Religious language arguments + responses Flashcards
What is religious language + what is it concerned with?
Statements or claims made about God or gods.
Religious language is not about whether these statements are true or false. Instead, whether such religious language is meaningful or meaningless.
Cognitivist language
- Aims to literally describe how the world is.
- When saying “God exists” or “God loves me” they are making a statement intended to be taken literally as true or false.
- Ontological, cosmological, teleological and problem of evil = all assume a cognitivist view of RL
e.g. triangles have 3 sides
Non-cognitivist language
- Do not aim to literally describe how the world is
- religious language is not to be taken literally as true or false
- statements like “God exists” or “God loves me” to express someone’s attitude to the world.
e.g. boo! or Hurrah!
Falsifiable meaning
- meaningful and capable or being true or false
- A statement is falsifiable if there is at least some possible evidence that could count against that statement
- Otherwise the statement is meaningless.
Unfalsifiable meaning
- meaningless and not capable of being true or false
- no possible evidence that could count against the statement
LOGICAL POSITIVISTS: AJ AYER on religious language:
- He uses his verification principle to argue RL are meaningless - A statement only has meaning if it can be verified: analytically, empirically or mathematically
- AND SO, Religious statements like “God answers my prayers” and “God exists” are not analytic truths, not empirically verifiable or mathematically verifiable.
- Therefore, according to Ayer’s verifications, RL is meaningless
SWINBURNE’s PROBLEM: with AJ AYER’s Verification Principle
TOO STRICT
- Swinburne argues against the strong verification principle.
- Universal statements like “all humans are mortal”, can’t be verified even though they seem intuitive
- And neither can some scientific and historical statements
- Scientific = black holes; we can’t test any of our theories about them as we can’t get close enough to them so any talk of black holes = meaningless
- Historic statement = The battle of Hastings happened in 1066. Unless you can show me it to be true through some empirical evidence it is meaningless.
- Therefore, this seems too strict
HICKS ESCATOLOGICAL VERIFICATION
To illustrate his point RL can be verified after death/ the end of time he uses his:
PARABLE OF THE CELESTIAL CITY:
- Two men are travelling on a road (the only road there is) so they must follow it
- A believes the road leads to a celestial city
- B believes the road leads to nowhere and the journey is meaningless
- They experience both “refreshment and delight” and “hardship and danger” whilst travelling
- If A is correct, they will eventually arrived at the celestial city and he will be proved right
- If B is correct, they will just keep going forever and neither will be proved right
- If the theist is correct, his belief will be verified in the afterlife when he meets God = reaching the celestial city.
- If the atheist is correct, his belief will never be verified because he’ll be dead + unable to verify anything = walking forever on the road
- SO, religious language isn’t necessarily meaningless, because it is eschatologically verifiable:
- If “God exists” is true, then it can be verified after we die
- But if “God exists” is false, then it is unfalsifiable
RESPONSE to SWINBURNE’s: on the verification principle
WEAK VERSION OF THE VP
- The weak verification principle fixes this issue as it claims that things can be verified in possibility (principle)
- For example, say an astronaut confirms something in space synthetically then we can accept this as meaningful as although I haven’t verified it personally its verified in possibility.
HICK’s COUNTER: to AJ Ayers verification principle
HICK’s - ESCATOLOGICAL VERIFICATION
- Eschatological verification = A statement that can be verified after death / at the end of time
- John Hick agrees with Ayer and Flew that “God exists” is not empirically verifiable in this life
- BUT, Hick argues that many religious claims are about things beyond the limits of human life
- He argues these statements are falsifiable: because its possible to verify them after we die
ANTHONY FLEW’s COUNTER: to Hicks Eschatological verification
INVISIBLE GARDENER analogy to show religious language is actually unfalsifiable ∴ meaningless
- 2 explorers find a clearing in a jungle
- A says the clearing is due to a gardener. B disagrees
- To test this, they watch for a gardener
- A few days past, they haven’t seen him, but A says its because the gardeners invisible
- So, they set up an electric fence + guard dogs to catch him
- After a few days they still haven’t detected him
- A says the gardener is not just invisible but also intangible, making no sounds, has no smell etc.
- B asks what’s he difference between this claim and the claim he doesn’t exist
- As A’s theory is unfalsifiable - nothing could possible prove the theory wrong, but
also nothing could prove it right either. - Therefore as its unfalsifiable, Explorer A’s theory is meaningless
- Flew is arguing that “God exists” is meaningless because it is unfalsifiable
- In the same way the existence of the invisible gardener is unfalsifiable.
BASIL MITCHELL COUNTER: to Anthony Flew’s invisible gardener
THE PARTISAN EXAMPLE
- Mitchell agrees a statement must be falsifiable in order to be meaningful
- BUT argues just because there are some observations that count against a certain belief, that doesn’t automatically mean we have to reject that belief.
- You’re in a war, your country has been occupied by an enemy
- You meet a stranger who claims to be leader of the resistance
- You trust this man
- BUT the stranger acts ambiguously, sometimes doing things that appear to support the enemy rather than your own side
- YET you continue to believe the stranger is on your side despite this and trust that he has good reasons for these ambiguous actions
- In this parable the stranger = God and the ambiguous actions = the problem of evil
- Mitchell argues religious statements are ‘significant articles of faith’ (invested in these beliefs so doesn’t withdraw from them as soon as the slightest evidence to the contrary turns up)
- we can accept that the existence of evil counts as evidence against God’s existence
- MAKING “God exists” falsifiable and meaningful
- without having to withdraw belief in God
R.M. HARE’s CONTER: to Another Flew’s invisible gardener
THE PARANOID STUDENT
- Religious statements can’t be true or false (non-cognitivism)
- Instead, they are part of someone’s view of the world - Hare calls these attitudes ‘bliks’.
- IMAGINE a paranoid student who thinks university lecturers are trying to kill him.
- You assure him this isn’t true and provide tons of evidence, yet he still believes it
- You go with him to talk to a lecturer and the lecturer acts totally normal.
- But the paranoid student thinks he was just pretending to be normal, to not expose his plan to kill him.
- No amount of evidence/reassurance will convince the student that his blik is false
- The students ‘blik’ is therefore unfalsifiable
- Despite being unfalsifiable, he argues bliks are still meaningful to the person who holds them
- The blik clearly meant something to the paranoid person as it has an effect on his behaviour
- Hare argues religious language = the same
- “God exists” = unfalsifiable, but it clearly means something to them.
- THEREFORE RL = MEANINGFUL to the person
Blik
A mental filter, shapes how you view everything and interact with the world
