Edexcel Religious Studies AS/A-Level - Unit 5 Works of Scholars
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Unit 5 - Works of scholars
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PEARSON (PEARSON)
This essay covers unit 5 of the Edexcel Religious Studies specification - Works of Scholars. It is used in Section C of Paper 1 (Question 4), includes a synoptic link, and can be tailored to earlier questions of the paper. The essay begins with contextual information of critiques of religion, inclu...
Evaluate whether critiques of religion are successful
This essay will evaluate whether critiques of religion are successful by examining these critiques,
before then evaluating them.
Critiques of religion began to emerge in The Enlightenment, known as the Age of Reason. This
was the intellectual movement in the eighteenth century that emphasised reason and science
over superstition and blind faith. Ideas that dominated in the Enlightenment include empiricism
and rationalism. This links to ethics as pre-enlightenment, people learnt moral law through
religious normative ethical theories such as Divine Command Theory teaching that morality is
learnt through whatever God commands, and His commandments are found in the Bible.
However, post-enlightenment saw the rise of deism, meaning the belief in the existence of a
supreme being, but one who does not intervene in the universe. We can know him through
reason and logic, but we must reject divine revelation as it is irrational. This is explained by
Westphal who makes a distinction between the ‘kernel’, representing religious belief, and the
‘husk’, representing the unnecessary explanations including revelation, which is a key part in
religion. This essay will now examine different popularist critiques of religion.
The first popularist critique that will be examined is from New Atheism. Atheism refers to the
belief that God does not exist, whereas New Atheism refers to the atheistic social movement
which focused on actively promoting atheism and countering religious belief. They focus on the
negative social impact of religion to criticise it. Dawkins argues raising children in religion is child
abuse as it is a virus of the mind, infecting people with outdates moral views such as regarding
homosexuality and women’s rights. Moreover, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, another New Atheist, also
criticises religion for the negative social impact it has; there is an overwhelming focus on the
afterlife which justifies evil on Earth as eternal pleasure is worth any cost on Earth, for example
justifying an act of terrorism by pointing out the rewards in the afterlife. Therefore, New Atheists
would criticise religion for being harmful and negative for society
However, New Atheism is criticised for assuming an objective understanding of morality.
Postmodernist thinkers (meaning after enlightenment) explain that human understanding cannot
encompass reality as different people see reality differently, hence there is no one true reality.
Postmodernists such as Jean-Francois Lyotard argued that we should abandon meta-narratives,
meaning and world view that claims to provide us with the objective truth, such as New Atheism’s
criticism of religion. However, postmodernist criticisms of atheism also criticise theism and
religion too. This is because religious worldviews also claim to provide us with an objective truth
of reality consisting of God and the afterlife. However, William Lane Craig, a Christian apologist,
offers another criticism to New Atheism for assuming an objective morality to criticise religious
morality. He explains that objective morality can only involve God as the objective standard.
However, Craig is criticised as his approach using Divine Command Theory is anti-realist,
meaning it is also subjective, as God’s standard can change. However, as the New Atheism’s
approach still offers a subjective approach, it may not be able to successfully critique religion.
Since New Atheism suffers from subjectivity, the psychological critique of religion will also be
examined. Sigmund Freud, seen as the father of modern psychology, explained religion to be a
form of neurotic behaviour. This is shown through ritualistic behaviour, such as praying, and
feelings of guilt, such as religious guilt. This neurotic behaviour is caused by repressed traumas
in the unconscious explained through the oedipus complex: boys develop sexual feelings
towards their mothers and see their fathers as their rival, with feelings of wanting to overthrow
their father. These feelings turn into guilt that is repressed in the unconscious and later lead to
feelings of wanting to worship a father figure, which is God. This explanation through
psychosexual development criticises religion as God does not exist, but is just a product of
unconscious trauma.
However, Freud’s psychological critique of religion is criticised as it is not applicable to all of
religion. This is because not all religions see God as the God of classical theism, as religions
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