Nature of Belief Flashcards
A.J. Ayer on God existence
“To say that God exists is to make a metaphysical utterance which cannot be either true or false”
He thinks existence of God is neither true of false, its meaningless because it doesn’t pass his verification principle
A.J. Ayer’s verification principle
A statement is true if it:
(a) is a tautology; true by definition
(b) it is verifiable; it can, in principle, be proved to be true or false
What Ayer’s principle is saying: in order to say something is meaningful…
In order to say something is meaningful, we must know what would make what we say true
Criticism of Ayer
- Renders moral statements meaningless (Yet Bentham’s model could be seen as empirically verifiable as the number of people receiving pleasure or pain could be counted)
- Self-defeating theory: doesn’t pass its own test !
How did Ayer attempt to try and respond to these criticisms
Came up with weak verification, contrasting it with strong verification
A statement is meaningful if:
- STRONG: verified by observation
- WEAK: some observations can establish the probable truth of a statement
(not much clarity to guide you for the weak model)
John Hick’s theory
Eschatological verification
Explain eschatological verification
- Rather than saying evidence is not needed when talking about the existence of God, he says we CAN verify or falsify it but once we die.
- Its potential verifiability makes it meaningful to Hick
Hick’s parable to explain eschatological verification
- Parable of the celestial city: one man believes the rod leads to the Celestial City and the other thinks it leads nowhere - only at the end of the road can verify / falsify that it leads to the Celestial city
Criticism of Hick eschatological verification
Only works if we retain our consciousness and our personality after death. If someone dies and appears in heaven, is it the same person?
How Hick responds to the criticism of eschatological verification
Example of someone disappearing in America and reappearing in Australia - then the same but dying - then dying but going from earth to heaven.
He says if we accept the first we must accept the second and if we accept the first and second then we must accept the last
Antony Flew’s theory
Falsification
Explain Flew’s falsification
Holds that things are only meaningful if if they have the ability to be proved wrong (rather than right which Ayer would say)
Explain Flew’s garden parable
Gardener is claimed to exist but is invisible, odourless and intangible so there is no way of being able to detect his activity.
Despite the believer not being able to apprehend him, he holds onto the belief that he is there. - each time the believer modifies their belief so that it cannot be falsified - thus is effectively unfalsifiable
Death by a thousand qualifications
Like goal posts that get moved: religious people are irrational because they don’t accept evidence they just change their view so that their new evidence no longer refutes it
Criticism for Hick and Ayer (and general argument of essay)
Faith (e.g. in God) is not about having to be rational / needing to be proved or disproved - it is arational - i.e. outside of the box of reason.
- To say it needs to be rationally proved is missing the point of faith
