Religious Language Flashcards
Issues with religious language
Some words or phrases are contradictory to our logic
Some have no connection to the physical world we can experience and so are difficult to understand
Human language appears inadequate to discuss a being which is ‘not of this world.’
Some of the stories could be interpreted in different ways – either literally or non-literally
Anthropomorphises God
Meaning
To be meaningful, a statement must, at the very least:
Be made up of real words
Be arranged in a grammatically correct order
Aim to communicate something clearly
Cognitivist theorists
Sentences are only meaningful if linked in some way to the real world
Non cognitivist theorists
Statements can be meaningful even though they don’t refer directly to the real world
The verification principle - Ayer
A sentence is only meaningful if it is:
Analytic - true by definition e.g. all bachelors are male
Synthetic - not true by definition but can be verified using sense experience e.g. all bachelors are happy
Can be verified in practice or in principle
Strong and weak verification
Strong - a statement is meaningful if we can verify it by observation and be certain whether it is true or false
Weak - a statement is meaningful if there are some observations that can establish the possible truth of the statement
Criticisms of the verification principle
Rules out scientific theories
Fails by its own criteria
Too strong - disregards subjective statements
Parable of the celestial city - religious claims can be verified
Two men travelling on a road - one believes they are going to heaven, the other believes it leads no where
Meet with moments of hardship and delight
When they turn the corner, one of them is right, and one is wrong
Falsification principle - Flew
A proposition can only be meaningful if you know the conditions under which it would be falsified
Religious statements are not meaningful as they are not falsifiable
Parable of the gardener
Two people discover a run down garden
One notices flowers and says there must be a gardener
Teh other says that is impossible
Set out traps to look for him
No gardener is found, the first person states that the gardener must be invisible, the other is adamant he doesn’t exist
If you can’t disprove, you can’t prove
Parable of the paranoid student - Hare
A student is convinces his teachers want to murder him
No matter what anyone says to try and prove him wrong, his reaction is still the same - it affects his life to such an extent it has to be meaningful
Bliks - Hare
An unfalsifiable belief that underpins or influences our world view
Partisan and the stranger - Basil Mitchell
A partisan meets a stranger who convinces the partisan to trust him
Sees the stranger helping both sides but continues to trust him
The behaviour is not enough to destroy the faith
Religious people acknowledge the problems of their religions but their faith gets them past it
Toys in the cupboard - Swinburne
We can understand a cupboard full of toys that come to life at night even if there is no way to falsify or verify it - meaning and understanding are interlinked, it doesn’t have to be true but it has to make sense
Equivocal language
The same word is used with two completely separate meanings, terms such as ‘good’ when applied to God mean something different than when applied to humans
Univocal language
Words used about God have the same meaning as when these words are used to describe other things
Analogy
When you compare two different things that have some similarity in order to explain a concept in a non literal way
Analogy of attribution - Aquinas
God and creatures can be described using the same words because there is a causal relation between them
Analogy of proportion
The same words can be applied to different things but their meaning is in proportion to the nature of that thing
Comparison is scaled according to the greatness of the being it is being compared to
Model
A familiar word which can be used to enable us to recognise the features of something unfamiliar
We have a human understanding of the word ‘good’, and this serves as a model for understanding God’s goodness
Qualifier
A word that is added to the model to adapt it and develop it in a useful way e.g. divine shepherd
Problems with analogy
There has to be an overlap for analogy to work, God is so different from humans so there is no sufficient overlap
Humans will not really understand what God is like in any meaningful way until they die
We define God by what he is not, meaning we interpret scripture and things in a negative way
Analogy of proportion - we can’t set a benchmark so we cannot know how much we should scale it up by
symbols - Tillich
a sign that points beyond itself and is involved in some way with what it represents e.g. the American flag
Randall
all religious beliefs are symbolic and religious language provides an insight into the meaning of life
a sign represents or stand for something whilst a symbol represents itself
functions of symbols - Randall
motivational - fires up emotions
social - common understanding of symbols stimulates people to co-operate
communication - communicate some of the spiritual nature of faith
clarification of the divine
creation myths
convey the power of God and valuable messages such as the responsible use of free will
myths of good against evil
shows that good will triumph over evil
heroic myths
bravery allows them to overcome adversity such as Noah and Moses
the ideal, the problem, salvation
Bultmann - demythologising
we need to take away the myth, we just need the meaning
the bible was written in a pre-scientific era but now our worldview has changed
Wittgenstein - language games
language can be used to give orders, describe an object etc and each of these is a separate language game with separate rules
language operates according to certain rules
when you take words out of their context to use them in a different context, it doesn’t work
D.Z. Phillips
religious claims are not used in a factual way but they fit in with other beliefs within the religious for, of life
science is its own language game with different criteria for truth
