factors influenced your decision?
What does this experiment tell us about moral decision making?
Stop the clip at 2min22 – Students to discuss what they would do (assume they are in the civilian boat)
Feedback discussions then play the remainder of the clip
After whole clip is shown – discuss the four questions

5. What are the different types of normative ethics?
Read through the information on the different types of ethical systems and answer the questions provided.
p146-7 in ‘Oxford A Level Religious Studies for OCR’ textbook (do not photocopy last paragraph on universal laws)
Questions on the information sheet
Reflection: Do you believe ethics come from beliefs (religious or philosophical ones) human psychology or something else?
Normative ethics tries to establish what is right and what is wrong by proposing systems for working out how human beings should behave and why

6. What type of normative ethics suits you best?
In pairs you are to take it in turns to interview your partner on a range of ethical dilemmas. The type of normative ethics that suits you best will be revealed shortly!
Reflection: Were there some dilemmas that you were unsure about what to do? What does this tell us about moral decision making?
Normative ethics tries to establish what is right and what is wrong by proposing systems for working out how human beings should behave and why

7. What type of normative ethics suits you best?
Mostly A’s...
Congratulations, you are a deontologist!
You believe that ethics should be focused on the act which is either intrinsically good or bad.
You may believe acts are important because you are motivated by duty or a belief that God has revealed e.g. through the Ten Commandments what acts are moral and immoral.
Mostly B’s...
Congratulations you are a teleologist!
You believe that ethics should be based on the consequences of an action.
What is morally good is determined by the end result e.g. telling a lie to your friend may be justified if it brings about pleasure or reduces pain.
Teleologists also tend to focus on the numbers affected by moral decisions.
Mostly C’s...
Congratulations you are a hybrid!
You believe that ethics should be focused on both the act and the consequence. You believe in following rules but in extreme cases, you may perform a bad act to achieve a loving outcome.
Or neither an act-centred or consequence-centred approach suits you, so you prefer a person-centred approach to ethics.
Normative ethics tries to establish what is right and what is wrong by proposing systems for working out how human beings should behave and why