Religious Language as Cognitive, but Meaningless

Question 1

Who is AJ Ayer, and what did he contribute to the understanding of RL?

Answer 1

A Logical Positivist, proposed the Verification Principle

Question 2

Who are the Logical Positivists?

Answer 2

A group of philosophers called the vienna circle, believe language is only meaningful if it is confined to discussing what falls within human experience

Question 3

What is the verification principle?

Answer 3

A sentence is meaningful if and only if it is a tautology, true by its own definition or most importantly, can be proven to be either true or false (verifiable)

Question 4

What is the verification principle?

Answer 4

A sentence is meaningful if and only if it is a tautology, true by its own definition or most importantly, can be proven to be either true or false (verifiable)

Question 5

What is Tautology?

Answer 5

A sentence true or false by its logical form, e.g: It either will rain or not rain

Question 6

What does verifiable mean?

Answer 6

Not necessarily true, but can be proven to be true. It doesn’t have to be empirically proven as long as we know what we would have to do to prove it I.E verifiable in principle

Question 7

How does the verification principle expose word games and incoherent sentences?

Answer 7

Statements such as “the universe doubled in size last night” cannot be proven to be true, despite saying something about the observable universe

Statements such as “sea level water boils at 100 degrees celsius” cannot be conclusively proven even in principle due to its difficulty

Question 8

What is the strong verification principle?

Answer 8

A statement is meaningful if we can verify it through observation and establish its truth/falsity for certain

Question 9

What is the weak verification principle?

Answer 9

A statement is meaningful if there are some observations that can establish the probable truth of the statement

Question 10

What is the most significant consequence of Ayer’s verification principle?

Answer 10

it appears to make all claims about religion meaningless, but this is because many religious claims are about something transcendant

Question 11

Does AJ Ayer view the claim God exists as false?

Answer 11

No, he views it as meaningless just as athiest claims are meaningless, they just cannot prove anything and all the talk is meaningless

Question 12

What is John Hick’s definition of verification?

Answer 12

he agrees factual significance is judged by the truth/falsity but verifiability should be judged by whether its possible to remove the grounds for rational doubt about the truth of the claim

Question 13

What does Hick say about the verifiability of religious statements?

Answer 13

They can never be falsified, but can be verified (rational doubt can be removed from the truth)

Question 14

What is hicks parable of the celestial city?

Answer 14

Two men travelling a road, one believes it leads to a celestial city the other that it leads nowhere, at the end of the journey it will be apparent that one was correct and the other wasnt

Question 15

What does the parable of the celestial city show?

Answer 15

eschatological verification, a method of verification of religious statements by seeing if heaven exists after death

Question 16

What is the issue with eschatological verification?

Answer 16

How can we be sure we retain out personal identity after death, or if its even the same person? Also its not meaningful in this life as it is only verifiable after death

Question 17

What are Hick’s thought experiments to support eschatological verification?

Answer 17

1. person dissapears in america, exact double appears in India -> we think this is the same person
2. person dies in america, exact double appears in India -> we think this is the same person
3. person dies in america, exact double appears in heaven -> we think must also be the same person

Question 18

What is Anthony Flew’s falsification principle?

Answer 18

propositions are only meaningful if they allow evidence to count against them, most religious statements aren’t falsifiable

Question 19

What is Flew’s parable of the gardener?

Answer 19

borrowed from John Wisdom and adapted:

Two men see a garden, one says it looks well kept, the other says it looks unkept, but both see no gardener. The skeptic says there is no gardener at all, the companion believes there is. After performing multiple tests, the companion alters their belief to -> he comes at night -> invisible -> also odourless and intangible. The skeptic asks how his claim differs from there being no gardener at all

Question 20

How does Flew’s garden parable show the principle of falsification?

Answer 20

The skeptics companion will not allow the evidence showing there is no gardener to count against his claims, so his claims are false. A person who refuses to give up their beliefs even when shown evidence from their world, is not really talking about the world

death by a thousand qualifications

Question 21

How does the falsification principle apply to religious context?

Answer 21

Christians used to believe it was factual the earth was made in 6 days, modern science has proved this false but many still believe it was made in 6 days, which is just false. Others have correctly adapted their beliefs.