Flew, Hare, Mitchell, and Flew again Flashcards
Flew General
• falsification principle originally proposed by Karl Popper for science, Flew applies it to religion in ‘Theology and Falsification’ (1971)
• responds to challenges to this in his Symposium which is to explain what would count as disproving the existence of a loving God
Parable of the Gardener General
invented by John Wisdom in 1944, Flew adapts it for his own purpose
• the jungle clearing represents the word, the flowers order, beauty and goodness (which are often used to argue for God e.g. Paley), there are also weeds, representing disorder, evil and suffering
• one explorer believes there is a gardener (a God). the other demands evidence
• they test to see if there is a gardener but fail to find any evidence of one, after which the explorer who posited a gardener suggested that the God is invisible, intangible and insensible
• the sceptical explorer says this is no different to there being no gardener (or no God)
Flew on religious belief
• Flew supposes that religious belief begins as something simple and disprovable (there is a physical being who maintains this garden- can be proven otherwise)
• however, more sophisticated religions have immaterial and omnipresent gods whose existence cannot be disproved
• Flew claims this makes religious language meaningless, because these statements could be true or false without changing anything at all
Flew on religious assertions
• religious belief starts as an assertion but is gradually “reduced step by step” and ends up as a “picture preference”- just a preferred way of looking at things, not mattering at all to how they actually are
• this happens in other areas of thought, Flew mentioned sex: some think it is a spiritual connection between souls, souls cannot be detected by science and spiritual connections cannot be tested
• most people will admit that they mean ‘spiritual love’ in a symbolic way, this Flew calls “checking” (stopping) the “process of qualification” (the tendency to make the assertion more complicated so it can qualify)
• he thinks religious people fail by continuing to qualify the idea of God
“death by a thousand qualifications”
• a play on a Chinese execution method- “death by a thousand cuts”
• religious claims are qualified so much that they ‘die’, they lose any meaning
• attacks liberal theology; Paul Tillich believed God was beyond literal description so called him “the ground of being”, we cannot do more than use symbols to gesture at God
• John Hick didn’t believe in a literal hell because it seems unfair- this kills the original assertion that there will be justice at the end of time
• the criticism extends to all believers: claiming that “God has a plan” or “God created the world” makes an assertion that cannot be falsified
Flew on Liberal Theology
• attacks liberal theology as utterances which read as assertions are meant to mean something else (as “crypto-commands, expressions of wishes, disguised ejaculations, concealed ethics”- Flew does not think this is “properly orthodox” genuine religion or “practically effective” (as in, effective as a means of communication)
• these (God has a plan and loves us) are also flawed as assertions in the traditional sense
Flew on Meaningless assertions
• saying God has a plan can be meaningless if anything can happen which believers assert is in accordance with that plan
• saying God created the world means that he is the only means by which the world came about. if another explanation is perfectly compatible with God, then God is not needed and asserting his role in creation is meaningless
• if God’s love permits anything to happen to us, then nothing is mean by saying he loves us
McCosh and Kingsley
James McCosh suggested that evolution was used by god to create life and Charles Kingsley argued evolution makes God seem even wiser: “death by a thousand qualifications”
Religious assertions allowing any possibility makes them meaningless
• “to assert that such-and-such is the case is necessarily equivalent to denying that such-and-such is not the case”
• a statement which denies nothing is not a statement, but meaningless
• So, religious statements which can be adapted and reduced to accommodate any real world state of affairs fail to be actual statements, for they do not actually deny the possibility of anything
• a child dying of “inoperable cancer of the throat” is permitted by a ‘loving’ God- saying God is loving should mean that this is not the case, but it is, so its meaningless
• Flew suggests two solutions to the problem of evil give by believers: God’s love is different to human love (“not merely human love”), God’s love is impossible to understand (“an inscrutable love”) both of which fail to rule out any possible happening
John Frame
turns the parable of the gardener on its head in response
• “A man was there, pulling weeds, applying fertiliser…introduced himself as the royal gardener…Our senses are deceiving us. There is no gardener….But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does this mirage, as you call it, differ from a real gardener?”
• the falsification principle arguably applies to atheism, it is only that religious believers are forced to defend their beliefs so this is not apparent
Hare’s main point
religious language can be meaningful without being falsifiable
• Bliks: are unfalsifiable but meaningful ideas
The Parable of the Lunatic
• the student’s blik that all dons want to murder him is meaningful yet unfalsifiable- despite evidence presented to him, the student attributed all the dons’ behaviours to “plotting” and “diabolical cunning”
• this belief is meaningful because it makes a difference to how the student behaves (not attending lectures) and the dons might want him expelled
• even if belief in God is unfalsifiable, it is meaningful as it affects behaviour
Bliks
Hare’s example of a blik about cars being safe: Hare is aware that crashes happen and car parts can fail, but his blik which is unfalsifiable prevails and he continues to drive
• his blik in “compatible with any finite number of…tests”, nothing can disprove the blik
• bliks exist in other contexts
• paradigm used by Thomas Kuhn to describe bliks in science
• Ludwig Wittgenstein’s language games are not dissimilar
• schemas in psychology
• faith
David Hume’s ‘Teatise of Human Nature’ and Hare
Hare’s ideas are linked to his theory of knowledge, specifically the Problem of Induction
• Treatise of Human Nature: Hume (sceptic) tries to doubt everything and finds that total scepticism leaves no good reason to believe in anything
• “These speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous”- we have certain foundational belief which we cannot verify or falsify but would be ridiculous to therefore deny
• we have a custom or habit of induction (using facts to come to conclusions)
• inductions tend to be right, but are not always
• inductions are therefore based on an irrational assumption
Hare’s criticism of Flew
• Flew treats religious language like scientific language, but it is not
• only scientific statements need to be falsifiable, though religious statements make up an unfalsifiable world view
• it is wrong to think of God as an answer to scientific questions because this is not the role that bliks play
• even atheistic bliks exist, for example, that everything occurs by chance. nothing can prove or disprove this, yet it would change how we live, leaving no point in planning or intending anything
• Religious language is therefore anti-realist: religious language does not make factual statements about the world
• religious language is still important, having implications, for example, for morality
Criticisms of Hare
• means that religious language becomes totally subjective and a religious assertion cannot be called truth- they are just personal preferences, and this seems contrary to what believers would want
• atheism cannot be a blik; it is based on the lack of evidence for God’s existence (Dan Barker: “I am an atheist because there is no evidence for the existence of God. That should be all that needs to be said about it”)
• Dawkins: religion remains a “virus of the mind” and an “excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate the evidence”
Howard Hosburgh
Hare makes a distinction between insane bliks and sane bliks. Horsburgh calls these pure and impure
• Pure bliks are truly unfalsifiable, such as ‘everything happens for a reason’
• Impure bliks are “artificially unfalsifiable”- they get contradicted but are held regardless, such as the lunatic’s paranoia
• “impure bliks can function either as bliks or as assertions”
• pure bliks never try to be factual statements, but impure bliks are maintained as assertions until contradictory evidence is presented, and then are presented as bliks and nothing more
Mitchell
concludes the Falsification Symposium with a response to Flew. He admits unfalsifiable language is problematic but argues believers tend to view their claims as falsifiable.
Parable of the Partisan
• argues believers do not bury their heads in the sand but recognise, for example, that the problem of evil contradicts their beliefs about God, though they don’t allow this to count against God’s love- they are committed to God, not blind to the challenges
• differentiates between a believer and a detached observer- scientists are detached observers but religious people when discussing religion are not: “I am unable to share the explorers’ detachment”
• religious language is unlike scientific language, so something that allows scientific language to be meaningless would not do the same for religious language because of the commitment involved
• links to Wittgenstein
Analysis of the parable of the partisan
• the stranger is God, the partisan a religious believer, their meeting is a religious experience (perhaps conversion), sometimes therer are miracles and blessings, other times there is evil and suffering, the doubters are atheists
• the parable reflects well a religious worldview; evil is in charge and good, though seeming far away, is providing hope
• arguably, it is a poor analogy: Flew said God has no excuses like the stranger, and others have said that it does not apply for believers who never had a conversion experience (although, this isn’t necessary for trust and commitment)
Mitchell and Faith trials
• the partisan’s experiences exemplify trials of faith
• the partisan isn’t qualifying his belief but simply remains committed to it, although Mitchell accepts there is a point at which this becomes “silly”
• no one can say when a belief like trust in one’s friend can be falsified, for Mitchell it is important that believers experience “the full force of the conflict” in a “trial of faith”, you cannot “say in advance”
• to struggle with faith and maintain it avoids the death by a thousand qualifications
Mitchell’s wrong responses from believers
• “blandly dismissing”the contradictory evidence as if it doesn’t exist. Those who do this seem “thoughtless or insane”
• treating disasters as “God’s will”. Means re-defining words like good and loving when applying them to God. This seems to be what Flew attacks but Mitchell agrees that it is unreasonable
How the partisan differs from the lunatic
• Mitchell thinks Flew’s challenge to religious language is misguided but agrees about falsification and that religious statements are assertions
• the stranger being “on our side” is an explanation which could be true or false- it explains the strangers behaviour and the existence of the resistance
• this rejects religious language is a blik, because the lunatic does not recognise anything contradicting his blik- the lunatic never thinks that he could be wrong
• believers seem more like the partisan than the lunatic in the way they assert their beliefs
Mitchell’s ways of understanding religious statements
- provisional hypotheses: will accept until there is contradictory evidence.
- vacuous formulae: more like Hare’s blik and Flew was attacking. These are not changed regardless of evidence and make no differences to life.
- significant articles of faith: beliefs you are committed to, make a difference in how you live, aren’t given up on easily
• Mitchell believes religious statements are the third.
• they shouldn’t be the first because they aren’t intended to be tested (Matthew 4:7: “you shall not put the Lord your God to the test”)
• admits believers are in danger of faith becoming vacuous formulae
Flew’s response and conclusion general
• “An explanation, to be an explanation at all, must explain why this particular thing occurs; and not something else”
• “sophisticated religious people” often ignore this by not allowing their statements to be disproved
Flew on Mitchell
• they agree that religious beliefs are assertions/explanations, can be falsified, that some believers have vacuous beliefs which they refuse to allow to be falsified
• admits to being wrong in suggesting all believers qualify their beliefs, and that believers try to explain contradictions rather than ignore them
• however, thinks that theodicies don’t ultimately work because of fundamental contradictions (between God and evil), so eventually believers have to qualify their beliefs
• the stranger is not a good analogy because there are good excuses for a human to be ambiguous, but not for God: “God [has] attributes which rule out all possible saving explanations”
Criticisms of Flew’s response to Mitchell
• Augustine’s or Irenaeus’ theodicy are arguably convincing
• Mitchell’s argument was not a response to the problem of evil, only to Flew’s challenge
• things do seem to falsify religious beliefs, but people trust in God
• trials of faith are supposed to be difficult
Flew on Hare
• two main objections: 1. ordinary Christians probably don’t regard their beliefs and bliks. 2. bliks are not meaningful anyway
• Hare claims only orthodox and mainstream Christians treat religious language as factual statements, not like Hare, so Hare is being unorthodox
• Bliks are not meaningful because they do not justify behaviour or give others reasons to behave as religious people do. Saying “you ought to because it is God’s will” is an unverifiable blik equivalent to just saying “you ought”- compared to a cheque to pay for an overdraft paid from that same account (appears to pay but doesn’t)
Criticisms of Flew’s response to Hare
• Flew’s initial criticism was of liberal believers, but then he challenges the orthodoxy of Hare
• most Christians make falsifiable statements, such as: Jesus rose from the dead, there is a heaven and hell (these don’t die the death of a thousand qualifications)
Flew’s conclusion
• 1984 George Orwell reference: the party’s propaganda is false and they know it is but distribute anyway and convince themselves it is true- “doublethink”
• religious language is like this as believers convince themselves there is a loving God while admitting there is suffering
• seems to suggest that religious language is just like bliks or trust/commitment (like the party members’ commitment)
