2014 RPE Essay Competition - Win an iPad..

Image courtesy of RPE 

It's back! The 2014 :

RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS ESSAY COMPETITION 

First prize: a new iPad

Four Runners-up receive a £20 Amazon voucher

The winning essay will be published in RE Today magazine

 Following the success of last year, the Religion, Philosophy and Ethics (RPE) course  is pleased to announce the return of the RPE Essay Competition

The competition is open to all those currently studying for any AS or A2-level examinations (or equivalent) in the UK. The first prize is a new iPad, and there will be four runners-up prizes of £20 Amazon vouchers.

Entries must be no longer than 1500 words including footnotes but excluding references and can take any form e.g. essay, dialogue, etc. All sources must be referenced.

The deadline for the 1500 word essay is 5pm on 24^st October 2014 and will be judged by RPE lecturers. The winner will be announced on the RPE Blog on 1^st December 2014

To enter please choose one of the titles below and email your entry to

dwebster@glos.ac.uk (please note you may only submit one entry to the competition).

Entries must be written in as a Microsoft Word document. Entries will normally be acknowledged within 5 days. In your email, please put your name, the Sixth Form / FE college you attend, and the title you have chosen to answer. The subject of your email should be 'essay competition'.

Choose one of the following titles: 

Q1: What is the proper role of religion in a modern, secular society?

Q2: If you had a time machine, would it be wrong to travel back and kill Hitler?

Q3: Does science give us an accurate picture of 'how the world is'?

Remember:

·       1500 words maximum

·       Your essay must include the title/your name/contact email at the top of the page

·       The essay must be an attachment to the email as a Microsoft Word document

Any essay that does not satisfy these three conditions will not be considered by the judging panel.

The panel decision is final, and no correspondence will be entered into.

Reblogged from: http://r-p-e.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/2014-rpe-essay-competition-win-ipad.html

Which Philosopher Are You?

Which Philosopher Are You?

Try the BuzzFeed quiz <here> and post your result in the comment section!

<Link>

Me?

You got: Aristotle.

You think that everyone should aim to be as happy as they possibly can, and that happiness is best achieved by challenging yourself academically. You’re always reading and you enjoy going to art museums and galleries.

SHoM A-Level RS Blog

"The Examined Life" is the working title of the Sacred Heart of Mary Girls' School A-Level RS Blog. Students are taking it in turn to blog about one aspect of their AS/A2 course, either linked to philosophy or ethics.

Our first post has been made, so please visit here to read, share and comment: http://shomrs.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/as-we-begin-new-school-year-our-focus.html

We hope you will visit frequently to find out what we have been learning about and read the reflections that students and staff have made.

What would you like to see on the blog? What topics would you enjoy reading about? Are you inspired to start a blog?

When Is Dead Not Really Dead?

Most people regard cardiac arrest, or having a heart attack, as synonymous with death. However many do survive...

"Doctors have long believed that if someone is without a heartbeat for longer than about 20 minutes, the brain usually suffers irreparable damage. But this can be avoided... with good quality CPR and careful post-resuscitation care.", a BBC article claims.

Dr Sam Parnia, the director of resuscitation research at Stony Brook University in New York, has written a book called the Lazarus Effect. So named after the story in St John's Gospel whereby Jesus brings Lazarus back to life, four days after his funeral (read it here).

However, Parnia is still talking a matter of hours. This is still an incredible length of time after the heart has stopped. In the original article (see below), he speaks of the process of 'cooling' which induces a form of hibernation.

He does think we need to rethink when death begins. Technically hospitals do not declare a person to be dead until everything possible has been tried, however he seems to be suggesting that we maybe need to rethink where this point is.

One story that is cited in the article is this truly amazing one:

A 2011 report in the medical journal Resuscitation describes the case of a 30 year-old unnamed Japanese woman who was discovered dead in the woods at 8.32am. She had been there for several hours and her body temperature was 20 degrees. At hospital she was given adrenaline and hooked up to a special CPR machine. At 2:57pm, her heart restarted. She was discharged three weeks later "with slight left-sided weakness".

How many people would try to save this woman?

Parnia also speaks in the article about his fascination with 'near death experiences', which he claims around 10% of patients who have 'died' have.

Does science mean we need to think more carefully about death? Do you think we need to realise there is a midway point between 'alive' and 'dead'? How does Parnia's interests in NDE effect his view of resuscitation? What other implications are there for health care? 

Read full article here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22154552

3 Minute Philosophy

A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring. ~ Wittgenstein

Philosophy can sometimes get a little heavy. It is one of the oldest academic subjects, and it's tough! It's also incredibly rewarding and the skills learnt are invaluable for all kinds of further education and careers. It's a real skill to enter into philosophical discussion - and even harder to summarise a whole complex idea into 3 minutes. However, many try to do just such a thing. Here are some examples (focussed on EdExcel AS/A2 Philosophy and Ethics syllabus):

St Thomas Aquinas:

Emmanuel Kant:

David Hume:

A full list of 14 vidoes can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlBA9_3zj9w&list=PLC8B9FEEB6117B81C

What philosophers could you summarise in 3 minutes? What philosophical ideas could you summarise in 3 minutes?

What is Philosophy?

"Philosophy is 99 per cent about critical reflection on anything you care to be interested in." - Richard Bradley

Brain Pickings is a website which produces a weekly digest containing lots of different interesting articles, many of which link to religious education, and in particular AS/A2 philosophy. A few weeks ago it had an article discussing some of the definitions of philosophy as cited in Nigel Warburton's book, Philosophy Bites (based on his excellent website - www.philosophybites.com).

He observes in the book’s introduction, “philosophy is an unusual subject in that its practitioners don’t agree what it’s about.”

Indeed after a years study, my Y12 students may be able to give some kind of explination of what they have been studying, but would perhaps struggle with defining philosophy itself. Additionally some students are now looking at universities and investigating the possibility of studying philosophy... yet our studies in school have merely focussed on one branch, the philosophy of religion.

"I’m hard pressed to say, but one thing that is certainly true is that ‘What is Philosophy?’ is itself a strikingly philosophical question.” - A. W. Moore

Defining philosophy can be as tough as studying it, but (I'm hoping!) one that students thoroughly enjoy.

Read more definitions here: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/04/09/what-is-philosophy/

People are essentially good, right?

This week in philosophy lesson's we've been discussing Richard Swinburn's Principle of Credulity (See http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/theistic-proofs/the-argument-from-religious-experience/the-principle-of-credulity/) whereby if things appear to be something, they are probably like that. He uses the idea that the majority of people will be telling the truth, most of the time and this should be our default position. If someone claims to have had a religious experience, and there is no good reason to doubt it, they probablly have.

We had a good discussion about this and whether or not people are essentially good and truthful. I then got sent this link, it seemed to fit:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/expresident/pictures-that-will-restore-your-faith-in-humanity

Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

This is the title of a book by Michael Sandel which was a NY Times bestseller. It is book on the big questions in political philosophy and covers issues such as bank bailouts, equality and inequality, taxes, immigration, affirmative action, the role of markets, national service, same-sex marriage, the place of religion in politics and other ethics dilemmas of our times.

A website has been set up by Harvard University, which shows his lectures on a range of these ethical issues with questions for thought and reflection. A fascinating resource for those looking to take philosophy and ethics further!

The videos are all found here: http://www.justiceharvard.org/watch/

Why did the chicken cross the road ?

Many thanks to www.the-philosophy.com for this, a little light hearted relief for AS/A2 Philosophy and Ethics students:

Why did the chicken cross the road?

We give our version of the famous game “Why did the chicken cross the road” on the basis of some philosophers.

Plato: To get to the essence of good
Marx: It was historically inevitable
Machiavelli: To instill fear in other chickens
Nietzsche: On the assertion of its will to power
Sartre: The chicken was ordered to cross the road
De Beauvoir: One is not born chicken, one becomes
Samuel Beckett: Because he was tired of waiting
Aristotle: To stop being in power, but in act
Camus: To challenge the absurdity of the world
Darwin: Because the chicken in the evolution of species, has become an animal crossing
Epicurus: To have fun
Kant: for respect the moral law
Pyrrho: What road ?
Zeno of Elea: To prove that he could never reach the other side
Kierkegaard: In despair of his chicken condition
Shakespeare: That is the question
Stuart Mill: To maximize his pleasure
Galilee: And yet, he crossed
Heidegger: Because the chicken is the shepherd of Being
Descartes: I cross, therefore I am
Hegel: To realize the reason in history
Spinoza: The chicken thinks he has freely crossed the road, but it ignores the causes he did so through
Rousseau: Because the chicken is good by nature
Pascal: Because the chicken is a thinking reed
Heraclitus: The chicken crossed because we never cross the same road twice
Hume: For me the chicken is a fictional idea
Husserl: It is the constitution of the ego that epoche, a mutation ego-ego notwithstanding the noetic-noematic component which is the origin of the object “road” for the subject “chicken”.
Mitterrand: The Road, it’s war
Confucius: Act against chicken as you would have them do unto you
Freud: The road is very clearly a phallic symbol, the fact of the cross reveals a profound liberation of the instincts (or that) chicken.
Leibniz: To maintain the universal harmony of the world.
Voltaire: To reduce intolerance
Aristotle: Because the chicken is a political animal

See original here: http://www.the-philosophy.com/chicken-cross-road-philosophical-game

Arguements for Atheism

This video has been circulating the internet for years. Many atheists went mad when they saw it... equally some Christians agreed with it. However there has been much reported about how actually man has played a big part in adapting bananas. Is this good evidence for God as designer? Do people like this damage Christians' arguements for design in the world?

On a similar topic, a blog post on Patheos, outlined 3 arguments that athesits can no longer use for the non-existence of God:

1) Babies Are Atheists
2) Priests Abuse Boys
3) Light Before Sun

Read these in more detail: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/badcatholic/2012/05/3-arguments-atheists-arent-allowed-to-use-anymore.html

Do you think that the evidence put forward is convincing? What arguments can athesists still use?

The nature of human beings and the question of their ultimate origin

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Prof. Richard Dawkins and Sir Anthony Kenny took part in a discussion titled "The nature of human beings and the question of their ultimate origin". Held at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford in Feb 2012.

Video version: http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/nature-human-beings-and-question-their-ultimate-origin-video
Audio version (inc mp3 download link): http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/nature-human-beings-and-question-their-ultimate-origin-audio

This was reported at the time with the headline: "Richard Dawkins: I can't be sure God does not exist"
Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9102740/Richard-Dawkins-I-cant-be-sure-God-does-not-exist.html

I have blogged about this before(http://talkingdonkeyre.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/science-vs-god-richard-dawkins-takes-on.html), but this is a high quality video/audio download.

Are you suprised by some of Dawkin's or Williams' comments? Do you think God does 'clutter' our view of the world?

#YOLO: A Christian Outlook?

Having heard students use the phrase #YOLO, I noticed a Catholic blog writing about the phrase. It raised the questions:

• What kinds of things would this life philosophy encourage?
• What kinds of choices are made by those who really do plan on living only once?

Does it mean we should live in a wasteful, reckless way? If we live as if everyday could be our last, that would determine a lot of our lifestyle choices. Indeed, why bother turning up for school this morning?

The author of the blog post suggests that actually, for those who have no belief in the Resurrection, no Christian faith, life becomes restless and individuals try to find meaning in meaningless things. He says:

"A man who doesn’t believe that he has anything to look forward to or that he’ll ever have to pay his debts – either because he doesn’t believe in an afterlife or because he isn’t mindful of it – is a fool at best and a danger to himself and others at worst."

He then goes on to quote St Augustine who before becoming a committed Christian lived a 'wasteful' life, gives a contrast of the YOLO philosophy to the life of a Christian:

"Belatedly I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new, belatedly I loved thee. For see, thou wast within and I was without, and I sought thee out there. Unlovely, I rushed heedlessly among the lovely things thou hast made. Thou wast with me, but I was not with thee. These things kept me far from thee; even though they were not at all unless they were in thee. Thou didst call and cry aloud, and didst force open my deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and didst chase away my blindness. Thou didst breathe fragrant odors and I drew in my breath; and now I pant for thee. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for thy peace." – St. Augustine, Confessions, Book 10, Chapter 27

The blogger does conclude, that despite his seeming rejection of the YOLO philosophy, there can be a Christian version. One that links to the ideas of St Francis, who encouraged total commitment to God: ”Hold back nothing of yourselves for yourselves so that He Who gives Himself totally to you may receive you totally.”

This, it is suggested, that maybe Christians need to just 'add' a bit to YOLO.

Have a visit to his site - http://truthandcharity.net/yolo-a-christian-outlook/ - and you can vote in the poll...

• #YOLO + #ILFTTROTD - I Look Forward To The Resurrection Of The Dead
• #YOLO + #MementoMori - Remember your death
• #YOLOL4G - You Only Live Once - Live For God
• Dude, leave it alone. You Catholic bloggers have to ruin everything!

View Results

What do you think? Can we live life as #YOLO if we are Christian? Do you use YOLO and mean it? How does it effect your life?

AS Philosophy Revision Sites

Pisp.co.uk:
This site hopes to get people interested in Philosophy. Unfortuantely they seemed to loose interest themselves a few years back. However there are some excellent resources available online still:
Learn - http://www.pisp.co.uk/learn/ - including PowerPoints on design and cosmological arguements

Campbell College:
Another school site that has collected lots of great links: http://rewebsite.moonfruit.com/#/introducing-philosophy/4535566441

AS/A2 Revision Games

To improve your knowledge (AO1) there are some useful online games to help!

Arnewood School Site:
These are largely ethics based - http://www.rsrevision.com/contents/games.htm

PISP.co.uk:
Guess the Philsopher - http://www.pisp.co.uk/interact/quizzes/guesswho.htm

Philosophers Net:
There is a vareity of philosophy and ethics based games here - http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/
Ones that I think are interesting are

• Looking at logical arguements - http://www.philosophyexperiments.com/wason/
• Philosophical Health Check (more ethics actually!) - http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/check.php
• Do-It-Yourself Deity - http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/whatisgod.php

Do you know any more good games websites?

Has Physics Made Philosophy and Religion Obsolete?

In January, Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist and Director of the Origins Institute at Arizona State University, published A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing, a book that, as its title suggests, purports to explain how something---and not just any something, but the entire universe---could have emerged from nothing, the kind of nothing implicated by quantum field theory.

This article contains an interview with Krauss who seemingly blows apart the theory that there needs to be a 'first cause' to the universe and that that cause needs to be God, as put forward by countless theists.

He caused controversy when he claimed that, unlike science, philosophy "hasn't progressed in two thousand years.". However when challenged on this in the interview claimed that "To me what philosophy does best is reflect on knowledge that's generated in other areas." and he categorises different parts of philosophy into other disciplines, effectively reducing the subject to maths, literature, history, political science etc.

He later claims that "scientists are really happy when they get it wrong, because it means that there's more to learn", but doesn't clarify if this means he thinks philosophers, and potentially theists, don't like it when they get something wrong. Indeed will philosophers or theists actually admit to getting things wrong? Perhaps not.

When asked about the religious nature of his work he says:

"The religious question "why is there something rather than nothing," has been around since people have been around, and now we're actually reaching a point where science is beginning to address that question...  I didn't write the book to attack religion, per se. The purpose of the book is to point out all of these amazing things that we now know about the universe. Reading some of the reactions to the book, it seems like you automatically become strident the minute you try to explain something naturally."

Richard Dawkins wrote the afterword for the book and claimed that this book was on a par with "The Origin of Species", although Krauss pushes away such claims.

When challenged on the actual claims of his work, he states:  "I don't think I argued that physics has definitively shown how something could come from nothing; physics has shown how plausible physical mechanisms might cause this to happen."

The articles then goes on to discuss some of the more scientific aspects of his work and how 'something' could be 'created' out of nothing.

Potentially this kind of science could provide big question marks to Aquinas' first three 'Ways'. There could indeed be an uncaused cause, and that it may not be God.

The article begins, "Science is meant to make people uncomfortable." - yet in many ways this is exactly the same as philosophy. Certainly Krauss is raising many philosophical questions and states he is always focused on the 'why'. Maybe he was right when he said these disciplines are linked? Maybe his love for philosophy has lead him to question whether something can be created out of nothing, although at this stage it is still largely hypothetical...

AS Philosophy Revision Videos

These 10min revision videos are hosted on TeacherTube.com:
Cosmological - http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=167995
Telelogical/Design - http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=168306
Evil & Suffering - http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=168309

Perhaps take a pen and paper and make as many notes as you can during the video!

Suggested by Y12 SHoM students:

What is Classical Theism? - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bW1zf65NR0

Causation and Infinite Regress - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhVWckCLry4

Is Free Will an Illusion?

Are you really in control, or is your every decision predetermined? Who's at the steering wheel: you, your genes, your upbringing, fate, karma, God?

This question has puzzled people, both religious and not for thousands of years. Recently, six academics from a range of backgrounds including neuroscience and philosophy tried to offer current up to date views on this topic. Eventually they voted 4-2 in favour of the position that free will is merely an illusion.

The scientists all argued that free will does not exist. They said that actions are governed by the brain, based on prior experience. They carried the 4 votes.

The philosophers claimed that neuroscience does not go against the theory of free will, and cast the 2 opposing votes.

"Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist, defined free will as the possibility that, after making a decision, you could have chosen otherwise. But a "decision," Coyne argues, is merely a series of electrical and chemical impulses between molecules in the brain — molecules whose configuration is predetermined by genes and environment. Though each decision is the outcome of an immensely complicated series of chemical reactions, those reactions are governed by the laws of physics and could not possibly turn out differently. "Like the output of a programmed computer, only one choice is ever physically possible: the one you made," Coyne wrote."

The other scientists all agreed. They argued that everyone should be held account for their actions and that this is vital in considering all cases in law.

The counter argument came from Hilary Bok, a philosopher. She said:

"Scientists misunderstand the question of free will when they argue that decisions are governed by the activity of brain cells. Free will, in her opinion, is being capable of stepping back from one's existing motivations and habits and making a reasoned decision among various alternatives. "The claim that a person chose her action does not conflict with the claim that some neural processes or states caused it; it simply redescribes it," she wrote."

There seems to be no possible agreement here. The problem actually seems to lie in definitions of free will. To what extent does this effect our view of human actions, particularly linked to evil and suffering? Is there an agreement that our actions are still conscious and that we can be held accountable for them?

Beauty helps prove God's existence?

Some people would find this video very convincing evidence for God's existence.

Is The Aesthetic Principle sound? Is it logical to argue for God's existence from the beauty we experience in the world? Or can it only play a part in the Teleological Argument, further backing up its reasoning?

"There’s More to Nothing Than We Knew" -Pre-Big Bang 'Nothingness'

Why is there something, rather than nothing at all? 
It is, perhaps, the mystery of last resort. Scientists may be at least theoretically able to trace every last galaxy back to a bump in the Big Bang, to complete the entire quantum roll call of particles and forces. But the question of why there was a Big Bang or any quantum particles at all was presumed to lie safely out of scientific bounds, in the realms of philosophy or religion.

Now even that assumption is no longer safe, as exemplified by a new book by the cosmologist Lawrence M. Krauss. In it he joins a chorus of physicists and cosmologists who have been pushing into sacred ground, proclaiming more and more loudly in the last few years that science can explain how something — namely our star-spangled cosmos — could be born from, if not nothing, something very close to it. God, they argue, is not part of the equation.

He gave a talk in 2009 which was a YouTube sensation:

If nothing is our past, it could also be our future. As the universe, driven by dark energy — that is to say, the negative pressure of nothing — expands faster and faster, the galaxies will become invisible, and all the energy and information will be sucked out of the cosmos. The universe will revert to nothingness.

Nothing to nothing.

One day it’s all going to seem like a dream.

But who is or was the dreamer?

Read the full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/science/space/cosmologists-try-to-explain-a-universe-springing-from-nothing.html

St Thomas Aquinas

"Thomas Aquinas was the greatest philosopher of the Christian middle ages. So what can he teach us that we have forgotten?"

The Guardian have run a fascinating 4 series on possibly the greatest Christian philosopher ever.

Part 1 outlines some of his background and foundation, compared to today's modern world: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/jan/30/thomas-aquinas-modernity?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

Part 2 looks at his view of the mind and soul:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/feb/06/thomas-aquinas-mind-as-soul?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

Part 3 looks at his greatest work Summa Theologica and Aquinas' reasoning for God's existence:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/feb/13/scripture-reason-god-thomas-aquinas?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

Part 4 continues to look at creation, modern science and some of the great Greek philosopher:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/feb/20/thomas-aquinas-world-begin?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

Part 5 looks at waht it means to be human and links to the idea of conciousness:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/feb/27/thomas-aquinas-what-does-it-mean-to-be-human

Part 6 is focused on Aquinas and natural law:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/mar/05/thomas-aquinas-natural-law?INTCMP=SRCH

Part 7 looks at Aquinas and his view on evil:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/12/thomas-aquinas-question-evil

Part 8 reflects on Aquinas for the world today:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/mar/19/thomas-aquinas-today

An excellent series that is well worth a read - the articles are short and accesible.

Do you agree on Aquinas being the greatest Christian philosopher? What is your favourite part of these articles?