(P) Religious language Flashcards
What is the debate within religious language?
It is one of meaning. Can we speak about a transcendent God above and beyond human experience with human meaning?
What’s the difference between cognitive and non-cognitive language?
Cognitive (or realist): Deals with factual statements that can be proved to be either true or false. These can be either empirically provable, such as ‘The Queen is the Head of State’, or statements that as far as believers are concerned, contain meaningful factual content such as ‘God exists’ or ‘God loves me’. Anthony Flew described cognitive language as consisting of ‘crypto-commands, expressions of wishes, disguised ejaculations, concealed ethics, or anything else but assertions’.
Non-cognitive (or anti-realist): Deals with statements that are not to be taken factually, but are to be understood in other ways - for example as symbols, metaphors, myths or moral commands. These statements express what is true to a particular religious community e.g. ‘Jesus is the Lamb of God’ but might not be meaningful to those outside of the community.
What movement is the verification principle associated with and what does it stipulate?
The verification principle stemmed from Logical Positivism and, in particular, the Vienna Circle of the 1920s (influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstien’s picture theory of language). They applied the principles of science and mathematics to language and argued that, like knowledge, language had to be based on experience (verifiable by our sense experiences) to be meaningful.
English philosopher, A.J. Ayer, formalised the argument in the 1930s.
What is A.J. Ayer’s formalised verification principle?
It states that: “A statement which cannot be conclusively verified … is simply devoid of meaning.”
Statements can only be meaningful if they meet one or more of the following criteria:
- Analytic statements - true by definition (e.g. a circle is round). These are a priori because they contain their own verification.
- Mathematical statements - Ayer observed that apparent inconsistencies in mathematical calculations would be discovered to be the product of human error.
- Synthetic statements - Those that can be verified or falsified by subjecting them to empirical testing. A posteriori statments e.g. ‘Dogs bark’ is verifiably true in the same way you can prove ‘all swans are green’ is false. Both statements are, therefore, meaningful. Theoretical statements such as ‘There is life on other planets’ are also meaningful, since they may be verified or falsified sometime in the future - we know the means to test even if it is not yet possible. However, a statement such as ‘the love f money is the root of evil’ is not meaningful since it is impossible to verify.
True or false: Ayer thought religious claims were cognitive.
False. Ayer thought that religious claims are Non-Cognitive and impossible to verify, so they are meaningless. He does not say that they are just false; it is more that they cannot really tell us anything at all.
What did the Vienna Circle/A.J. Ayer conclude about religious statements/language/experience?
- Religious statements are meaningless becase they are subjective and cannot be empirically tested/verified.
- Ayer obserserved that since the existence of God cannot be rationally demonstrated, it is not even probable, since the term ‘god’ is a metaphysical term referring to a transcendent being which cannot therefore have any literal significance. He observed that the same is true for atheist and agnostic statments, since any statement which includes the term ‘god’ is meaningless. He argued they are not ‘significant propositions’, neither true nor false as they are simply not valid: ‘The notion of a being whose essential attributes are non-empirical is not an intelligble notion at all’.
- Talk of a soul/an after life were dismissed by Ayer as they are metaphysical.
- Ayer stated: ‘The fact that people have religious experiences is interesting from the psychological point of view, but it does not in any way imply there is such a thing as religious knowledge.’
Give some criticisms of the verification principle (7)
- Statements that express unverifiable opinions or emotions such as ‘I love you’ become meaningless under the verification principle, contrary to common human understanding.
- Ethical and moral statements such as ‘Do not kill’ become meaningless under the verification principle, despite the fact both secular and religious societies have been successfully built on these laws.
- The laws of science cannot be absolutely verified.
- Historical statements such as ‘The Battle of Waterloo took place in 1815’ are regarded as meaningless because they cannot be verified by sense experience.
- The verification principle itself cannot be verified.
- John Hick said that that ‘God talk’ might be verifiable in principle. Convincing evidence is not apparent now, but it could be in the future; the whole idea of final judgement implies that God will be seen and known. Hick calls this future possibility ‘eschatological verification’
- Richard Swinburne argues that there are propositions which no-one knows how to verify but still are not meaningless. He gives the example of toys which come out of their cupboard at night and dance around, then returning without a trace. No observation could ever establish this as truth, but it’s not meaningless
How did A.J. Ayer respond to criticisms of the verification principle?
To address the criticisms, Ayer proposed a ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ form of the verification principle:
- Strong: Occurs when there is no doubt that a statement is true e.g. The Pope is a Catholic.
- Weak: Occurs when there is not absolute certainty, but ehre there is a strong likelihood of truth because of the evidence e.g. Nelson won the Battle of Trafalgar.
‘A proposition is verifiable in the strong sense if, and only if, its truth could be conclusively established…but it is verifiable in the weak sense if it is possible for experience to render it probable’
How did theist philosophers respond to Ayer’s verification principle? (Ward & Hick)
- Keith Ward observed that God’s existence could be verified in principle since ‘If I were God I would be able to check the truth of my own existence’
- John Hick asserted that since many religious language claims are historical, they are also verifiable under weak verification e.g. ‘Jesus rose from the dead on Easter Sunday’. He also used analogy in the Parable of the Celestial City to claim that although it is impossile for us to verify our destination during life, our beliefs about God/the afterlife are still meaningful as there is the prospect of eschatological verification.
What is the falsification principle?
- The falsification principle is concerned not with what makes something true, but with what would, in principle, make it false (the inverse of verification). Anthony Flew claimed that religious statements are meaningless because there is nothing that can count against them and religious believers are so convinced of their truth that they hardly ever consider arguments that God does not exist.
- Flew uses the example of the problem of evil & suffering: ‘What would have to occur or to have occurred to constitute for you a disproof of the love of, or the existence of God?
- Flew effectively argues that if nothing is allowed to count against a claim such as ‘God loves us as a father loves his children’ then the claim means nothing, since anything is apparently consistent with their claim.
Which Parable did Flew use to highlight how believers continue to refuse to accept anything that counts against the existence of God?
John Wisdom’s Parable of the Gardener
- By the end, the two men have both seen all the evidence and the first continues to insist that there is a gardener, but one which is invisible, intangible and inaudible. The seond man asks what is the difference between such a gardener and no gardener at all?
- Flew argued that religious believers have similarly avoided the evidence by hiding behind phrases suc as ‘God moves in mysterious ways’. He said that in order for believers to claim God exists, they must also be open to the idea that he does not. However, Flew felt that believers were reluctant to do so and, consequently, the religious language they use is meaningless because it is not falsifiable.
What was James Richmond and Robert Prevost’s response to Flew’s use of the Parable of the Gardener?
James Richmond (1970): claimed the real message of the Parable was that religion does match up to the empirical facts about the world ad that the existence of the plants did indeed support the belief in a gardener.
Robert Prevost: siggested that, since religious belief is based on trust, then it is perfectly reasonable for a religious believer to hold on to their beliefs in the face of opposition.
What alternative viewpoint did R.M. Hare offer to Flew’s falsification principle?
He introduced the notion of a blik. He claimed that when believers use religious langauge, they are using it in a unique way. ‘Bliks’ are ‘ways of regarding the world which are in principle neither verifiable nor falsifiable - but modes of cognition to which the terms ‘veridical’ or ‘illusory’ properly apply’. They use religious langage to express concepts that are important to him/her. They make a significant difference to that peron’s life, which can be empirically observed and therefore their statements do have meaning. Hare illustrated this theory with the example of a university student who was convinced that a lunatic don was ploting to kill him. Peter Vardy observed that ‘religious language…calls people out beyond the frontiers of their existing morality to a different way of living life…’.
How did John Hick respond to R.M. Hare’s blik theory?
John Hick responds by arguing that there are reasons behind religious beliefs: experiences, Scripture, etc. He also objects that there is no way to distinguish between sane or insane bliks, and the judgement that religion is insane could only ever be arbitrary.
What was Basil Mitchell’s propositions about religious language?
Basil Mitchell objects to the idea that religious claims are groundless ‘bliks’. He argues that religious claims are grounded in some facts and that the faithful do allow that evidence may stand against what they believe.
In the Parable of the Partisan and the Stranger, Mitchell highlighted the fact that many religious believers do accept that their beliefs can be questioned but that, nevertheless, they will continue to believe them even in the face of evidence to the contrary. The story illustrates a partisan meeting a man who he believes is the secret leader of the resistance movement. At times the stranger seems to be helping the enemy but the partisan is told that is all part of his plan. The partisan continues to believe the stranger because his initial meeting with him has been decisive.
So with God: one could trust in God while recognising the contrary evidence: that he allows evil and suffering, or disbelief.
Mitchell called such beliefs ‘significant articles of faith’, which the believer accepts to be open to serious challenge but in light of their personal experiences, will not allow to falsify their belief. This is non-propositional faith - faith rooted in a relationship rather than simply accepting facts about God. Mitchell observed that there are three ways in whcih the believer can react when their assertions are challenged:
- provisional hypotheses to be discarded if experience tells against them
- vacuous formulae to which experience makes no difference and which make no difference to life
- significant articles of faith, which ‘face the full force of the conflict’ and may be seriously challenged but are not easily abandoned
What was Richard Swinburne’s view of religious language?
‘…there are plenty of examples of statements which some people judge to be factual which are not apparently confirmable or disconfirmable through observation. For example: Some of the toys which to all appearances stay in the toy cupboard while people are asleep and no one it watching, actually get up and dance in the middle of the night and then go back to the cupboard, leaving no traces of their activity.’
