Religious language

• outline cognitivism about religious language

  - cognitive statements are expressions of a belief about the world that can be true or false- they are 'truth-apt'

  - is religious language is cognitive it therefore truth-apt and aims to describe the world and that this is how religious language is meaningful
• outline non-cognitivism about religious language

  - non-cognitive claims are expressions of mental states that are not intended to be truth apt nor make a objective claim about reality

  - if religious language is non- cognitive, then religious claims are expressions of a particular mental state e.g. the way we see the world, and this is how they have meaning, rather than accurately describing a state of affairs in the world.
• Outline Ayer's verification principle

  - A statement only has meaning if it is either an analytic truth (true by definition) / empirically verifiable (we can determine its truth from our experience of the external world)

  - his principle asserts that in order to say something is meaningful, we must know what makes our statement true (how to verify it).

  - Applying the verification principle to religious language, Ayer argues that statements like "God answers my prayers" and "God exists" are not analytic truth, neither are they empirically verifiable or falsifiable.

  - Therefore, according to Ayer's verificationism, religious language is meaningless.

  - RL for Ayer is non-cognitive as it acts as if it makes cognitive claims, however these claims are empirically unverifiable and therefore cannot be proven true.
• outline logical positivism


  - a philosophical movement promoted by the Vienna Circle (Ayer, Popper, Wittgenstein) in the 1920s, which argues that scientific knowledge was the only kind of factual knowledge and that all religious language is meaningless
• outline what is meant by something being verifiable


  able to be proved or demonstrated to be true
• outline a possible (weak) critique of Ayer's verification principle (+ then a response to this)


  - the principle fails its own test as it is not analytic and cannot be verified empirically. This suggests that the test itself is meaningless and may therefore lose its credibility.

  - one response is to say that the verification principle is a criterion or definition of what is meaningful, rather than a statement, so it may not be fair to assess the verification principle by its own criteria.
• outline a stronger critique of the verification principle:

  - it dismisses a wide range of other statements which are widely considered to convey meaning, such as historical events, and scientific theories.

  - e.g. historical statements such as 'the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066' cannot be empirically verified as ultimately no one living was alive to observe it and although historical artefacts might make it probable that this was the year of the battle, they do not precisely verify the statement according to the VP.

  - if extended far enough the verification principle cancels out many scientific statements- for example there are many sub-atomic particles that cannot be verified through sense experiences or even concepts like gravity cannot be verified as a constant as I cannot be in every place at once.

  - therefore a main issue with the verification principle is that after strict application, the number of meaningful statements left is negligible (so small or unimportant as to be not worth considering) and therefore its usefulness should be doubted
• outline john Hick's response to Ayer from eschatological verification:

  - Hick argues however that religious statements can in principle be verified after death.

  - John Hick agrees with Ayer that "God exists" is not empirically verifiable in this life,

  - however many religious claims are about things beyond the limits of human life and therefore may be verifiable outside of these limits.

  (- To illustrate this, Hick tells a parable of a 'celestial city', where two people travel along a road (representing life).

  - Person A (the theist) believes that it leads to the Celestial City (heaven), but person B (the atheist) believes that it leads to nowhere in particular (e.g. no afterlife).

  - Although they encounter 'refreshment and delight', they also encounter hardship and danger (e.g. the problem of evil).

  Person A views this as encouragement and tests.

  Person B believes none of this, saying that these events have no ultimate purpose.

  But when they turn the last corner, one of them will be shown right and the other wrong.)

  If the atheist is correct, his belief will never be verified because he'll be dead and unable to verify anything

  (- this is the equivalent of walking forever or to nowhere in particular.)

  - However it is possible that 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.)

  - therefore Hick saying that "God exists" is not necessarily meaningless nor non-cognitive, because it is in principle eschatologically verifiable and if successful is factually significant.
• outline a possible response to Hick's eschatological verification about issues of personal identity and the idea of life after death (Hume?)

  - Some would argue that such an analogy is unconvincing and that Hick's argument faces issues of personal identity after death, if there even is an afterlife at all.

  - In order for an individual to verify religious claims after death, they must remain the same individual as before.

  - This does not seem guaranteed, and faces issues around whether your entire form would be resurrected or just your mind e.g. If someone were to die from horrific cancer, would their cancer still be present in the afterlife?

  - If not, then they would not be the same being as before to verify the claim, as the cancer is an integral part of their being.

  - But if so, then this seems incredibly cruel and puzzling for an omnibenevolent God allow.

  - It seems a weak analogy in his parable from just turning a corner or a road to the complex idea of death and resurrection.

  - Therefore Hick's argument for eschatological verification is unconvincing.
• outline a possible response from Hick about the plausibility of resurrection

  - Hick recognises that the personal identity of the individual must remain the same.

  - He provides several thought experiments to show the logical possibility of the continued personal identity of someone following the loss of their body

  - e.g. a person vanishes in America and then an exact duplicate of the person simultaneously appears in Australia, with their appearance, memories and personality identical to the person that disappeared from America.

  - Hick argues that everyone would say that the apparent new person in Australia is the same person as the one from America.

  - He proposes various alterations including that the original person dies or that they appear in Heaven rather than in Australia, but his conclusion remains the same.

  - Hick does recognise the problem with the resurrection of the cancer victim, however, he may make a distinction between our empirical self that can only be described 'in terms of a particular historico-cultural context'

  - and our basic nature or soul, which can be described independently of 'the concrete ways in which its basic traits express themselves in particular circumstances'.

  - Therefore as long as the soul or basic nature of the cancer victim is resurrected, they would still be able to verify the existence of a God as that is the fundamental part of people's identity.
• outline Flew's Falsification Principle


  (against Hick- even though RL may conceivably be verifiable, it not falsifiable as if the theist was incorrect, they cannot falsify this claim after death)

  
  

  - Flew argues that language is only meaningful if it could conceivably be proven false.

  - The statement "Water boils at 100°c" is falsifiable as there are possible tests that could prove it wrong (e.g. heating a beaker of water to 100°c and it not boiling) and is therefore meaningful.

  - Flew argues that religious language is not falsifiable as believers refuse to accept any evidence against their beliefs.

  - They qualify or amend their claims to avoid them being falsified, which ultimately leads to 'death by a thousand qualifications' i.e. the assertion becomes so different from its original meaning after all of these amendments that it is no longer recognisable.

  - he uses the parable of the gardener to outline this:

  1- two explorers come across a clearing in the jungle where weeds and flowers grow (representing the good and evil in the world) and disagree on the existence of a gardener (i.e. God).

  2- To settle the argument, carry out various tests to test his existence.

  3- despite having found nothing, explorer A (i.e. the theist) says that the gardener is invisible, intangible, has no smell, feels no pain etc. Therefore no sense experience can prove the gardener's existence false

  4- But is clear that nothing meaningful remains of original assertion after all these additional qualifications.

  - Flew argues that the statement "God exists" is meaningless and contentless because it is unfalsifiable in the same way the existence of the invisible gardener is unfalsifiable.

  - Other religious assertions such as 'God loves us like a father' also cannot be falsified e.g. by evils in the world, as in order to justify God not acting in the same way an earthy father would,

  - various qualifications are then made such as 'God's love is not like human love' or it is an 'inscrutable love',

  - but the original meaning of the words 'love' and 'father' have changed so much that they are wholly different from the original assertion.

  - Therefore all religious statements are non-falsifiable.

  - He argues that RL is non-cognitive as it is not making meaningful claims about reality that can be proven false
• outline Hare's response to Flew and his Blick theory

  - Hare suggests that Flew's definition of meaningful is far too strict and that a non-falsifiable belief can still be meaningful to an individual.

  -He denies that religious statements are factual statements, but instead he thinks that they are expressions of a Weltanschauung (world view). He believes that religious language is non-cognitive.

  - he introduces the idea of 'bliks'- world views that are meaningful but unverifiable and unfalsifiable.

  - They are logically prior to the facts.

  - Your 'blick' tells you how to interpret the world, how to evaluate evidence and what this evidence means to you as an individual.

  - he highlights this with an example of a man, who is convinced that all of his colleagues want to kill him.

  - Despite all the interactions he has with this colleges that suggest no malice at all, nobody can convince the man otherwise as he believes that their actions are devious and trying to lull him into a false sense of security.

  - Hare argues that even unfalsifiable lunatic beliefs are meaningful- such beliefs or bliks clearly mean something to this individual

  - as they have an effect on his behaviour and the way in which he evaluates the evidence of his colleges behaviour, as well as showing others how he views the world around him.

  - Therefore, religious claims like 'God loves us' or 'God exists' are not cognitive statements or assertions about some objective reality

  - they are instead meaningful expressions of a blick or subjective world view.
• outline issues with Hare's blick theory

  - Many religious believers and many atheists would disagree with what Hare is saying and claim that their beliefs are intended as explanations of the world.

  - Most religious believers think their beliefs are objectively true, but if religious beliefs are bliks then they can't be true or false and there's no way of judging which one to follow, other than personal preference.

  - If theism is a blik, then it follows that atheism is also a blik and cannot be based on lack of evidence for God's existence, as bliks are non-cognitive - but many atheists would argue that's exactly what their atheism is based on.

  - Therefore Hare's Blick theory seems counterintuitive and seems to go against people's perception of their religious language.

  - moreover, if bliks cannot be falsified, we cannot therefore counteract evil or insane bliks in other people- we cannot distinguish between a deluded blik (like the lunatic) and the intuitively correct blik (of his peers), which seems impractical.
• outline Basil Mitchell's response to Flew (the partisan)

  - Mitchell argues that (Flew and Hare are wrong as) believers' claims can be falsified (e.g. by the problem of evil) but that the believers' faith ensures that they remain committed to their claims despite this evidence.

  - He argues that the belief in God is cognitive but that it is based on personal experience of God that leads to trust and an internal sense that God exists.

  - uses a parable to illustrate this argument:

  - 1. In a time of war, a member of the resistance has an intimate and powerful meeting with stranger who tells the partisan that he is also involved in the resistance.

  - 2. The partisan becomes completely convinced that 'the stranger is on our side' and he often sees the stranger helping the resistance.

  - 3. Sometimes the stranger appears to act against the resistance, which counts against the partisan's belief, however the partisan overcomes these doubts and trusts that the stranger ultimately knows best.

  - 4. In this way, the partisan maintains his belief that the stranger is 'on our side'.

  - In this analogy, the stranger represents God and his ambiguous actions represent the problem of evil.

  - Contrary to Flew, the Partisan isn't just ignoring this contradictory evidence and he isn't really "qualifying" his belief that the Stranger is on his side. He wrestles with the problems he faces and goes through a "trial of faith".

  - The Partisan must either give up on the idea that the Stranger is on his side or accept that the Stranger has reasons for his refusal to help on occasions.

  - The Partisan cannot do the former as he has made a commitment.

  - Therefore religious language can be falsifiable and therefore still have meaning, especially to a believer.
• outline a potential weakness to Mitchell's partisan of stranger

  https://philosophydungeon.weebly.com/mitchell.html

  - However Flew argues that Mitchell's analogy of the parable of the partisan does not accurately reflect the nature of God.

  - While one might be able to forgive the shortcomings of the Stranger, since they are human and may not be able to accomplish everything in their goals of helping the resistance, the same cannot be said of God, who is unlimited in power and knowledge.

  - It is not necessarily the case that God would have to do evil deeds in order to promote a greater good.

  - Therefore the argument that religious language can still be falsified seems significantly flawed, as the analogy used to show is weak.
• outline a possible response to the weakness about Mitchell


  - However Mitchell would refute this critique.

  - The idea of the Stranger being 'on our side' is a good analogy for a religious assertion

  - as it can explain the Stranger's behaviour (that he is acting in the best interests of the cause) and explain the Resistance movement (as these actions are being done for its sake).

  - Just because the stranger appears to be going against the resistance, it does not mean that that is actually the case.

  - Similarly, just because an omnipotent omnibenevolent God appears to go against humanity, we may be ignorant of the reasoning behind such actions.

  - The idea of an omnibenevolent God still can be an explanation for the problem of evil.

  - It can explain God's behaviour (e.g. that he is making us into virtuous creatures or allowing us freewill) and explain the way the world is (e.g. God has created it for 'soul-making' or as an environment in which meaningful free choices can be made).

  - Despite this, the very fact that religious believers, in a similar way to the Partisan, do struggle to overcome evidence against these assertions shows that their idea of God is not dying "the death by a thousand qualifications" - instead they go through a "trial of faith".

  - Therefore fact that this is so difficult for religious believers shows that their beliefs are falsifiable and therefore religious language is cognitive and meaningful.