Lesson video

Hi there.

My name is Mrs. Cooper.

Hopefully you're joining me for this final revision lesson after enjoying all of my other lessons on philosophy and ethics.

Obviously, we've described this unit as non religious worldviews.

So we've looked at things to do with science, we've looked at philosophy.

Hopefully, you remember philosophy is about a search for truth and that of wisdom.

We've looked at different views about the meaning of life, and whether or not God exists.

And essentially, we've been looking at a lot of philosophical arguments whether or not God exists.

We've also looked at morality and ethics and ways different philosophers suggest we should live our lives.

We also spent one lesson looking at equality.

Hopefully, if you haven't looked at all the previous lessons, this taster might make you go back and have another look.

This lesson then is designed to be a quick revision of all the things that we've gone through.

When you're ready, make sure you found yourself a nice quiet spot to sit and work.

Please turn your mobile phone off if you can, unless you're using it to watch this lesson.

So at least turn your apps off, so you don't get distracted.

Make sure that you've got one coloured pen and then a different colour pen or pencil to make alterations.

You've got some paper, and that's it.

Okay, so, let's get started, then.

Hopefully, we're going to be really quick, this is going to be really enjoyable.

And by the end of it, you're going to remember all this brilliant stuff you've been learning.

Okay, so as I've just said, we're looking at non religious views.

So we're going to do a general cover of philosophy of religion.

We're going to quickly go through ethics and different ethical views, and we're going to do a little bit on equality.

So let's get ready.

Make sure you've got that pen and paper and we're ready to go.

So philosophy of religion, so the first thing that I would like you to do is pause the video to complete the following task.

So you can use one big sheet of A4 or even A3 if you like to have really detailed big writing.

On one side of your paper, so you can divide your piece of paper in half, on one side, you're going to have arguments for the existence of God.

On the other side, you're going to write arguments against so think of all the things you've learned, all the things you can think of what things might be evidence towards arguing that God does exist, and what may you have or what do you know, which could be evidence against God's existence? So first of all then, we're going to go through the first cause theory.

If you remember, this is a philosophical argument, arguing that God exists and more importantly, God exists because God was the first cause of the entire universe.

So if you remember, the argument goes that something has to have caused everything else to happen in the universe.

We can talk about the Big Bang Theory, so science is the Big Bang is what created the universe.

I'm going to go into that in a bit more detail in a minute.

But the first cause theory suggests that it was God that started that Big Bang, that everything that we have experience of goes under the laws of cause and effect, like the phone boxes that I've got on the picture, one phone box has been pushed over and it's toppled all the others over.

In the same way everything in life goes with those laws of cause and effect, which is exactly the same as the universe.

The Big Bang Theory entirely supports this.

However, somebody that follows the first cause theory will say that it was God that caused that Big Bang.

So next theory, the design argument, this was the original formulation of this was by someone called William Paley.

He said that if you found a watch in a field, you wouldn't assume that it just grown there.

It's too complex and therefore it must have had a designer.

In the same way the world is so complex.

If you look at things like the human eye, the uniqueness of a human fingerprint, the way that we've got all these different bio systems, it suggests that there must have been a designer because it is so complex.

And this is also known as intelligent design.

Now, what I'd like you to do, is if you haven't already got those two arguments down, can you add them to your spider diagram? When you're ready, please unpause the video and resume.

So let's just go through my answers then what you should have added was on the arguments for column, the design argument and the first cause theory, when you're ready, and you've written those down and made sure they're in there, you can add any more details if you wish, then resume your video.

The next theory is the Big Bang theory.

This is the scientific explanation for the beginning of the universe, what we call these explanations beginning of the universe different ones are cosmological arguments, because we're talking about the cosmos, or the universe.

There's a scientific theory, the current one is that 13.

7 billion years ago, everything that exists was in this hot, dense state, which suddenly exploded and is expanding.

Evidence that supports this is the fact that actually if you listen to the sound of the universe, there is always a sound, which sounds like the aftermath of an explosion.

The fact that when you look in time, the whole universe is still moving away and apart from each other, which suggests that at one time it was all together.

So this is what supports the Big Bang theory.

What's also been able to help support the Big Bang theory has been the Hadron Collider in CERN.

This was a place where they managed to try and recreate the conditions of Big Bang to see if that is possibly what happened.

They also managed to uncover more about the Higgs boson, which if you watch my first lesson, you know is also known as a God particle because it is something that gives matter to other things, and therefore, it's part of the creation of the universe.

Now, as I mentioned before, the Big Bang theory is a scientific theory.

And there is no part of this scientific theories that says God is any part of this creation.

However, the Big Bang theory can still support the first cause theory.

Okay, so the next scientific theory that we will look at then, is the theory of evolution.

Remember, we did unpick the word theory in a little bit more detail in these lessons.

A theory is something which tries to give some evidence to a suggestion about something, but we don't have total proof because nobody was there to watch the world being created, or evolution happen because it happens over millions of years.

So there is nobody that is that immortal, that can live forever to see that, not that we know of anyway.

So the theory of evolution was introduced by somebody called Charles Darwin.

He wasn't the first person to introduce it, but he's the most famous person to have really written about it.

He suggested that actually, we are all here by some kind of chance.

Because there have been lots of times when people are born and some of us are born with mutations.

Sometimes those mutations help in the environment we're in.

And that means that they make us more able to use the resources where we are.

There are some adaptations and mutations which make it less easy for us to survive.

So the ones of us that do have the mutations that are great and work we're the ones that continue in wherever it is we are, in our environment, in our habitat, and we'll continue that genetics and we'll have more of us.

The ones that don't have such good mutations will die out and possibly not live until adulthood and therefore into a point where they can have offspring.

Some evidence that we have to support this and if you look at my picture of the.

I'm pointing the wrong way, if you look at my picture there, where it starts an ape, and then moves up to different sort of formations until it's human.

So our evidence is we have the bodies of Neanderthals and what we call the missing link.

They are almost like human bodies, but they're not.

And they're somewhere in between monkeys and humans, but this will have taken place over billions of years.

So when we talk about natural selection, its nature that allows us to improve and continue.

It's in our DNA, which is our genetics, which continues on.

So when we have certain genetics that survives better, that will continue on.

But it is essentially by chance.

Now, to give a better analogy to help understand this, I've got a picture of a monkey and a typewriter.

If you had a million monkeys in a room and they were all typing on typewriters, one of them at some point would spell out the word Shakespeare or they'd spell out the word evolution.

Now, this wouldn't be because that monkey is able to spell it, is because if they are just tapping away, you've got all these different monkeys and they're all tapping away and tapping away and tapping away, at some point, they're going to make some words, but it's entirely by chance.

It is not because they are intelligently designed.

In the same way, it's by chance that we are here we have mutated and adapted to the environments we are in.

So now I'd like to pause the video and add to your arguments for and against the existence of God.

When you're ready resume the video.

Using a different coloured pen, please now add to your arguments.

But now you can see I have added evolution and the Big Bang.

Resume when you are finished.

So now we're going to look at humanism and atheism.

Now the reason why I've put these two together because they were two separate lessons is because humanism and atheism have a lot in common.

Often, humanists or atheists not always but very often, they have some very shared ideas about where beliefs and ethics come from.

And much of their history is intertwined.

So both the beginnings of humanism and atheism started in the Enlightenment period, which was known as the Age of Reason.

It was a time where people stopped blindly reading holy books and saying this is where our truths and our rules come from.

And it was a time when science was taken more seriously, or what we might call empirical evidence, people only believed things if they could see them, hear them, smell them, taste them, or touch them.

Essentially, if you could use your senses, then your senses will be able to prove it.

If you can't prove it by the senses, then you will be sceptical, and you will not necessarily going to believe it.

Which is why lots of people at this time started to question God.

So this is where humanists and atheists get their rules from.

Humanism is not a religion, but there are many things that they share with religions, like having rites of passage ceremonies, they do have a book, they do meet up.

They do have some shared values, whereas atheists could be anyone.

They're not exactly a group of people that will meet up together.

But essentially, neither of them believe in God and they don't believe that you need to believe in God to live a happy life or need God to give you rules to follow.

Once again please pause the video to add to your arguments for or against.

When you're ready please resume.

Now using a different coloured pen, add to your arguments.

I have now included humanism and atheism in the arguments against.

Now, the next part we are going to look at is some keywords to do with religious experience because this is one argument that somebody would say God must exist because of all the people that have religious experience.

What I'd like you to do is pause the video for five minutes and write out the key words with a matching definition.

Remember, they are not currently next to their matching definition.

When you're ready resume the video.

So near death experience is nearly dying and having an experience of God.

Quite often people can be clinically dead for a couple of minutes and they can come back describing everything that happened when they were supposed to be dead.

We went into this in more detail during that lesson.

So please do have a look, if you find that interesting.

A miracle is something that happens that goes against the laws of nature.

Somebody maybe they should have died and they suddenly get better or somebody is able to have a child when they were told they weren't able to.

These are all things that people might describe as a miracle.

A conversion experience is an experience of God that is so amazing, it changes that person.

And the numinous is a feeling of awe and wonder.

Now if you can pause the video, please add to your arguments for and against.

And as you can see, I have added religious experience to arguments for God's existence.

This is why some people will say God does exist.

So, religion and sociology.

So, religion and sociology, sociology is the study of society.

It began with somebody called Emile Durkheim, but the person we really focus on when we're looking at religion in this unit is somebody called Karl Marx, because he said that religion was the opiate of the masses, that it kept poor people oppressed by the rich.

If you remember, we talked about the fact that sociology uses observation, interviews, surveys, to study a group.

So Marx was one of the first sociologists and he used these to look at how people acted within religion.

He said that religion oppressed the poor by first of all making poor people feel like they're important and special.

But then by having the rich in society control the poor by the rules within religion.

For example, most religions say actually, you shouldn't get rich.

So it was keeping the poor, poor and the rich, richer.

Marx also said that people felt the need to have religion as sort of a comfort, and therefore, that's how it was so strongly oppressing everybody because people were too worried to leave their religion.

They were too worried of the bad consequences that might happen if they were no longer religious, and this is why Marx claimed it had such a strong hold on people.

Some different theories that we looked at about religion and psychology.

Psychology is the study of the human brain and mind and the way that we think.

So the most famous psychologist that the world is probably ever known was somebody called Sigmund Freud.

He had some really interesting beliefs about all sorts of things.

A lot of them have been sort of disproved or disputed since but he's still regarded incredibly highly in the world of psychology.

He said that religion was a comfort to people, they needed to feel like there was a comforting father figure always looking out for you.

So even when bad things happened, people could survive and be happy, because they believed that there was someone always looking out for them.

This doesn't necessarily mean that he was saying that God doesn't exist.

But essentially he was saying that it didn't really matter whether or not God exists.

This is how the effect that religion has on people.

So let's do a couple of true or false questions.

Sociology is the study of society.

Three, two, one.

True.

Marx said that religion gives people comfort.

Three, two, one.

False.

It wasn't Marx who specifically said this.

But he said something similar.

We're doing this again.

Psychology is the study of how our brains and minds work.

Three, two, one.

True.

Marx taught that religion helped to oppress the poor.

Three, two, one.

And that is true too.

When you're ready, pause the video and add to your arguments for and against.

And using a different coloured pen, add to your arguments.

Using a different coloured pen, add your arguments, I have added psychology.

I've also added the arguments for something that we haven't talked about, but actually the fact that a religious person would say having faith isn't about having proof you don't need scientific evidence.

The whole point is you believe without having proof.

And that shows that essentially you are worthy of that faith.

Right so the next topic, we're going to look at is ethics.

What is ethics? Let's have a quick reminder is the study of moral philosophy.

So you're trying to find out right and wrong in a situation.

Here are three theories.

Please pause and copy them down.

If you remember, we looked at utilitarianism, the categorical theory and virtue ethics.

So, what I would like you to do now is point to the correct answer on the screen.

I am going to do a countdown from three to one and then I am going to reveal the correct answer.

So it doesn't make sense for everyone to steal remember to point at the screen at the correct answer.

Three, two, one.

Well done.

Next one, the greatest happiness principle point to the screen.

Three, two, one.

Well done fantastic.

The highest moral behaviours, so an example of the highest moral behaviour.

Three, two, one.

You are on fire today.

A mixture of intentionalist and consequentialist theories.

Three, two, one.

Well done.

Do the most logical thing if everybody did it.

So the role is to do the most logical thing if everybody followed it.

Three, two, one.

Well done.

Now, what I'd like you to do is you are going to apply each of these theories to the story of the Nazi at the door.

So this is to see how much you can remember.

If you remember the Nazi at the door was about imagining that you are in Nazi Germany, during the late 1930s.

The Jewish family next door had left and you are hiding them in your attic.

So there's a Nazi and a Gestapo secret police knocks on your door and says oh, do you know anything about the whereabouts of the Jewish family that live next door? And you say what? And it will be a different answer whether you are utilitarian, you follow virtue theory or the categorical theory.

The answers, a utilitarian would lie, because the consequences would be that the Jewish family are saved, is therefore, for the greater good.

Remember to make any alterations with a different coloured pen, a virtue theorist would also lie, because the intention would be to save lives.

The consequences would benefit a number of people.

And actually, it's using the compassion of.

the virtue of compassion.

The categorical theory, somebody following the categorical theory would not lie, because it doesn't make sense for everyone to lie.

Therefore, lying is wrong.

Right, now looking at our final topic, which was equality.

Remember, equality is about people being treated equally in rights and freedoms. Now, if you watch this lesson, you'll know that we looked at three particular views from different philosophers on equality.

The idea that there is only one race which is the human race.

The challenge is to take hearts and minds and equip them with the ability to work together as one global tribe.

And in a racist society, it is not enough to be non racist, we must be anti racist.

What I'd like you to do is copy out words and fill in the blanks.

When you're ready, unpause the video.

And now, check your answers.

Pause the video, and when you are ready resume.

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Thanks for joining in with today's lesson.

Now please attempt the summary quiz to see what you've learnt.