20th century religious language

Question 1

basis of Ayers verification principal

Answer 1

a statement that cannot be verified is devoid of meaning and cannot tell us anuthing of the world

Question 2

explain Ayers method of verification

Answer 2

to have meaning the statement must be cognitive - analytic or synethtic-

due to criticism on proving historic events - strong and weak verification

strong - practical verifiability (no doubt )
weak - verifiable in principal - strong likelihood such as roman influences suggesting they invaded

Question 3

who calls god a metaphysical term - no way to verify it

Answer 3

ayer

Question 4

how does hick criticse Ayer

Answer 4

eschatological verification
- emprirically verifiable in afterlife
- celestial city afterlife - will disvover which traveller is right

Question 5

how to respond to hicks eschatological verification

Answer 5

• if there is no afterlife we wil not know
  and just because religious langauge is possibly verifiable doesnt mean it actually is since we do not know if it actually exists
• could verify moon in prinicple since we knew that exists, but not god

Question 6

explain Hare’s paranoid student example

Answer 6

rejects idea religious language is meaningless

student can see evidence of kind dons but still believes they are malicious - even if they are not they still impact the students life and their choices - may cross street to avoid them
eg. bliks

Question 7

explain Mitchells example of the partisan

Answer 7

there is both evidence for an agaisnt god, so much more likley that someone would have faith to close that gap

sometimes the partisan is on their side, sometimes they are not, but they always have faith that they are

Question 8

What is the falsification principle

Answer 8

popper disagreed with verification because scinece doesnt work by just looking for things which verify a theory - they work by trying to prove it wrong

Question 9

can religious language be falsified

Answer 9

falsifiability is the test if anything can be asserted, but religious language doesnt assert anything
- religious ppl cannot state what would disprove belief in god because it is based upon faith not fact

some ppls child may die and they lose faith in god, but if asked in advance they would not be able to say that this death disrpoves belief in god

eg of gardener and death by a thousand qualifications

Question 10

explain Hare’s non cognitive Bliks

Answer 10

religious language is not an attempt to describe reality but they are just non cognitive expresisve language on attitude or emotion or worldview - aka bliks

it affects mentality and behaviour so must be meaningful non cognitively
eg. paranoid student

Question 11

evaluation of bliks and the paranoid student (hare)

Answer 11

• religious people dont think they are exptessing personal feelings or attitudes, they see it as fact
• aquinas’ cosmological argument doesnt seem to just be an expression of belief - he really thinks that god created universe

Question 12

explain wittgensteins language games

Answer 12

ayer and flew misunderstood!
- words get meaning by participating in social reality and context aka language games
- diff in speaking with freind at work than with parents, or a queen in the context of monarchy or chess
- science and religion diff language game

Question 13

evaluation of wittgenstein (2)

Answer 13

• scinece and religious claimed to be diff language games but often overlap - such as natural theology
• most religious people do not speak in a ‘language game’ - even in other ‘games’ they believe in god