20th century perspectives and philosophical comparisons

• empirical evidence

  Evidence obtained through sense experience or experimental procedure.
• A.J. Ayer

  -wrote 'Language, Truth, and Logic'

  -atheist

  -said "God-talk is evidently nonsense"

  -believed that there were two types of cognitive statement; analytic a priori and synthetic a posteriori

  -his principle is called the 'Verification Principle'

  -as God is transcendent we have no empirical evidence about Him, therefore we can't make a posteriori statements about God

  -you can't analyse the concept of God as we don't have a concept of Him, so we can't make a priori statements about God
• Kant's criticism of Ayer

  -wrote 'Critique of Pure Reason'

  -asks whether there is the synthetic a priori, and if so whether these statements could be cognitive e.g. every effect has a cause

  -Ayer is wrong that there are only two cognitive statements according to this
• Antony Flew

  -the Falsification Principle

  -Flew says a statement is only meaningful if you are able to falsify it, that means to say what must be the case for it to be false e.g. a triangle has 3 sides, not 4

  -for example, 'God is good'. If it were false, there would be children dying etc., which is what really happens. Religious believers explain them away by stating free will etc., so this makes the word 'good' in the statement meaningless because there is nothing that could be accepted that would falsify God

  -"religious statements die the death of a thousand qualifications"
• R. M. Hare

  -theory of 'bliks'

  -he thinks philosophy is useless as everyone has different views

  -believes that atheists, agnostics and religious believers won't allow any evidence to falsify their views of the world (bliks)

  -we have views of the world and we use arguments to justify them (not the other way around)

  -says religious views are unfalsifiable but not meaningless
• Basil Mitchell


  -says religious statements are falsifiable and meaningful

  -agrees with Flew that in order for a statement or belief to be meaningful it must be possible for some observation to count against it

  -argues that just because there are some observations that count against a certain belief, that doesn’t automatically mean we have to reject that belief
• Mitchell's the parable of the partisan

  -you are in a war and your country has been occupied by an enemy

  -you meet a stranger who claims to be leader of the resistance and you trust him

  -but the stranger acts ambiguously, sometimes doing things that appear to support the enemy rather than your own side

  -yet you continue to believe the stranger is on your side despite this and trust that he has good reasons for these ambiguous actions
• Mitchell's the parable of the partisan analysis

  -in this analogy, the stranger represents God and his ambiguous actions represent the problem of evil, with you representing a religious believer -Mitchell is arguing that we can accept that the existence of evil counts as evidence against the statement 'God exists' (and so it is falsifiable) without having to withdraw from belief in this statement
• Flew's parable of the invisible gardener

  -2 explorers find a clearing in a jungle. Both weeds and flowers grow

  -'A' says the clearing is the work of a gardener & 'B' disagrees

  -they decide to keep watch for the gardener, but they still haven't seen him after a few days, so 'A' says it is because he is invisible

  -they set up an electric fence and guard dogs, but still don't detect him

  -'A' says that not only is the gardener invisible, he’s also intangible, silent, scentless etc., so 'B' asks what the difference between this claim and the claim there is no gardener is
• Flew's parable of the invisible gardener analysis

  -'A's theory is unfalsifiable, so it is meaningless

  -clearing is world, gardener is God, flowers are good and weeds are evil

  -Flew argues that 'God exists' is meaningless because it is unfalsifiable in the same way the existence of the invisible gardener is

  -we can’t use problem of evil as evidence against God’s existence because religious believers just create reasons why God would allow evil

  -Flew argues that because the religious believer accepts no observations as evidence against God, it is unfalsifiable and meaningless
• Ludwig Wittgenstein

  -Wittgenstein says a word such as 'time' is simply a sound humans make or squiggly lines

  --> to understand time, we must look at how humans use the word in practical everyday use

  -humans engage in lots of different activities e.g. sport or art, and in all of these they use different languages called language games

  -we privilege some subjects above others e.g. science is factual while art isn't, but Wittgenstein says they are all equal and fictitious

  -Wittgenstein says you can't mix up the rules of different language games e.g. you can't have a scientific view on religion
• Wittgenstein on religious language

  -is in favour and against religious language (not in favour of Ayer or religious philosophers)

  -e.g. 'Our Father, who art in Heaven'. This is part of a language game humans invented, and is a form of life. No language is cognitive, so religious language isn't either. Like music, it is neither true nor false, and is an expression of a human

  -to understand religion, you have to understand it from its own side

  -Wittgenstein thinks religion is neither true nor false and is a game. But it's meaningful, and tells us something about what it is to be human
• Ludwig Wittgenstein background

  -his 1st book 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus' agreed with Ayer and isomorphic view of language (belief that language can represent reality accurately), and says "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent"

  -his theory called 'Language Games', which he developed in his 2nd book 'Philosophical Investigations', goes against Ayer and says there are no cognitive statements

  -he says in his 2nd book, that “the meaning of a word is its use in the language” & “philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language”
• Hick's parable of the Celestial City

  -two men are travelling on a road – it is the only road there is, so they both must travel it

  -traveller A believes the road leads to a celestial city, whereas traveller B believes the road leads nowhere and that the journey is meaningless

  -as they travel along the road, they experience both “refreshment and delight” and “hardship and danger”

  -when they turn the last corner of the road, one of them will be proved right: if traveller A is correct and there is a celestial city, his belief will be verified
• Hick's parable of the Celestial City analysis

  -in this parable, traveller A is the theist and traveller B is the atheist

  -the 'hardship and danger' represents the problem of evil. If the theist is correct, his belief will be verified in the afterlife when he meets God – this is the equivalent of reaching the celestial city

  -so, in response to Ayer’s verification principle, Hick says 'God exists' is verifiable (and therefore meaningful). It may not be empirically verifiable, but it is eschatologically verifiable: if 'God exists' is true, then it can be verified after we die
• the Kalam Cosmological Argument

  -philosophers such as Aristotle and Islamic theologian Al-Kindi developed the Kalam Cosmological Argument during the ancient period, and Al-Ghazali, a medieval Islamic philosopher and theologian, is credited with its prominence and formulation

  1. premise- everything that begins to exist has a cause (a synthetic a priori statement)
  2. premise- the universe began to exist
  3. conclusion- the universe must have a cause which is God

  -God does not need a cause because God did not begin
• Hick's criticism of Ayer

  -argues not all propositions can be verified, but this doesn't make them meaningless

  -e.g. pi is infinite, so even though we haven't yet come across three consecutive sevens, it doesn't mean the statement 'pi has a series of three sevens in it' is nonsense

  -he further says you cannot disprove God's existence any more than you can disprove three consecutive sevens, because it could be you just have not reached God yet

  *there is a problem with this: since we have no 'idea' of God, there is no way of knowing we are meeting God
• Hick summary

  -suggests the religious view is not meaningless

  -both travellers interpret their experience differently, so what they believe really does make a difference (if religious language was meaningless then it would not make a difference what you believe)

  -Hick's point is that religious language may not be true, but it is not meaningless

  -if there is an after-life and God, you will be able to verify that is the case after death
• Hare criticisms

  -no explanation to how people come to have particular bliks

  -he reduces religious statements to pre-conceived ideas without any evidence, not to statements of truth

  -people change their bliks, so this must be based on something e.g. arguments/ evidence (events of reality)

  -in his 'parable of the paranoid student', there is a 'true' position which could be verified or at least made likely, but you cannot do this with God
• fideism

  -the view that faith alone can gain knowledge of God, not reason

  -Wittgenstein has inspired a view called Wittgensteinian fideism, though it’s not clear to what degree Wittgenstein held it himself. On this view, religion is purely a matter of faith. It is a totally separate language game to science which is a matter of a posteriori reason. This has a long tradition within Christian theology
• Wittgenstein's chess analogy

  -the use of language is like partaking in a game. To use a word, you must first understand how it works

  -classic example was chess. You might be told a piece is called a 'king', but without understanding the rules, you could never use it

  -stated that to argue about how language is used is meaningless. If you want to play the game, you must accept the rules. You can't play chess if your opponent is trying to play checkers
• Wittgenstein criticism: self-contradictory

  -'language games is true' is not a legitimate statement because 'true' is simply part of a language game

  -therefore, language games is self-refuting
• Wittgenstein criticism: acceptance

  -fundamental difference between religion on the one hand and science/ history on the other

  -whereas the 'fact' of science/ history are universally accepted, the religious ideas are not

  -this suggests that science/ history are true
• Wittgenstein criticism: truth

  -different religious traditions have different beliefs

  -they can't all be equally valid

  -there must be an answer to some of their questions so their statements must be true or false

  -e.g. what happens after death? Either there is rebirth, reincarnation or no life after death
• Wittgenstein criticism: mixing language games

  -there are historical and scientific dimensions to religion e.g. 'Jesus was resurrected' is a historical statement

  -Wittgenstein is wrong to separate the language games

  -'God created the universe' is scientific because it is explaining how the universe came about
• Wittgenstein criticism: ethical dilemma

  -Wittgenstein's theory seems to suggest that ethics is a language game so ethical statements are neither right or wrong

  -this would mean torture, rape and mass murder could not be seen as wrong in his theory

  -many would question this
• Wittgenstein criticism: equality

  -it would seem to suggest that all religious traditions are equally valid

  -this would include religions that involved human sacrifice
• Hume's criticism of 'every effect has a cause'

  -Hume argues that effects are different events from their causes, so there is no contradiction in conceiving of a cause occurring, and its usual effect not occurring

  -e.g. if you were suddenly brought into the world as an adult, you couldn't determine that an aspirin tablet could relieve your headache by examining it

  -Hume held that the ability to conceive something clearly and distinctly implies its possibility e.g. imagining flowers coming from nothing
• provisional hypothesis

  Belief is abandoned as soon as the balance of evidence counts against it (e.g. a scientific hypothesis once it is disproved by evidence).
• significant article of faith

  Accepts some conflicting evidence against the belief but seeks an explanation of this conflicting evidence (this is what religious belief is).
• vacuous formulae


  -irrationally maintained in the face of any and all conflicting evidence

  -no amount of evidence is enough to disprove it (so completely unfalsifiable)
• Wittgenstein criticism: circularity

  -language games are circular

  -where do we find the meaning of a word? From the language game from which it takes its meaning. So where does the language game get its meaning? From the words that make it up

  -it seems for a given language to make sense, there needs to be an external link for it all to make sense
• approaches to scripture


  -literalists: every sentence is true and cognitive

  -conservatives: accept the general message from god but accepting the role of biblical scholarship. Not every word is factually true, but the message is authentic

  -liberals: an open approach to scripture, a human document needing interpretation to fit our times (inspiration from God)
• Language Games

  -it is an anti-realist theory, meaning he believed words had subjective meanings, and asked for sense not meaning

  -it is also non-cognitive because he is focusing on the purpose of language, not if it is a fact
• D. Z. Phillips

  -analyses language games cognitively

  -he says religion and philosophy are different games

  -both have different meanings of ‘God’ so they cannot be the same

  -but there are religious philosophers, so surely you can be part of both groups?

  -as a reductionist, Phillips aims to reduce everything down to the simplest possible explanation

  -he argues ‘God exists’ is an expression of belief

  -"Talk about God's reality cannot be considered as talk about the existence of an object"
• Don Cupitt

  -argues a non-cognitive approach to language games is needed

  -he says a misunderstanding occurs whenever we interpret religious language in 'realist' terms

  -talk of God is really just talk of human experiences

  -to speak of ‘God’ is to subscribe to a certain set of values and a certain way of seeing the world

  -he says we should understand theological language in this non-realist way
• Herbert McCabe

  -said there is a difference of assumption

  -Aquinas assumes language is a given and we use language to express a thought

  -whereas for Wittgenstein we play different games to create different thoughts

  -Aquinas writes as a philosophical theologian and develops analogy doctrines on dealing with talking about God

  -Wittgenstein barely considered God

  -both do focus on use over meaning
• Wittgenstein criticism: sections

  -dividing up human social life into different language games seems very messy

  -Wittgenstein’s characterisation of language games is imprecise e.g. ‘religious’ language game can be divided into different religions. Those can often be sub-divided, such as into the ‘Catholic’ language game

  -the way the congregation of one Catholic church speak to each other might be different to another, perhaps due to the language game of the village they live in
• emotivism

  -the theory advanced principally by Logical Positivists that ethical sentences merely evince emotions and cannot be justified

  -named the 'Killing - boo!' theory by Winston Barnes

  -the emotion need not be felt by the one making the statement
• boo-hoorah theory

  -apt nickname for crude version of emotivism

  -states we use ethical words to express our feelings/attitudes & to evoke similar feelings/attitudes in others

  -hence, ‘… is wrong’ or ‘… is right’ amount only to ‘Boo!’ or ‘Hoorah!’

  -provides only an embryonic theory of moral language, involving a sharp distinction between facts & values

  -was developed into more subtle versions of emotivism

  -influenced by the growth of analytic philosophy & logical positivism in the 20th century, the theory was stated vividly by Ayer in LTL, but its development owes more to C. L. Stevenson