Religious Language

Question 1

Describe non-cognitive language

Answer 1

• NC makes claims/observations that are to be interpreted as symbols/ethical commands/metaphors
• It is language that serves a function other than expressing factually true claims, as NC cannot be verified/falsified, and it is not intended to be treated as if it can be

Question 2

Describe cognitive language

Answer 2

language which makes factual assertions that can be proven true or are true by definition

Question 3

Describe what the Vienna Circle thought about language

Answer 3

-Empirical evidence was the key to understanding what is/isn’t meaningful
- Only mathematic, scientific/analytical language is meaningful

Question 4

State the verification principle

Answer 4

• AJ Ayer argued that if a statement is neither analytical nor empirically verifiable, then it is meaningless and non-sensical

Question 5

Describe how the verification principle argues that God’s existence cannot be demonstrated to be probable

Answer 5

• The teleological argument cannot be accepted as proof because even though it relies on empirical data, otherwise God exists would be synonymous with ‘there is a certain regularity and order in nature’ and religious people have more than this in mind when they assert the existence of od

Question 6

Describe how the verification principle challenges the meaningfulness of religious language

Answer 6

• The mystic may claim his mystical experiences come to him via intuition, which despite being a cognitive function in itself, still mean that none of his propositions are empirically verifiable and therefore they are unintelligible. All he is actually doing is expressing a subjective description of his state of mind , which tells us nothing about the existence of a transcendent deity
• Ayer believed that if the VP is indeed the only way to be sure of the things we claim to know, then no metaphysical or ethical proposition has any meaning - ethical propositions are therefore merely only expressions of emotion and have no deeper significance
• Questions like ‘does god exist’ have no inherent meaning therefore are beyond the scope of philosophical enquiry since they aren’t based on analytic propositions
• ## ‘God talk is evidently nonsense’

Question 7

Weaknesses of the verification principle

Answer 7

• The demands are too narrow - it might be straightforward, but it

Question 8

What are the strengths of the verification principle

Answer 8

• Straightforward: meaningful statements are either true by definition or else verifiable in principle by sense experience, bracketing out all other questions of emotion
• It is in line with science, demanding that we view the world empirically
• It demands a sense of reality in how we view the world therefore it points out a major issue with religious language in that it often makes religious statements without justifying them

Question 9

What are the weaknesses of the verification principle

Answer 9

• the demands are too narrow: it might be straightforward, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is right. it excludes lots of language as meaningless, including ethical/moral/aesthetic statements . Human engagement with the world is as least as important as matters of verifiable fact
• Much of science deals with entities that are not empirically verifiable - eg quarks
• Religion makes a very clear proposition about god based on our observation that our minds are creative, therefore a supremely creative mind is possible

Question 10

State the falsification principle

Answer 10

Something is factually significant only if there is evidence to falsify it

Question 11

What did Popper say about the falsification principle

Answer 11

Scientists make bold hypotheses and then try to find evidence to disprove their claims. Falsification is therefore a constructive approach
- ‘Insofar as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable’

Question 12

Describe what Flew said about the falsification principle

Answer 12

• Religious statements are meaningless because there is nothing that can count against them. Believers are so convinced of their faith that they often refuse to accept evidence that god doesn’t exist
• Showed this through the parable of the gardener - one man in an overgrown garden continues to insist there must be a gardener, despite all the evidence suggesting that there isn’t
• Flew argued that religious believers avoid the evidence by saying that ‘god works in mysterious ways’. For believers to claim the god exists, they must be open to evidence that he doesn’t. Flew felt believers weren’t open to this, and consequently religious language is meaningless as it isn’t falsifiable
  ‘What would have to occur to constitute for you a disproof of the love or existence of god’
• IF nothing is allowed to count against a claim, it means nothing, as anything is consistent with it

Question 13

Describe the strengths of the falsification principle

Answer 13

• Where religion makes important factual claims, Flew seems to show that they are empty, as all evidence against such claims is ignored by believers
• If the main criteria of a meaningful assertion is just to know what falsifies it, then believers dont know

Question 14

Describe Hick’s responses to the falsification/verification principle

Answer 14

• Argues that the concept of god is ‘in principle verifiable’ because it can be eschatologically verified, and therefore all religious statements are cognitive
• Flew = all religious statements are cognitive and vacant
• Ayer = they are subject to eschatological verification
• theists will be right/wrong and we will only know at the end of time

Question 15

Describe the strengths of Hick’s argument (eschatological verification)

Answer 15

• Hick’s claim that the celestial city is a real possibility seems undeniable
  ‘There is life after death’ must be true/false
• His argument seems to show that taken as a whole, christian claims are cognitive/factual because if we do wake up resurrected we’ll know the answer to them
• Hick supports this conclusion further with his argument about ‘experiencing as’ in which he tries to show that interpretation is an essential element of all factual experience.
  ‘We experience things as something ‘ and by talking about things we are interpreting them

Question 16

Describe the weaknesses of Hick’s argument for eschatological verification

Answer 16

• He writes from the perspective of the believer for whom the celestial city will be reached
• From the perspective of the atheist, the possibility of it being verified is so remote as to not be worth considering - if the believer and the non-believer are interpreting the evidence in completely different ways, Hick’s argument is no longer stronger than that of the atheist
• Hick’s argument that religious claims are verifiable eschatologically is not a normal factual claim

Question 17

Describe Hare’s argument that religious language is a blik

Answer 17

• A blik is a framework of interpretation - a view of the world that is not an assertion, but rather is non-cognitive and non-falsifiable
• In response to Flew’s challenge , Hare defends religion by arguing that it actually consists of a set of assumptions about the world ( a blik) everyone has a blik and these bliss dominate their world view
• The blik is non-negotiable in a rational debate about evidence because it is beyond it. It is non-cognitive, and a framework for seeing the world

Question 18

Describe how Hare used his parable of the lunatic to explain his theory

Answer 18

• Hick’s parable of the lunatic describes a deluded lunatic who thinks all Oxford lecturers are trying to kill him. even when faced with evidence suggesting otherwise, he refuses to accept it
• You can produce all the reason/rational evidence to someone with a blik and they still won’t change their opinionn

Question 19

Describe Flew’s response to Hare

Answer 19

• Flew rejected Hare’s view that statements are non-cognitive because believers do not see their statements about God as non-cognitive
• Why would a christian say ‘god cares for his creation’ if he didn’t believe that it was true.
• Unless these are cognitive/factual assertions, they have no cash value therefore are worthless. Most christians really do believe that their assertions are meaningful

Question 20

Describe the strengths of Hare’s argument

Answer 20

• It seems simpler to accept Hare’s view that however sincerely a believer makes his assertions about God and the world, all such assertions are expressions of non-cognitive bliks, deeply meaningful to those that have them, but their value is in personal meaning and not in any factual content they might be supposed to have
• Hare’s position explains why people are not convinced by evidence that contradicts their faith
• Hare’s argument that religious people see the world in a particular way seems to be true - this is evident in how religious people see God at work in a variety of ways, such as in nature

Question 21

Describe the weaknesses of Hare

Answer 21

• Flew: most believers don’t see their statements as non-cognitive, but rather as cognitive, expressing factual truths about the cosmos. Believers would claim that the statement ‘there is a god’ is not a way of seeing the world, but rather a factual truth
• Hare seems to make an odd claim that Christian beliefs are expressions of non-cognitive bliks whether Christians know it or not
• IF there are no factual truths about christianity, its value is reduced to its phsychological and sociological benefits

Question 22

Describe Wittgenstein’s early picture theory

Answer 22

• Language corresponds to a state of affairs in the world
• Language can only be spoken about meaningfully if it used in relation to what we see in the world
• Language is a way of representing facts

Question 23

Describe wittgenstein’s later language games theory

Answer 23

• He criticised the Vienna circle, arguing that our language is far richer and more diverse than logical positivism allows . If we want to know the meaning of language, then we need to know how it is being used - the words only make sense when you understand the nature and purpose of the activity
• He saw language as a game, where you knew how to play it once you understood the rules of the game. Language has a different meaning within a particular context, each context being governed by rules in the same way that different games are governed by different rules - the meaning of the statement is therefore not defined by the steps taken to verify it

Question 24

Describe Wittgenstein on religious language

Answer 24

• Religious language is non-cognitive but meaningful
• It is innappropriate to treat religious claims as claims about the world because their meaning is not defined by steps you have to take to verify/falsify it
• The meaningfulness of RL is determined by context therefore to a believer the statement ‘god exists’ means more than just ‘there is a god’ - it is a positive affirmation that they are entering a life of faith , confirming their belief in God as a reality in their life
• What is meaningful is what is true for the believer - whether god does/doesnt have external reality doesn’t mater . Religious faith is an affirmative decision to ‘enter the game’ and therefore find meaning in the language that is used accordingly

Question 25

Describe the strengths of Wittgenstein’s language games theory

Answer 25

• Avoids the confusion that comes from mistaking what language is trying to do, particularly the mistakes of the VP/FP
• It allows a variety of meaning - artistic, poetic, musical - rather than just expecting all language to conform to an empirical norm
• Wittgenstein recognises the meaning behind a statement of faith to a christian - to a believer, that statement affirms as they are, as HH Price put it, believing ‘in’ rather than believing ‘that’ , confirming god as a reality in their lives

Question 26

Describe the weaknesses of Wittgenstein’s language games theory

Answer 26

• Wittgenstein’s approach discourages debate with secular thinkers
• If We cannot understand RL unless we engage with it and use it according to the rules of the game, this isolates it from external criticism - particularly important when many christians are committed to dialogue with those who do not share their language game
• It assumes that there can be no evidence for metaphysical beliefs - there is a god is the main metaphysical belief of Christian theism and a cognitive factual claim insofar as a creative mind is likely to hypothesise to explain the existence of the universe

Question 27

Describe Tillich’s theory of language as symbolic

Answer 27

• Tillich believed that talking about God in anything other than a symbolic way means we end up saying nothing cognitive about God
• HE differentiated between signs and symbols - a symbol is self transcending and means something in itself but also points beyond itself to em higher/greater reality - eg the communion bread and wine in church
• the only literal statement inn religious language is that god is ‘being itself’ . God doesn’t exist as a separate being and is not. being among others. He is the name for what a religious person encounters in a way that is personal
• We cannot use literal language to describe ‘being itself’ because asking the question of what it is is not about a particular being but rather one that examines the question of what it means to exist
• All religious language is symbolic in that it attempts to express a meaning that always transcends the literal . It doesn’t give factual information about this world but rather the profound, religious significance of it

Question 28

Give the strengths of Tillich’s argument

Answer 28

• He was able to take conventional religious language and show the way that it addresses the personal needs and questions that people have about reality and meaning
• It doesn’t give factual information about another realm/ world, but rather shows the profound religious significance of features of this world
• symbolic language relates everyday experiences to religious ideas
• It allows us to make only one literal statement when we speak of god - that god is being itself
• It reflects what is known through religious experience, through which we gain insights into experiences which are central to our lives such as salvation/guilt act

Question 29

Give the weaknesses of Tillich’s symbolic language

Answer 29

• Hick criticised Tillich’s idea of participating, calling it unclear - he argued that there is little difference between a symbol and a sign, arguing that many things we want to say about god do arise from our conscious mind
• many christians don’t view god as merely ‘being itself’ but rather a separate and transcendent entity who is also the origin of our existence
• Paul Edwards argued that symbols are meaningless because they can’t be verified/falsified due to their subjective nature - ‘it doesn’t convey any facts’

Question 30

What did Aquinas reject about religious language

Answer 30

• rejects univocal and equivocal language
• univocal = it means the same thing each time
  equivocal = it means different things in different situations

Question 31

Describe Aquinas’ analogical language

Answer 31

• our positive talk is analogical
• we don’t speak of god univocally, as words applied to him don’t have the same meaning as when they are applied to a person
• we don’t speak equivocally because there must be some connection between creature and creation
• God should be thought of analogically - making connections in order to understand his nature
• Analogy of attribution = god is the cause of all good things in humans
• analogy of proportion = all good qualities that belong to god are in proportion to humans

Question 32

why does aquinas reject univocal and equivocal language>

Answer 32

• if we speak univocally we claim god is good in the same way humans are - he rejected this as god is perfect so humans can never be good in the same way god is
• if we speak equivocally, we are claiming god is good in a completely different way to humans - aquinas rejected this use as it would mean that we couldn’t claim to know anything about him

Question 33

Give the strengths of aquinas’ analogical argument

Answer 33

• literal/univocal language doesn’t take into account god’s transcendence but tends to reduce him to one thing amongst many
• analogy avoids anthropomorphising god
• easy to understand as it uses human experience to express, and it is therefore cognitive

Question 34

Give weaknesses of analogical argument

Answer 34

• for both analogies they only work ion you have prior knowledge of god -

Question 35

Describe via negativa***

Answer 35

• Defenders of the apophatic approach to religious language argue that by speaking about god by way of negation is consistent with expressing the transcendent nature of god
• if god is defined by Anselm as something greater than which can be con sieved, then it is logically. consistent to argue that god is beyond literal description therefor any descriptions of god must be given in a transcendent format which will help to signal the transcendent nature of god