Religious languge

• Cognitivism


  P1: Sentences are meaningful if they are statements.

  P2: Expressions of beliefs about the world are true or false.

  P3: The claim that 'God exists' is the claim that there is a God that exists independently in the world, and reasons can be given to support this claim.

  C: Therefore 'God exists' is meaningful.
• Non-cognitivism


  P1: Sentences are meaningful if they are expressions of a mental state, for example an attitude, emotion, value or way of seeing.

  P2: Expressions of these non-cognitive mental states are neither true nor false.

  P3: 'God exists' is not a claim about the world, but an expression of a non-cognitive mental state.

  C: Therefore 'God exists' is meaningful.
• Issues with religious statements

  • They can be contradictory or paradoxical.
  • They can contain metaphysical terms that lie beyond human experience.
  • They can appear figurative or metaphorical
• Ayer and the elimination of metaphysics(part 1)


  P1: Claims are meaningful if they are true by definition or verifiable in principle.

  P2: Religious language makes claims that are not analytic.

  P3: Religious language makes claims about metaphysical entities.

  P4: Metaphysical entities are beyond observation and experience and cannot be verified.
• Ayer and the elimination of metaphysics (part 2)


  C1: Therefore religious claims are not factually significant because we do not know what conditions would need to be met for us to verify these claims as true/false.

  C2: Therefore religious language makes claims like 'God exists' that are not meaningful, but are pseudo-statements.
• Hick's response to Ayer (parable of the Celestial City)


  Two men are travelling on a road. One believes it leads to the Celestial City, whereas the other believes it leads nowhere in particular. On their journey they encounter moments of pleasure and times of hardship. When they turn the last corner they will find out who is right.
• Hick's response to Ayer


  P1: Verification means we can describe a situation (in principle) in which rational doubt is removed.

  P2: In principle after someone dies they will encounter and recognise God.

  C1: Therefore after someone dies the rational doubt that there is a God will be removed.

  C2: Therefore in principle the claim that 'God exists' is verifiable and thus meaningful.
• Issue with Hick

  • Hick's theory relies on the questionable idea that we retain our identity after death.
  • It also relies on the person who is resurrected being able to recognise God.
• Anthony Flew on falsification (parable of the gardener)


  Two people find a clearing in a jungle. One believes it is being tended to by a gardener, the other does not. They keep watch and see no one so the believer suggests it is an invisible gardener. They set up an electric fence and sniffer dogs and there is still no sign of a gardener. The believer now suggests that the gardener is intangible and odourless. The other person is despairing and asks 'How does your claim differ from their being no gardener at all?'.
• Flew on falsification (part 1)


  P1: A meaningful assertion is one that can be falsified.

  P2: To falsify an assertion means describing what the world would be like if that statement were false.

  P3: Atheists provide many examples of what the world would be like if the claim 'God exists' was false.
• Flew on falsification (part 2)

  P4: Believers refuse to accept these examples as falsifying - instead they qualify or amend their claims to avoid them being falsified.

  P5: Moreover, believers cannot conceive of any examples of what the world would look like if the claim 'God exists' was false.

  C: Therefore believers claims that 'God exists' are unfalsifiable and meaningless.
• Basil Mitchell's response to Flew (parable of the partisan)


  During a war, a partisan member of the resistance meets a stranger who tells him he is also a member of the resistance. The partisan becomes completely convinced that the stranger is on his side and often sees him helping the resistance. However the partisan sometimes sees the stranger helping the enemy which makes him doubt his belief. Despite these trials of faith he maintains trust in the stranger and continues to believe the stranger is part of the resistance.
• Mitchell's response to Flew (part 1)


  P1: A meaningful assertion is one that can be falsified.

  P2: To falsify an assertion means describing things that count against the assertion.

  P3: Believers who claim that 'God loves us' recognise that the problem of evil counts against their assertion.

  C1: Therefore 'God loves us' is a meaningful assertion.
• Mitchell's response to Flew (part 2)

  P4: However believers will not discard their belief, despite the evidence against it.

  P5: This is because their faith in God means they will always commit to finding an explanation for the counter-evidence.

  C2: Therefore religious statements like 'God loves us' are genuine assertions but not conclusively falsifiable.
• Hare's response to Flew (parable of the paranoid student)


  A university student is convinced that all his tutors want to murder him. No matter what his friends do to try and convince him this is not true he continues to hold the belief.
• Hare's response to Flew 


  P1: A blik is a foundational attitude that we have about the world and our beliefs are based on these.

  P2: A blik cannot be falsified.

  P3: Religious claims like 'God loves us' are expressions of foundational approaches to the world.

  P4: Religious claims like 'God loves us cannot be falsified'.

  C: Therefore religious claims lime 'God loves us' are not assertions, they are expressions of a blik.