Religion and Ethics

What Religion and Ethics covers

Paper 2. The major normative theories from utilitarianism to virtue ethics, what moral language is doing when it is used, and how the theories bear on war, sexual ethics, equality, the environment and medical decisions at the beginning and end of life.

The 14 subtopics

Each one has its own page.

• Environmental EthicsRecall questions on stewardship and conservation, religious and secular positions, animal welfare, sustainability, waste and climate change, Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, Næss's deep ecology, and how far law, attitudes and religious perspectives shape the debate.Open →
• EqualityRecall questions on religious and secular grounds for equality, the gender debate, racial equality and the models of disability, Martin Luther King and Joni Eareckson Tada as religious campaigners, and how far law changes social attitudes.Open →
• UtilitarianismRecall questions on Bentham's hedonic calculus, Mill's higher and lower pleasures, act and rule forms, and the standard objections.Open →
• Situation EthicsRecall questions on the new morality, agape and situationism between legalism and antinomianism, Fletcher's four working principles and six propositions, gospel examples, Robinson's contribution, Barclay's assessment, and the theory's strengths and weaknesses.Open →
• Natural Moral LawRecall questions on absolutism and legalism, the classical and biblical roots, Aquinas's types of law and the synderesis rule, the primary and secondary precepts, double effect, Hoose's proportionalism, and the case for and against the theory.Open →
• War and PeaceRecall questions on the pacifist and just war traditions, jus ad bellum, jus in bello and jus post bellum, Augustine and Aquinas, a contemporary conflict tested against the criteria, nuclear weapons, the forms of pacifism and peace movements.Open →
• Sexual EthicsRecall questions on Christian diversity and sacred texts, sex before marriage, promiscuity and adultery, same-sex relationships, contraception, secular approaches, Vardy and Dominian, and whether religious teaching and ethical theory still help.Open →
• Meta-ethics and Ethical LanguageRecall questions on cognitivism and non-cognitivism, realism, ethical naturalism, Moore's naturalistic fallacy and open question argument, Hume's is-ought gap, intuitionism, prescriptivism, Ayer's emotivism and Stevenson's development of it.Open →
• Religion and MoralityRecall questions on autonomy, theonomy and heteronomy, divine command ethics and the Euthyphro dilemma, Dawkins and Sharpe on morality without God, the moral arguments for and against God, religious terror, and biblical parenting.Open →
• Kantian DeontologyRecall questions on the influences on Kant, the good will and acting from duty, hypothetical and categorical imperatives and their formulations, the main criticisms, Ross's prima facie duties, Nagel's contribution, and duty-based ethics today.Open →
• Aristotelian Virtue EthicsRecall questions on eudaimonia and the function argument, intellectual and moral virtues, the golden mean and phronesis, role models and vices, the twentieth-century revival, and the arguments of Foot and MacIntyre.Open →
• Comparing Kant and AristotleRecall questions on duty against character, the place of emotion, how each grounds moral authority, and where each is strongest.Open →
• Medical Ethics: the Beginning of LifeRecall questions on the moral status of the embryo, sanctity and quality of life, embryo research, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, stem cells and cord blood, IVF, abortion and British law, and double effect at the beginning of life.Open →
• Medical Ethics: the End of LifeRecall questions on the forms of euthanasia, acts and omissions, double effect, British legal cases, palliative care, religious and secular arguments on assisted dying, personhood, and the views of Singer, Glover and Wilcockson.Open →

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Take Religion and Ethics further

The same content, four other ways.

Commonly confused

Pairs that lose marks when they are blurred together.

• Act utilitarianism vs Rule utilitarianism

  Act utilitarianism: judging each action by the balance of good it produces on that occasion. Rule utilitarianism: judging actions by rules that produce the most good when generally followed.

• Categorical imperative vs Hypothetical imperative

  Categorical imperative: a command that binds unconditionally whatever a person happens to want. Hypothetical imperative: a command that binds only if a person wants the end it serves.

• Primary precept vs Secondary precept

  Primary precept: one of the basic goods that natural law says every person seeks. Secondary precept: a specific rule reasoned out from one of those basic goods.

Questions from this topic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What do Jews and Christians usually mean when they call humanity a steward of creation?

   Model answer

   That the earth belongs to God and human beings hold it in trust rather than owning it. Reading the Genesis creation accounts this way, Jews and Christians take dominion to mean responsible care for which humanity is answerable to God, not a licence to exploit. Muslims express a similar idea through khalifah, humanity as God's trustee on earth.

2. 2

   Is stewardship the same as conservation?

   Model answer

   No. Stewardship is a religious account of why humans are accountable for the natural world; conservation is the practical management of habitats, species and resources. A conservationist need hold no theology at all, and stewardship can be argued for on grounds a secular conservationist would reject.

3. 3

   Give a worked religious position and a worked secular position on the environment.

   Model answer

   Religious: Catholic teaching in Laudato Si' (2015) treats care for creation as a moral duty, links environmental damage to injustice against the poor, and criticises a throwaway culture of consumption. Secular: deep ecology holds that non-human life has value in its own right, independent of any use to humans, so the whole biosphere generates obligations. Students may argue from either, or set them against each other.

4. 4

   How do religious and secular thinkers argue about animal welfare?

   Model answer

   Hindus, Buddhists and Jains appeal to ahimsa, non-harming, and many practise vegetarianism; Jewish and Muslim law imposes rules on slaughter that are themselves argued to reduce suffering, though critics dispute this. On the secular side, Peter Singer argues that a being's capacity to suffer is what earns it equal consideration, so ignoring animal pain is speciesism, while Tom Regan grounds protection in the rights of animals as subjects of a life.

5. 5

   Define sustainability and explain why it is an ethical idea and not just an economic one.

   Model answer

   Sustainability is meeting present needs without destroying the capacity of future generations to meet theirs. It is ethical because it asks whether people who do not yet exist can make claims on us, and whether present consumption can be justified against future cost.

6. 6

   Why is waste management treated as a moral issue rather than a technical one?

   Model answer

   Because how much a society throws away reflects choices about consumption, and because the burden of landfill, incineration and exported plastic falls unequally, often on poorer communities and poorer countries. Religious critics add that treating goods as disposable expresses ingratitude for gifts held in trust.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.

Religion and Ethics revision questions

What does Religion and Ethics cover in Edexcel A-Level Religious Studies?

14 subtopics: environmental ethics, equality, utilitarianism, situation ethics, natural moral law, war and peace, sexual ethics, meta-ethics and ethical language, religion and morality, kantian deontology, aristotelian virtue ethics, comparing kant and aristotle, medical ethics: the beginning of life and medical ethics: the end of life. Each one has its own page with questions and model answers.

How is Religion and Ethics organised?

By the Edexcel 9RS0 specification, subtopic by subtopic, so it matches the order you are taught it in.