Religious Language

Question 1

Define ‘cognitive’

Answer 1

Language: statements that are to be taken as fact

Question 2

Define ‘non-cognitive’

Answer 2

Language: statements that are not meant to be factual

Question 3

What did the Vienna Circle believe?

Answer 3

Logical Positivism/Verification Principle;
Language of God is pointless as it cannot be verified. However, these statements CAN be verified:

• Analytic
• Synthetic
• Mathematical

Question 4

Outline a criticism of the Verification Principle

Answer 4

Statements that were seen to be meaningful were found meaningless by the Vienna Circle. For example: Black Holes, because we can’t get close enough to them to test any of our theories.

Question 5

Outline A.J. Ayer’s Weak Verification Principle

Answer 5

Ayer argues that some language cannot be proved immediately, however it could still be meaningful if it can be proved ‘in principle’

Question 6

Explain how the Verification Principle is “Self-Refuting”

Answer 6

The statement: “Only analytic, synthetic and mathematical statements are meaningful” is not any of those three things

Question 7

Outline the Falsification Principle

Answer 7

Karl Popper believes that you must be capable of disproving a theory for it to have any merit. Otherwise, it isn’t even a ‘theory’ either.

Question 8

Outline Hick’s Parable of the Celestial City

Answer 8

• Two men are travelling on a road together, one believes the road leads to a celestial city. The other believes they are going nowhere
• On the journey, he who believes in the celestial city, sees the good times as encouragement, and the bad as tests of faith
• The other sees the journey as pointless, so he enjoys the good and endures the bad
• Only when they turn the last corner will they know where they were headed

(Essentially, you don’t know where you’re headed after death, until you get there)

Question 9

Outline Hare’s Lunatic and Bliks

Answer 9

Bliks are like schemas, they are views and biases gained through experience and upbringing. Hare illustrates this in the following:

• A lunatic believes all dons at his university want to kill him
• The lunatic’s friends introduce him to some dons, who are polite and cordial to the lunatic
• Despite this, the lunatic claims that the dons are pretending and are still evil people plotting against him

(Ultimately showing that people’s mindsets can’t be falsified)

Question 10

Outline the Parable of the Gardener

Answer 10

• Two explorers are in the jungle, and come across a nice garden
• One explorer said a gardener must tend the garden, the other disagreed
• They put out electric barbed wire to catch this gardener, but they never did
• The bloke who believes there is a gardener said maybe he’s invisible and insensible to electric shock
• The other said, what’s the difference between that and no gardener at all?

(Basically, the gardener is God)

Question 11

Outline Mitchell’s Parable of the Partisan and the Stranger

Answer 11

• During a time of war, a Partisan meets a stranger who claims to be the leader of the resistance
• The stranger says that even if he appears to be acting against Partisan interests, that the Partisan should trust him, and he does

(Pretty much saying that religious statements are meaningful even if they aren’t straightforward or falsifiable)