Religious Language

Question 1

What is religious language? give an example

Answer 1

Language concerned with the subject of God, e.g. discussion of belief

Question 2

What are the two main approaches to religious language and what is the difference between the two?

Answer 2

Realist and anti-realist. Realism argues that words have an objective meaning, anti realism argues they have subjective meanings.

Question 3

Who was the verification principle proposed by and when?

Answer 3

The verification principle was devised in the 1920’s by the Vienna Circle

Question 4

Who were the Vienna Circle?

Answer 4

The Vienna Circle were a group of scholars who wanted to make philosophy more objective (logical positivists)

Question 5

What is the basis of the verification principle?

Answer 5

If a statement cannot be verified analytically or synthetically then it cannot be held to be true

Question 6

What is analytic verification?

Answer 6

When a statement is true by definition, for example ‘a triangle has 3 sides’ or ‘all unmarried men are bachelors’

Question 7

What is synthetic verification?

Answer 7

When a statement can be found to be true through the testing of an empirical hypothesis, for example ‘all swans are green’ or ‘I have five fingers’

Question 8

How does the verification principle relate to God?

Answer 8

According to A.J. Ayer, God’s existence is unverifiable because of his supposed nature as a transcendent being. This therefore means that the statement ‘God exists’ is meaningless

Question 9

What observation about verification did modern Scholar Bryan Mcgee say?

Answer 9

‘this glittering new scalpel was, in one operation after another, killing the patient’

Question 10

Why did Mcgee criticise verification?

Answer 10

Because the principle rendered many things meaningless which clearly did have meaning, for example historic statements or statements of feeling

Question 11

How did Ayer counter Mcgee’s criticism?

Answer 11

By developing the differentiation of strong and weak verification

Question 12

What is strong verification?

Answer 12

Strong verification applies to statements that can be found to be objectively true, for example analytic statements or statements verifiable through direct sense experience

Question 13

What is weak verification?

Answer 13

Weak verification refers to statements that can be ‘rendered probable’, for example statements such as ‘last week it rained’

Question 14

Keith Ward’s criticism of verification?

Answer 14

While God is unverifiable to humans, God would be verifiable to himself (‘if I were God I could verify myself’).

Question 15

What is modern scholar John Hick’s answer to the verification principle?

Answer 15

Hick argues that many religious claims would be considered to have meaning because they express historical statements (‘Jesus rose from the dead on easter sunday’ etc)

Question 16

What is eschatological verification?

Answer 16

The idea that the existence of the afterlife (and so of God) could be verified in principle on death. Celestial City analogy.

Question 17

What was R.M. Hare’s contribution to the religious language debate?

Answer 17

Hare devised the idea of a ‘blik’, described by Hare as ‘an individual’s way of viewing the world which is in principle neither verifiable nor falsifiable’

Question 18

What example does Hare use for a blik?

Answer 18

A university student who believes that their don is plotting to kill them

Question 19

What relation do bliks have to the argument of religious language?

Answer 19

Bliks are meaningful to those who believe them, and in turn the actions of that individual may have meaning to those around them. Bliks do not support the idea that God’s existence is provable however

Question 20

What did Anthony Flew believe about religious language?

Answer 20

Flew believed that religious believers are unwilling to allow their beliefs to be falsified (proved wrong), and that this therefore means that their beliefs are meaningless

Question 21

What is John Wisdom’s parable of the gardener about?

Answer 21

Two men find a garden which, while generally messy, contains within it some areas of beauty. One man argues there is a gardener and the other that there is not. When no evidence of the gardener is found, the believer argues that he is invisible and refuses to accept anything as proof there is no gardener.

Question 22

What does the parable of the gardener mean?

Answer 22

The parable of the gardener illustrates the fact that in some cases there are no conditions under which a belief may be falsified, and that belief in this manner should be considered meaningless because there is no difference between it being true or untrue

Question 23

What criticism did Basil Mitchell have of Flew?

Answer 23

Mitchell argued that many religious believers do question their faith, however choose to continue believing anyway (‘non-propositional faith’)

Question 24

C.S. Lewis on faith:

Answer 24

‘faith is the art of holding onto something which your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods’

Question 25

R.B. Braithwaite’s view on religious language?

Answer 25

Braithwaite argued that religious language has meaning because it expresses people’s beliefs about how to act to one another.

Question 26

R.B. Braithwaite’s response to verification and falsification?

Answer 26

While verification and falsification are useful for cognitive statements (realist statements), they are irrelevant to religious language because it is non-cognitive (anti-realist)

Question 27

What did Ludwig Wittgenstein argue about religious language?

Answer 27

Wittgenstein, an anti-realist, argued that individuals have different meanings for words.

Question 28

What is Wittgenstein’s ‘coherence theory of truth’?

Answer 28

Statements and words have meaning if they are ‘coherent’, and different things are coherent to different groups

Question 29

How did D.z. Phillips develop Wittgenstein’s ideas?

Answer 29

Phillips, a reductionist, argued that philosophers and religious believers belong to separate groups and therefore have separate definitions for God. Religious statements are not factual, they just express a belief

Question 30

D.Z. Phillips about religious language

Answer 30

‘talk about God cannot be considered as talk about the existence of an object’

Question 31

What did Paul Tillich argue about religious language?

Answer 31

Tillich argued that religious meaning is symbolic rather than literal.

Question 32

What 4 qualities did Tillich state a symbol to have?

Answer 32

1: point to something greater than themselves
2: participate in that thing
3: open up deeper levels of reality than the surface
4: open up the soul

Question 33

What did Tillich argue the purpose of a symbol to be?

Answer 33

to describe something which cannot be expressed through words alone

Question 34

What did J. Randall argue that religious language does?

Answer 34

create emotion, inspire action, allow us to express non literal things and clarify our experience of God.

Question 35

What did J.Randall refer to God as?

Answer 35

an intellectual symbol and ‘ripple of imagination’

Question 36

What is William Alston’s criticism of symbols?

Answer 36

They still do not provide meaning, because they may be untrue

Question 37

Similarly to Alston, what does Paul Edwards state about Tillich’s ideas?

Answer 37

that symbols are neither verifiable nor falsifiable, ‘conveying no facts’

Question 38

What is univocal and equivocal language?

Answer 38

Univocal - words have one objective meaning

Equivocal - words may have multiple meanings

Question 39

Why did Aquinas reject language for learning about God?

Answer 39

Aquinas believed human language to be limited because humanity is itself limited, and that to understand

Question 40

How did Aquinas suggest that God should be talked about?

Answer 40

Through two types of Analogy, proportion and attribution

Question 41

What is the analogy of attribution?

Answer 41

The idea that our attributes are caused by God’s attributes, but they are not necessarily the same. Our goodness therefore points to God’s but is not the same.

Question 42

What is the analogy of proportion?

Answer 42

The analogy of proportion rests on the idea that all things exist in proportion to others. Plants are alive, people are alive and God is alive, we consider ourselves to be more than plants, and consider God to be more than us.

Question 43

How did Ian Ramsey develop Aquinas’ ideas?

Answer 43

Using words such as kind or great to refer to God is not adequate (univocally or equivocally). The language requires a qualifier such as ‘infinitely’ or ‘maximally’ in order to show the greater meaning of God.

Question 44

Who created the ‘via negativa’, and why?

Answer 44

Originating from Pseudo-Dionysus, the via negativa stems from the belief that human language is not adequate to discuss God.

Question 45

How does the via negativa allow us to talk about God?

Answer 45

By the use of negative statements, such as ‘God is immortal’ or ‘God is timeless’, we can communicate how mortal language fails to apply to Him

Question 46

What did Moses Maimonides argue about the via negativa?

Answer 46

that speaking negatively about God allows for meaning because it does not limit God.

Question 47

What is Anthony Flew’s response to via negativa?

Answer 47

Negatives amount to nothing, especially when they are unfalsifiable

Question 48

What changes does Anthony Flew make to John Wisdom’s parable?

Answer 48

Rather than a garden, it is about a clearing in a jungle, however it is roughly the same.