falsification principle

• whose theory is the falsification principle?

  Antony Flew's
• what did Karl Popper oppose?


  logical positivism
• what did Popper argue?

  that science works primarily through falsification, rather than verification
• so, science should be set out to do what?

  falsify statements
• what does Antony Flew say about statements?

  that they are only meaningful if they can be falsified
• why does Flew believe that religious statements are meaningless?

  because they cannot be falsified, and believers do not accept any evidence to the contrary
• for example...?

  Christians hold that "God is good" even though there are examples of evil in the world, and God in the Old T is presented as ruthless and full of hatred
• A.Flew states that religious statements are based merely upon what?

  belief, rather than knowledge, which is why they can't be falsified
• what parable relates to the falsification principle?

  the parable of the gardener
• two explorers come across a clearing in the jungle that was growing a lot of plants, what does one explorer say?

  "some gardener must tend this plot" but the other disagrees
• no gardener is ever seen, so what does one explorer say?

  "perhaps he is an invisible gardener" - so they set up a barbed wire fence and the wire never moves. They electrify the fence and no one ever screams
• one explorer still believes, finally, the sceptic repairs, what does he say?

  "how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all"?
• what is the explanation go the parable?

  the gardener = God, the believer = theists, the sceptic = atheists and the garden = the world
• for Flew, no empirical tests shows that he's present, so what happens to the gardener's existence?

  his existence "dies the death of a thousand qualifications"
• why?

  because the believer in the parable will allow nothing to falsify his belief that there's a gardener
• in the same way that...?

  religious believers will allow nothing to falsify their belief that there's a God
• therefore, what are statements about belief in God?

  vacuous
• what does vacuous mean?

  empty (and therefore meaningless)
• Flew believed that if you don't admit that there's some evidence that could falsify your belief...?

  you may as well believe any nonsense you like, because you will never admit that it is nonsense
• what is a direct quote from Flew that supports his belief in the falsification principle?

  "a sentence is factually significant if, and only if there is some form of evidence which could falsify it"
• (s) what did Karl Popper argue?

  that the scientific method was based not on verification but on falsification
• (s) flew applied the falsification principle to religious language, what did he conclude?

  that religious statements are meaningless
• (s) why did Popper conclude that religious statements are meaningless?

  because there is nothing that can count against religious statements (they can neither be proved true - verified, or proved false - falsified)
• (s) Flew believed that a statement is meaningful if...?

  it is known what empirical evidence could count against it
• (s) an often quoted example of how a proposition may be falsified can be seen with the statement "all swans are white" explain it:

  we may see hundreds of white swans but this doesn't prove the statement, however, when we see one black swan, we know that it is false
• (s) how did Flew apply this example to religious language?

  he argued that Christians say "God is god" no matter what evidence is offered against this claim
• (s) why did Flew state that these constant qualifications render religious statements meaningless?

  because they die the "death of a thousand qualifications"
• (w) what do realists believe?

  that a statement is true if it corresponds to the state of affairs that it attempts to describe
• (w) most theists are realists about god, what does this mean?

  that there is a truth to be known (not that we can necessarily know whether a given statement is true or false)
• (w) how does Swinburne's analogy of the toy's in the cupboard also apply to the falsification principle?

  although one cannot prove or falsify the the toys do not leave the cupboard, the concept of their movement still has enough meaning because we understand it
• (w) Basil Mitchell wanted to show us that religious statements are meaningful, how did he do this?

  he used the parable of the partisan (to argue that Flew is wrong that believers never allow anything to count against their beliefs)
• (w) in the parable of the partisan, a stranger meets a resistance worker, who's on his side, what does the resistance worker ask the stranger?

  to trust him
• (w) the resistance worker asks the stranger to trust him even though...?

  he might be doing things that appear to be going against the cause they're both working for
• (w) but what does the stranger still have?

  faith in the resistance worker
• (w) Mitchell therefore claimed that Flew had missed the point, how?


  like the resistance worker, believers have a commitment to trust God, based on faith
• (w) what is Mitchell's point here?

  that religious belief is based upon facts, but that belief cannot be verified/falsified
• (w) according to religious belief...?

  all the peculiar and problematic parts of religious belief will be revealed at the end of time