20th Century Religious Language Flashcards
What is essay 1 ?
Is religious Language meaningless
What is ur view essay 1 ?
It is meaningful - disagree
What are the scholars in essay 1 ?
what is the point in para 1 essay 1 ?
Swinburne Toys in a cupboard analogy
Statements are not meaningless just because they cant be emprically verified
Hick - believers would be able to verify statements about God and heaven at the end of life’s journey. So religious statements can be verified in principle and are therefore not meaningless.
What is the counterargument in para 1 essay 1
AJ Ayer - Verification Principle. Statement only meaningful if its :
- An analytical truth
- Empirically verifiable
Any statement that doesn’t fit these descriptions is meaningless according to verification.
Statements like ‘God answers my prayers’ and ‘God exists’ are not analytical truths , further , they are not empirically verifiable or falsifiable
Therefore according to Ayer, RL is meaningless.
Strong verification principle argues that since religious language cannot be verified by sense experience now, it cannot be talked about as true or false, e.g. we cannot observe God exists or that God is good (meaningless statements ).
Strong verification principle argues that ‘God is good’ is not true by definition , it is not a tautology or an analytic statement , therefore its meaningless
How will you counteract the counterargument para 1 essay 1 ?
Underlying assumption of v principle is that only science can give meaning and knowledge about world
Brunner and DZ Phillips - Sentences of faith , just like poetry and literature , shouldnt be treated in the same way as scientific statements . Veriication principle is too narrow
What is the point in para 2 essay 1 ?
Hick - Eschatological statement that can be verified after death, or at the end of time.
What is the counterargumentn in para 2 essay 1 ?
Anthony Flew = Meaningless bcos language is unfalsifiable.
‘Everything in the universe doubles in size every 10 seconds ‘- example - no possible observation could disprove this.
Analogy -show that religious language is meaningful - Parable of Gardener
- Jungle clearing = world
- Invisible gardener = God
- flowers = good
- weeds = evil
Flew = God exists = unfalsifiable so meaningless in the same way the existence of the gardener is unfalsifiable,
We cant use the problem of evil as evidence against Gods existence because the religous believer just creates reasons. (free will , soul making ).
Why an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God would allow evil.
Because religious beiever accepts no observations count as evidence against belief in God
How will you counterargue the counterargument in para 2 essay 1 ?
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What is essay 2 ?
Falsification helps us understand religious language , yes or no.
What is the intro essay 2 ?
- Falsification - created by Karl Popper (1902-1994). He was a philosopher of science.
Created to describe how scientific statements can be separated from non-scientific statements
What is ur view essay 2 ?
It does help us understand religious language
What scholars essay 2 ?
Popper, Flew, Hare, Mitchell, John Frame.
What is your point para 1 essay 2 ?
Falsification principle = A statement is a genuine scientific assertion if it is possible to say what evidence would prove it false.
KARL POPPER - created it to describe how scientific statements can be separated from non-scientific statements . Rejected verificationism and invented falsification.
‘science is more concerned with falsification of hypothesis than with the verification’
‘Any theory that is impossible to disprove is no valid theory at all’
Helps to clarify which statements are scientific and which are non-scientific
Religious claims = not falsifiable so they are not genuine scientific assertions.
Religious statements are not scientific so it can be argued they are not cognitive or factual
Flew - Parable of Gradener . Uses it to teach that unfalsifiable language fails to assert everything,
what is counterargument in para 1 essay 2 ?
Religious language is not like scientific claims which can be tested and are justifiable.
Hare - Parable of the lUnatic
Blik = unfalsifiable , fundamental beliefs which are either sane or insane but are not affected by contrary evidence.
Parnoid student thinks dons are out to get him.
No matter the evidence which they show him
