Summary of religious language

• Verification Principle

  • We know the meaning of a statement if we know the conditions under which the statement is true or false. Only meaningful if it can be proved through logic or experience. They said that ethics, God and art were meaningless to talk about because they cannot be verified.
• Verification Principle under Ayer

  • Ayer developed the strong and weak principle to allow events (such as historical events) to be verifiable even if it cannot be verified in the present.
  • Ayer said that religious statements hold no factual content and say nothing about the world so they’re neither valid or invalid, but this still makes them meaningless
• Strengths of the verification principle

  STRENGTHS:

  • Ayer accepts more statements under his strong and weak principles
  • The VP is in line with empirical science
  • The VP makes a valid demand for realism in what we say about the world. Encourages religious believers to consider the claims they are making and the evidence they have for the claim
  • It is straightforward in its demands. Meaningful statements are either true by definition or verifiable by sense experience. Avoids making claims based on emotion or commitment, concentrates only on facts
• Weaknesses of the verification principle 1/2

  • The demands of the VP are too narrow: it rules out all sorts of language as being meaningless, including ethical statements. But many people view these as meaningful? Why should we consider how meaningful something is based on if it is facts or not instead of the value it has for someone’s life?
  • VP is not in line with science actually. Much of science deals with entities that cannot be directly observed, such as quarks, so by the VP’s definition it would not be verifiable even when science verifies it. Science works through falsification
• Weaknesses of the verification principle 2/2

  • Based on our observation and creativity, claims about the existence of God are not overly absurd. Believing that such a mind exists is no more irrational than scientific assumptions about quarks, and as a hypothesis it is simple to understand
  • Ayer does not view religious statements as historical events, for example the resurrection of Jesus, but some philosophers of religion hold that religious statements can be verified by empirical statements made by observers at the time (such as those recorded in the gospels)
• Strengths of the falsification principle

  • Where religion makes important factual claims Flew shows that these claims are empty, because all the evidence against such claims is ignored by the believer. Death by a thousand qualifications
  • Science supports it to an extent. It is the process scientists use to verify a theory
  • Mitchell’s argument about truth does not work because you know what it means to lose faith; what would occur to lose truth in an individual
  • Encourages religious believers to think their claims
• Weaknesses of the falsification principle

  • Faith is not falsifiable: Does not consider human experience. Religion is part of human culture, it cannot be dismissed just because someone disagrees with its claims. It is personal. They create their own facts and worlds, but to try and verify them using universal facts is not possible.
  • Religious believers claims about God are not wild and unrealistic. They assume that there is a truth to be known about the nature and origin of the universe and that God is a reasonable explanation of that truth.
• Weaknesses of the Falsification principle 2/2

  • Popper’s falsification principle was concerned mainly with scientific statements. But statements about God are metaphysical not scientific, so it seems inappropriate to demand that they should be empirically falsifiable
  • To say that religious believers will never falsify their assertions is untrue. For example, the evidential problem of evil has led many believers to question or reject their beliefs in God. 
  • Later in life Flew changed his opinion
• Falsification Principle

  • Created by Anthony Flew
  • What would occur for you to disprove your love of God?
  • Flew’s issue with religious language is that believers change their story to make it align with their beliefs. This is articulated through the phrase ‘death by a thousand qualifications’
  • Parable of the Gardner: highlights how within religion often times God’s existence cannot be proven but believers insist he does exist
• Responses: Hick’s eschatological verification

  Hick claims that the Christian concept of God will be verified eschatologically, so religious language is cognitive. He attempts to show this by his Parable of the Celestial City; the theist who believes there is heaven but has no evidence to determine whether or not it exists, but will be proven at the end of their journey.
• Strengths of Hick’s eschatological verification 1/3

  Hick’s claim that the Celestial City is a real possible seems undeniable. The statement ‘there is life after death’ must either be true or false. Therefore, under the verification principle, religious statements can be proven. If this is proven, then other religious claims such as the resurrection could be proven true as well.
• Strengths of Hick’s eschatological verification 2/3

  Hick argues that we experience things as something and as soon as we try to talk about things we are interpreting them. Sometimes interpretation is straight forward but sometimes it is not, as shown through the Parable of the Celestial City as the theist and atheist interpret it differently but they are both equally valid in their interpretations.
• Weaknesses of Hick’s argument 1/2

  1. Hick writes from the perspective of the believer who reaches the celestial City. If the believer and the non-believer are interpreting the evidence in different ways, Hick’s argument is no stronger than the atheists
  2. His method of verifying religious claims is flawed. You can only verify it if you reach heaven, but if you don’t it still isn’t verified because you are unconscious. You need to ‘know’ that it has been verified or falsified for it to be confirmed true or false. Therefore, to argue that eschatological verification is cognitive is incorrect
• Weaknesses of Hick’s argument 2/2

  3. Hick’s argument can falsify but not verify, but he presents it as a factual argument. He tries to solve this problem by claiming that there are other examples of statements that will be verified if they are true but can never be falsified if they are false; but the example he gives is from mathematics and logical rather than a factual claim
• Strengths of Hick’s eschatological verification 3/3

  • there is evidence in favour of life after death. For example, NDE’s give support for the possibility of continued consciousness (so you could confirm no afterlife if you were conscious after death and went nowhere)
  • The atheists argument that there is no life after death is not a normal factual claim either, because if there is life after death, he will know that his claim has been falsified, whereas if there is no life after death, he will not be able to verify his claim because he will be dead
• Flew v Hare

  1. Flew: religious statements are assertions about the world, so they are intended to be cognitive or factual —> Hare: religious statements are bliks. A blik is not cognitive - it is an interpretation of the world. Religious bliks are therefore non cognitive.
  2. Flew: religious believers allow nothing to count against their cognitive assertions, so religious statements are non falsifiable and therefore meaningless. They die the death of a thousand qualifications —> Hare: religious bliks are non-falsifiable, because they are non cognitive and deeply meaningful.
• Hare’s bliks

  According to Hare, religious assertions are non verifiable bliks. Bliks are worldviews, and everybody has a set of bliks about the world which gives them a framework to understand other beliefs. Bliks cannot be debated; it is ones outlook on the world and is real to them. To religious people, religious statements are facts
• Strengths of Hare’s bliks

  • it explains why different religions make different factual claims: the truths of one religion may contradict the truths of another which leads some to suppose that one religion is right and the other is wrong.
  • Explains why people are not convinced by evidence that appears to contradict their deeply held beliefs. Believers see the evidence through the framework of their bliks
  • Religious people see the world in a different way. They see God at work in the world in a variety of distinctive ways. For example, through the beauties of nature, through meditation.
• Weaknesses of Hare’s bliks 1/2

  Flew says most believers do not see their belief statements as non cognitive: they take their assertions to express factual truths about the cosmos, otherwise they would not bother to make them. Take the claim ‘There is a God’. Believers would argue that this is not just a way of seeing the world but a factual truth Christians would argue that their religious beliefs are not just bliks, they are factual. By calling religion a blik, it reduces it down to opinions rather than facts and diminishes its authority.
• Weaknesses of Hare’s bliks 2/2

  • If there are no factual truths about Christianity, its value reduces to its psychological and sociological beliefs
  • ‘There is a God’ is a factual claim, not a non cognitive one. Why would believers want to believe it non-cognitively? To use the language of verification, it is verifiable in principle by the existence and qualities of the universe and it is falsifiable in principle by the problem of evil
• Wittgenstein’s Language Games

  According to Wittgenstein, the use and context of a statement governs its meaning. Different activities are forms of life, and they can only make sense if you understand the nature and purpose of each activity. So, religious language is its own language game, with its own set of rules such as praying, worshipping and blessing. Religious language regulates the believer’s life. Verification and falsification is irrelevant to religious language games because language games are different perspectives. There is no right or wrong
• Strengths of Wittgenstein

  1. it avoids the confusion that results from mistaking what language is trying to do, particularly the mistakes of the verificationist and falsificationist approaches.
  2. It allows a variety of meaning rather than expecting all language to conform to an empirical or scientific norm
  3. Wittgenstein recognises the meaning behind the statement of a Christian who says ‘There is a God’. To the believer, the statement affirms that believing in God rather than believing that God exists (belief in refers to faith).
• Weaknesses of Wittgenstein 1/3

  1. Discourages debate with secular thinkers. If we cannot understand religious language unless we engage with it, it isolates religion from external criticism. It is more likely that critical debate with secular thinkers would lead to more understanding
  2. Using language is based on guesswork and when applied to God the discussion loses any possibility of making sense. No two people can guarantee that they are using the words in the same way
• Weaknesses of Wittgenstein 2/3

  1. Religious statements no longer have to be true or false according to Wittgenstein. This means that theoretically, a group of people could construct their own consistent set of beliefs and these would form a valid language game. Believers who assert that ‘there is a God’ do not generally think of these statements in anything like the same way as Wittgenstein. Instead they believe they are making assertions about reality.
• Weaknesses of Wittgenstein 3/3

  Wittgenstein’s theory of meaning assumes that there can be no evidence for metaphysical beliefs, but the existence of the laws of nature imply a metaphysical explanation of the universe in terms of a creative mind
• Strengths of cognitive religious language (also weaknesses of non-cognitive)

  • It makes clear factual claims that can be examined by anyone
  • Most believers are cognitivists. Whether they believe that religious language is meaningful or meaningless, the best way to assess that is through assessing its reliability
  • Believers are committed to religion because they see their beliefs as factual and not as bliks
  • FP encourages religious believers to justify their claims
  • VP excludes emotion and deals only in facts
  • Via negativa does not limit God or anthropomorphise him
• Strengths of non-cognitive language (also weaknesses of cognitive language)

  • Shared human experience or awareness enables people to communicate effectively
  • Symbols reflect something beyond. it is meaningful in our search for answers about the universe
  • Bliks explain why people hold different beliefs
  • It avoids the view that religious language can be scientific, so avoids VP and FP
  • Acknowledges that religious language is one of many different ways in which language can be meaningful
• Religious language as analogical (Aquinas)

  Aquinas argues that religious language is neither univocal or equivocal; it is analogical. In the analogy of attribution, if we talk about human attributes of goodness, wisdom and love in persons, as the creator of humans, God has what it takes to produce these qualities in humans. In the analogy of proportion, we cannot compare human faithfulness to God, and since we have nothing to compare him to, we know he has certain qualities but just not to what extent.
• Strengths of analogical language about God

  • It avoids using univocal language about God, and so avoids treating God as a thing among other things
  • It avoids speaking anthropomorphically about God
  • It is useful in pushing words beyond their normal meaning, for example in talking about religious experiences
  • Analogy is cognitive, being based on human experiences so it allows ‘God talk’ to be meaningful
  • Allows God to remain a mystery. We do not interpret him through human senses but as his own being
• Weaknesses of analogy

  • It works only if you know both terms being compared, but we do not know God. Too ambiguous; how do we know he is good if we do not know anything else about him. we have no prior knowledge of God
  • If we can say that God is good because of the good qualities he produces in humans, we can also say he is bad because of the bad qualities in humans
• Via negativa

  Where kataphatic theology says positive things about God, apophatic theology emphasis the belief that God is beyond all description. The VN was developed in the sixth century by Pseudo-Dionysius to emphasise God’s transcendence and mystical otherness. In the twelfth century, Maimonides insisted that language about God can only say what God is not
• Strengths of via negativa

  • avoids the problem of positive language about God, where he is compared to human concepts of certain words such as good or Father. If God is the creator and therefore the source of all things, then it is reasonable to think that God cannot himself be a thing
  • Avoids anthropomorphism since it focuses on God’s transcendence
  • God’s transcendence is supported by the claims of those in the mystical tradition, such as Otto and Stace, and in apophatic forms of meditation, where mystical experiences of God are said to be beyond sense experience
• Weaknesses of via negativa

  • Brian Davies says that it gives no indication of what God actually is. It makes him more confusing
  • The language of via negativa dies the death of a thousand qualifications
  • Mystical tradition supports via negativa, but if an individual says they experienced God but cannot describe it, how do we know if it was an experience of God or produced by the brain?
  • Is it possible to worship a God who is described entirely in negative ways: not finite, not visible, not limited in any way? Most believers describe God positively
• Religious Language as symbolic (Tillich)

  • Symbols show us new levels of meaning. With religious symbols, they are unique and nothing else can fulfil their function.
  • Symbols are self-transcending.
  • Symbols participate
  • Symbols grow and die within a cultural context
• Strengths of Tillich’s symbols

  • Symbolic language can relate religious ideas to ordinary / everyday experiences. For examples, symbols are participating can relate to waving your country’s flag at the olympics
  • it allows us to make only one literal statement about what we mean when we speak of God - he is ‘being itself’. He is eternal and an infinite being
  • Reflects what is known through religious experience.
  • Religious language likes symbols is trying to reflect something about the beyond without limiting it. it is meaningful in our search for answers about the universe and who we are
• Weaknesses of Tillich’s symbols

  • Religions would challenge Tillich by saying that there is more to religious language than symbolism. Events are not metaphors, they are factual
  • Marriage vows and funeral rites are not just symbolic they are deep in meaning and God is actually acting
  • How do we know what the symbol means? Different interpretations