philosophy - religious language

aquinas

via negativa- only legitimate way to talk about god is to say what he is not, apophatic way e.g., god is infinite

• pseudo-dionysius (apophatic language); preserves the mystery of god

• maimonides (apophatic language); he wanted to be able to say something about god, he claims god and humans were so totally different that words would be equivocal

via positiva- uses positive language to describe the qualities and nature of god, cataphatic way e.g., god is good

verification principle

-only analytic or synthetic statements are meaningful

• analytic- statements which are true by definition; a tautology (when the meaning of the predicate is necessarily contained within the meaning of the subject e.g., the bachelor who was married)

• synthetic- gathered through empirical investigation (experiments) e.g., water boils at 100 degrees celcius

-this version supported by vienna circle

verification principle and religious language

‘god loves me’

-would say not analytic, as god by definition does not have to love me, we can imagine a scenario where god doesn’t love someone e.g., the flood in the bible

-would say not synthetic, as it is not possible to test this statement empirically

-therefore, religious statements are meaningless

ayer’s adaptations to verification principle

1. historic statements, ‘the battle of hastings happened in 1066’ is a meaningless statement according to v.p. BUT they have meaning

2. statements that cannot be verified (perhaps due to lack of technology), ‘there are mountains on the other side of the moon’

falsification symposium

1. popper

2. flew

3. hare

4. mitchell

popper - falsification principle

-science; uses statements that can be tested to see if they are false

-pseudoscience; uses statements that cannot be tested to see if they are false

• e.g., ‘water boils at 100 degrees celcius’, which can be tested, and so is falsifiable and therefore is a scientific statement

• e.g., ‘god loves me’ which cannot be tested, so it is pseudo-scientific, and therefore unfalsifiable

flew - parable of the gardener

parable-

• two explorers discover a clearing;

1. believes the clearing (world) has a gardener (god)

2. doubts it

• they test it by putting up fences, bloodhounds etc. but the tests come back negative

• 2 asks 1 how the gardener that cannot be seen, felt, smelt etc. is any different from no gardener at all

-god cannot be falsified

a death by a thousand qualifications

-idea that if a statement needs to be qualified so much it can lose its integrity as an idea

-the claim ‘i believe in the gardener who tends the garden’ has to be qualified to include that the gardener cannot be seen, heard, felt, smelt etc.

-what is left of this original claim?

hare - parable of the lunatic

parable-

• story of a student at uni who is convinced all the staff want to kill him, so his friends introduce him to many kind staff who treat him well

• the friends say ‘see, now you must be convinced they don’t wish to kill you?’, however the student (lunatic) is not convinced

• each kind staff member is just plotting a scheme, they are only kind to lure him inot a false sense of safety

• his belief that they wish to kill him remains unchecked

-religious belief cannot be falsified as it is not based on evidence, it is not a kind of scientific belief - its a blik (religious belief)

sane vs insane bliks

bliks- religious beliefs, a belief that someone holds that is not based on evidence

sane bliks- helpful bliks that makes life possible e.g., the belief that my car will stop when i hit the brake pedal

insane bliks- perhaps a belief like that of the lunatic that isn’t helpful

-hare didn’t tell us if religion is an insane or sane blik

mitchell - parable of the partisan

parable-

• partisan sees a stranger whom he is convinced is the leader of their side of the war

• some activities of the stranger support this, some do not

• the partisan always believes the stranger is on his side, even when there’s evidence against it

• mitchell is saying evidence does matter, but the partisan does not see the evidence objectively, they see it subjectively through the lens of their faith

• therefore, they see evidence and try to explain it in the context of their faith, just as someone might with the problem of evil

wittgenstein - language games

-language has no set meaning, it only means something in the context in which it is said e.g., ‘water!’ which could be used as an imperative or an answer to a question or something else, we only know because of the context in which it is used

-this is because all language is a game (sprachspiel) that has rules, if we don’t understand the rules (context) the game cannot be played (understood)

-if we take a game like chess, we can play chess only if we have shared understanding of the rules, this is the same with language. if we don’t have same context, we cannot understand one another (we cannot ‘play the game’)

-’moses did not exist’, doesn’t mean anything on its own. it could mean ‘moses wasn’t really called moses’, or ‘moses as a historical figure didn’t exist’ or it could mean something else. it is only with shared context that we could understand the meaning

-’if a lion could speak, we could not understand him’, the contextual starting point of a human and a lion is so different, that even if they could speak the same words, they would have no shared meaning

-religious language depends on the degree of shared contextual understanding. if that understanding is high, religious language could be meaningful. however, if the context is lower, the meaningfulness is reduced

language games ao3

-argues that language only has meaning in terms of shared context. language is therefore non-cognitive (subjective). language is not true or false, it is instead only meaningful in the context of its use. the game chess only has meaning in the context of chess, but not in the context of football. this is the same as religious language, it only makes sense in the context in which it appears

-the second concern is that the ‘game’ ultimately becomes a single player one, as however similar the contextual situation, no two players have the same contextual understanding of something, it reduces to personal opinion

swinburne - toys in the cupboard

-this is the idea that we imagine a toy cupboard where the toys come alive when the door is shut. before anyone can open the door they always return to their original position and any attempt to record them would fail as the toys would know and not move

-swinburne points out that this scenario is unfalsifiable; there is no way to test it, yet, it is perfectly meaningful. even children would understand the story, therefore, an unfalsifiable story can still be meaningful. religion might be unfalsifiable, but still meaningful

tillich - symbols

signs- simply point towards something e.g., road signs

symbol- a simple idea/concept that represents something complex and difficult to express. do more than signs; according to tillich they participate in the thing they describe e.g., a poppy (for rememberance) is more than just a sign, it is a part of the rememberance

-tillich argues that religious language is not to be understood literally, instead it is symbolic

symbolic language

symbolic language ao3