Religious Language Flashcards
What are the 5 named scholars on the specification ?
1) Hick
2) Hare
3) Wittgenstein
4) Tillich
5) Aquinas
“The best way to deceive believers is to cloak a message in religious language and declare that it conveys some new insight from God.” Charles Stanley
Introduction to religious language
“Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent” Ludwig Wittgenstein
If we can’t observe them in the world and don’t know what it means, we must remain silent since it is meaningless.
“We say that a sentence is factually significant to any given person if he knows how t verify the proposition.” AJ Ayer
- Verification principle
Sentences are only meaningful if we can explain in what circumstances the could be verified by sense experience.
“If you disprove of stealing whereas I approve…we’re both expressing moral statements rather than factual statements.” AJ Ayer
AJ states that moral statements and religious language is in the same category (non-cognitive)
“A scientific statement speaks about reality it must be falsifiable.” Popper - The Two Fundamental Problems of The theory of knowledge.
Falsification principle
“We cannot decide what the world is like by observing it because al observation and evidence is open to interpretation.” Hume
Hare’s Blik comes from Hume who stated that quote
“If hare’s religion really is a blink, involving no cosmological assertions about the nature and activities of a supposed personal creator, then surely he is not Christian at all?” Flew
Flew’s response to Hare’s Blik who rejected the Idea that religious statements are non-cognitive. Religious believers are cognitive.
“It seems that no word can be used literally of God.” - Aquinas
“God is good” good for God is different for humans, we don’t know God well enough to describe him
- univocal and equivocal language
“The term ‘God’ is a metaphysical term. And if ‘God’ is a metaphysical term then it cannot even be probably that God exists.’’ Ayer
Religious language
