Religious Language

Question 1

What is one of the strongest attacks on the argument for the existence of God?

Answer 1

Linguistic philosophy

Question 2

Statements about God or religious phenomena are…

Answer 2

philosophically problematic

Question 3

‘God is love’

Answer 3

What does God mean?
Can ‘love’ be applied to God?
Does it mean the same as it does when it is applied to humans?

Question 4

‘God is timeless’

Answer 4

How can we talk about timelessness when everything we know about time is bound up with space?

Question 5

Other issues include… (3)

Answer 5

How we view Universals e.g. goodness

Is reality…
beyond things? (Plato)
In things? (logical positivists)
a human construction?

How do we interpret religious texts?
Literally
Allegorically
Symbolically

Question 6

Cognitive Statements

Answer 6

Statements that are true or false in the ways that literal statements are true or false e.g. “a triangle has 3 sides”

Question 7

Non- cognitive statements

Answer 7

Statements that are not open to truth or falsity e.g. “Love is like a red rose”

Question 8

Correspondence theory of truth

Answer 8

claims that a statement is true if it corresponds to something in the real world.

Question 9

Coherence theory of truth

Answer 9

claims that a statement is true if it coheres with other statements.

Question 10

Realists

Answer 10

those who believe that a statement is true if it corresponds to an actual state of affairs

Question 11

Anti-realists

Answer 11

those who believe a statement is true if it fits in (coheres) with other true statements. Reality is separate from language

Question 12

The Vienna Circle

Answer 12

saw their job as freeing people from factually meaningless chatter by applying some of the principles of science to language

Experience is the key to determining whether a sentence is meaningful or not

Question 13

Two members of the Vienna Circle

Answer 13

Schlick and Carnap

Question 14

Logical positivists regarded religious language….

Answer 14

univocally

Question 15

Three influences of Logical Positivism

Answer 15

Empiricism
Science
Wittgenstein’s Picture Theory of language (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 1921)

Question 16

Analytic statements

Answer 16

Check they are true by analyzing

E.g. a triangle has 3 sides

Question 17

Synthetic statements

Answer 17

More difficult to check

E.g. my geography teacher has dog’s breath

Question 18

Strong Verification Principle

Answer 18

Only meaningful if truth or falsity can be conclusively proved/verified in practice by either experience or observation
e.g. all sweaty socks stink would be condemned as meaningless because I am unable to conclusively verify it as true by either observation or experience because this would require experience of all past, present and future sweaty socks.

Question 19

Two issues with the SVP

Answer 19

the requirement is for conclusive proof so it condemns as meaningless too many obviously meaningful sentences

wipes out the whole of science. Popper said that general statements used in science can be wiped out using SVP.

Question 20

Weak Verification Principle

Answer 20

Something is factually meaningful if it’s possible in principle to gather evidence through experience and observation to establish these statements as probable
Although in practice I can’t smell all of the past, present and future sweaty socks I know in principle what would be required to verify this statement

Question 21

Two issues with WVP

Answer 21

now makes too many statements meaningful

Cant apply to ethics (eg right/wrong) as such terms cannot be observed

Question 22

Falsification Principle

Answer 22

Statements are meaningful only if it’s possible to say what would make the statement false
Karl Popper was an inspiration (not his intended use of the principle)

Question 23

Two issues with FP

Answer 23

Doesn’t work with all statements: can’t falsify negative universals like “not all sweaty socks stink”

Flasification applied to Theology- Flew’s use of the parable of the gardener- “death by a thousand qualifications”, “God ways are mysterious”

Question 24

When did the University debate take place?

Answer 24

1950s

Question 25

Anthony Flew

Answer 25

parable of an invisible gardener. The believer’s initial claim that a gardener must exist is tested in several ways, and each piece of evidence is dismissed by a qualification – the gardener is invisible, then intangible, then free of scent, and so on. By the end, there seems no way of testing the existence of the gardener at all. The claim seems empty of content and therefore meaningless. Flew argues that for a statement to be meaningful it must at least be open to falsification – there must be some way of showing it to be false. A statement that fits any imaginable state of affairs doesn’t appear to say anything at all, and is therefore meaningless. Religious statements tend to suffer from ‘death by a thousand qualifications’: the claims they embody are so immune to falsification that they are, in fact, empty.

Question 26

How can Flew’s argument be applied to God?

Answer 26

‘God moves in mysterious ways’. By invoking mystery as the defining characteristic of God’s plan, a believer can make the statement fit any situation. Earthquakes, plagues, diseases, holocausts – all are compatible with ‘mysterious’ intentions and none can be considered evidence against the claim. Flew’s argument is that assertive and meaningful statements are absent in religious discourse. The only statements that remain are meaningless.

Question 27

R M Hare

Answer 27

Hare uses the example of a lunatic university lecturer - he thinks that his colleagues are all trying to kill him and every action they do, he sees as a sign that they are trying to kill him.Hare’s trying to explain that experiences are subjective, and we may perceive something in a particular way and be convinced we are right. But this does not mean that we are right
At first sight Hare’s paranoid lunatic seems to confirm Flew’s argument, and Hare agreed that religious statements are meaningless by Flew’s standards of evidence. But what counts as evidence? For the lunatic, there is plenty of evidence to confirm his paranoia: from his perspective, every ‘diabolical’ don’s mild manner is just a pretence. It is this notion of perspective that is key: Hare calls this a ‘blik’, a frame of reference that determines what counts as evidence. A ‘blik’ is a way of seeing the world, a filter that affects our standards of evidence. The paranoid man’s blik leads him to see evidence of hostility in everything; the religious blik similarly allows the believer to see evidence where a sceptic may not.
Hare’s point is that religious statements are not assertions at all, and therefore are immune to verification and falsification. Instead they are expressions of a particular blik with particular standards of explanation and conduct. Religious people see the world a certain way, and from within that perspective all sorts of things count as evidence for God: a beautiful sunset, a flock of geese, the ‘miracle’ of birth, and so on.
it is difficult to resist the conclusion that some frameworks, some bliks, are better than others at representing the nature of things. Paranoia is not a flattering analogue to religious belief – and surely the scientific blik (if such a thing is admitted) trumps them both. Moreover, by claiming that religious statements are not assertions of fact, Hare seems to be weakening the important claims that believers make.

Question 28

How did Flew reply to Hare?

Answer 28

If Hare’s religion really is a blik, involving no cosmological assertions about the nature and activities of a supposed personal creator, then surely he is not a Christian at all?

Question 29

Basil Mitchell

Answer 29

the Parable of the Resistance Leader
the parable illustrates that belief in the absence of conclusive evidence is not unreasonable.
While Flew insists upon empirical tests to render a statement meaningful, Mitchell shows that belief is as much a matter of trust and commitment.
Religious claims do not have to be intellectually convincing: a believer can trust in their relationship with God, as the partisan comes to trust the stranger.
Moreover the partisan’s trust is falsifiable in principle (and thus meets Flew’s challenge) but the question remains: what would it take to change the partisan’s mind? How much evidence is required to show that the stranger has betrayed him? Mitchell admits that there is no simple answer to this question – but at least it is not unreasonable to give the stranger the benefit of the doubt.

Question 30

John Hick

Answer 30

parable of the travelers (celestial city)
In other words, religious claims may, in the end, be verifiable if true (although not falsifiable if false). Hick’s point is that the two men experience the journey differently: the believer accepts the good and the bad calmly and pursues the path in hope of salvation. Belief makes a difference. It is important to note that Hick is not claiming that religious statements are true (or false), only that they are meaningful and that belief in those statements is reasonable. This approach has become known as eschatological verification.

Question 31

Wittgenstein quote

Answer 31

“ … philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday.”

Question 32

Early Wittgenstein

Answer 32

developed a ‘picture theory’ of meaning. The concepts we use have meaning precisely because they correspond to images derived from experience: so my understanding of the term ‘church’ is based on its matching my mental picture of a church. This notion of a correspondence between language and the world influenced the logical positivists and encouraged the notions of verification and falsification as criteria of meaning.

Question 33

Early Wittgenstein book

Answer 33

Tractus Logico-Philosophicus (1921)

Question 34

Later Wittgenstein book

Answer 34

Philosophical Investigations, published 1953 (two years after his death)

Question 35

Later Wittgenstein

Answer 35

we use language in many different ways: to promise, to command, to act, to joke, to curse, to greet, to name, and so on. In such cases language does not generate meaning through reference to external objects, but through its use in a particular context.
In fact, the meaning of any statement depends upon the context in which it is used. If a spectator watching a football match has no understanding of the rules of football, then all the actions and commentary will lack meaning and appear pointless. Once the rules are understood, however, everything becomes clear.
It is a mistake to see religious utterances as simple factual statements open to proof or disproof: they are, instead, part of a language-game played by religious speakers. The meaning of religious words is determined by their use, not by correspondence to some external reality.

Question 36

Felicity McCutcheon

Answer 36

Dialogue, 1997

Question 37

McCutcheon language games comparisons

Answer 37

There is no unique object that can be said to be the meaning of the word ‘game’. Likewise, there is no one meaning of a particular word.
There are many different games each of which has its own rules. Learning to play means learning the rules. Likewise, with language it involves learning what you can and cannot say.
Games involve participation. The speaking of language is part of an activity. Participation involves being understood (playing to the rules).

Question 38

“Was Jesus God”

Answer 38

According to neo-Wittgensteinian it cannot be given a yes/no answer- it depends on which game you are in when you ask the question- Jews and Christians would have two different answers.

Question 39

D Z Phillips

Answer 39

A religion generates its own rules about meaning and truth, and those rules cannot be judged from outside the language-game. The truth of statements thus becomes relative, and focus switches instead to the nature of language.

Question 40

Equivocal

Answer 40

Equivocal means the same word is used with a totally different meaning
“bank” of Nile, Lloyds “bank”

Question 41

Via negativa

Answer 41

literally, the way of negation- understanding God by saying what He is not

Question 42

Univocal

Answer 42

same word, same meaning

“bank” of Mississippi, “bank” of Nile

Question 43

Analogy

Answer 43

a comparison that attempts to show how two or more things are similar