Religious Language Flashcards

Question

Anthony Flew

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

‘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.

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

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?

Answer 5

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.

Answer 6

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.

Answer 7

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

Answer 8

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.

Answer 9

Tractus Logico-Philosophicus (1921)

Answer 10

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

Answer 11

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.

Answer 12

Dialogue, 1997

Answer 13

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).

Answer 14

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.

Answer 15

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.

Answer 16

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

Answer 17

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

Answer 18

same word, same meaning | “bank” of Mississippi, “bank” of Nile

Answer 19

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

Religious Language Flashcards

(43 cards)