Religious Language (God) Flashcards
Ayer’s Verification Principle + Strong and weak verification
Aims to clarify meaning.
Somethings meaningful iff:
- it’s true by definition
- it can be shown to be true or false empirically
Strong: We can actually go out and test it in the world
Weak: We can test through articulation (theoretically)
Objection that ayer’s verification principle is self refuting
The VP isn’t analytically or empirically (weak/strong) verifiable it’s self
Essay Plan
Start: Intent + Definition
Section 1
P1. Cognitive explanation (‘God exists’).
P2. Objection: Ayer’s Verification.
P3. Defence: VP isn’t verifiable.
Section 2
P1. Defence: Hick’s Eschatological Verification (if weak verification is possible, this seems to fit the criteria). Support with:
a. Soul-making
b. Epistemically distance
P2. Objection: Relies on the afterlife, no empirical evidence.
P3. Defence: Same with the VP, cannot be weakly verified
P4. Mini Conclusion: VP fails as a criteria of meaning for language - RL could still be meaningful
Section 3
P1. Flew’s application of falsification principle.
- Parable of the gardener
P2. Defence: Mitchell (religious language not conclusively falsifiable due to faith)
- Parable of the Partisan
P3. Objection: Flew - Faith is not enough to save religious language. Ultimately when pressed a believer will have to qualify what they mean. (e.g. defences of poe). Reject Mitchell’s defence.
P4. Defence: Hare’s Bliks
- Parable of the deluded student
Conclusion.
Cognitivism on religious language
P1. Sentences are meaningful if they are statements.
P2. Expressions of belief about the world are true/false (can be verified/falsified).
P3. “God exists” is the claim that there’s a God that exists independently in the world, and reasons can be given to support this claim.
C. Therefore, “God exists” is meaningful.
Hick’s Eschatological Verification
The view that ,in principle, we can verify God exists only after we die.
Therefore, making the claim ‘God Exists’ is meaningful as it is verifiable (after death).
Support to Hick’s Eschatological Verification: Soul Making Theodicy
Evil exists and the world/humans are imperfect to allow us to grow spiritually and morally in order to ‘grow’ our soul.
Support to Hick’s Eschatological Verification: Epistemic distance
Means we cannot ever truly know of God’s existence.
If God did make himself known to us, we would follow his commands out of obedience to his authority instead of following them because we had figured out that they were the right thing to do.
Flew’s Falsification Principle
- A meaningful assertion (claim) is one that can be falsified; a meaningless assertion cannot be falsified.
- To falsify an assertion is to imagine what the world would be like if that statement was false.
Atheists provide many example of what the world would be like if claims such as ‘God exists’ or ‘God loves us’ were false (e.g. pointless deaths in the world)
However, believers refuse to accept these claims are falsifiable and instead they qualify or amend claims to avoid them being falsified.
This means that religious language, such as ‘God exists’ or ‘God loves us’, are unfalsifiable and are therefore meaningless.
Parable of the Partisan
In a time of war, a partisan member of the resistance meets a stranger that says they are also a member of the resistance. The partisan becomes completely convinced ‘that this stranger is on our side’ and often sees the stranger helping the resistance. But sometimes the stranger acts against the resistance - this worries the partisan and counts against the belief. The partisan overcomes these tests however and seeks an explanation for the stranger’s apparent betrayals and trusting that the stranger knows best. In this way, the partisan maintains his belief that ‘the stranger is on our side’.
Mitchell’s Response to Religious Language not being Falsifiable
Says that believers do accept that the problem of evil counts against the existence of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, supremely good God.
However, will not allow the problem to count decisively against their belief as their faith allows them to trust that God has reasoning for these acts of evil.
This makes the assertion (God loves us) meaningful as the believers accept that there is evidence against it, making it falsifiable.
Hare’s Bliks (As a response to Flew)
P1. A blik is a foundational approach/attitude that we have to the world, and our beliefs are based on these
P2. A blik cannot be falsified
P3. Religious claims like ‘God loves us’ are expressions of fundamental approches/attitudes to the world (bliks).
P4. Religious language cannot be falsified
C. Therefore, religious claims are not assertions, they are expressions of a blik.
This argument shows how religious language is non-cognitivist (not truth apt). And are just beliefs/bliks so they are therefore meaningless.
Flew’s response to Mitchell’s Faith Defence + POTP
POTP: Weak analogy. We can see what the human in the story does, but we cannot see what God does and therefore not understand.
M’s Faith: They won’t actually give up their beliefs as they are ‘allowed’ not to due to ‘keeping their faith’ , therefore not actually falsifiable.
