GCSE Religious Studies: Arguments About God and Evil

Nothing here says whether God exists. The examiner does not ask that, and the marks go to candidates who can set an argument out properly, say what it claims, and say what somebody on the other side would put to it — which is what every question does.

The design argument is given as an inference: order and apparent purpose, therefore a designer. The objection offered is the real one, that natural processes may account for the order, rather than the straw versions that pretend the argument says the world is chaotic. The first cause argument comes with both halves of its usual exchange: the question of what caused the first cause, and the reply that it is held not to have begun and so falls outside the chain.

Then evil, in three parts. The problem is stated as a tension between three claims held together — that God is all-powerful, that God is all-loving, and that suffering exists — and the wording is careful that this is a difficulty for those beliefs rather than a proof of anything. The free will response is asked about through what it handles least well, which is suffering nobody chose: disease, earthquakes, the things that happen whether or not anyone decides anything. And the response that suffering can build character or compassion is set beside the objection that a great deal of suffering appears to do neither, with the disagreement left where it is.

A miracle gets both halves too: what believers usually mean by the word, which is more than good fortune, and what a doubter asks for, which is evidence in proportion to how unusual the claim is. The explanation is careful that this objection weighs likelihoods rather than ruling the thing out in advance, and notes that believers themselves differ about how widely the word should be used.

The last three are the distinctions students most often lose. General revelation is what is said to be available through the world and conscience; special revelation is what is said to come to particular people. Agnosticism is a claim about what can be known, not a halfway quantity of belief. And on science and religion, the accurate answer is the range: some read a text as literal history, some as carrying meaning rather than mechanism, and some hold that the two are answering different kinds of question.

The set closes by asking what an argument of this kind can claim to have shown — reasons that may persuade, rather than proofs that settle it, which is why thoughtful people continue to disagree.

No view is attributed to a named philosopher, and no study, statistic or quotation is invented. Nothing is reproduced from any exam board specification, past paper or mark scheme.

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• Set out the design argument and state a real objection to it
• State the first cause argument with its standard challenge and reply
• Present the problem of evil as three claims in tension rather than as a proof
• Say what the free will response explains and what it explains least well
• State the character-building response and the objection to it
• Say what a miracle is claimed to be and what evidence a doubter would ask for
• Distinguish general from special revelation
• Define agnosticism as a claim about knowledge
• Give the range of positions held on science and religion
• Say what an argument of this kind is offered as

Ten questions about arguments: order taken as evidence of design, a first cause and what it invites, three claims that will not sit together, human freedom set against earthquakes, suffering said to make character, an event nature does not account for, what is shown to everybody against what is said to particular people, a claim about what can be known, the several ways people relate a scientific account to a religious one, and what any of these arguments can claim to have established. Twelve flashcards carry the vocabulary — design argument, first cause, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, the problem of evil, moral and natural evil, free will, miracle, general and special revelation, agnosticism.