20th century Religious Language

What is the primary shift in Twentieth-Century Religious Language? : A shift away from traditional meaning to analytical philosophy, focusing on whether religious claims are logically meaningful or completely incoherent.

What was the "Vienna Circle"? : A group of early 20th-century philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians who developed the movement known as Logical Positivism.

Define the core stance of Logical Positivism. : The philosophical belief that the meaning of a proposition lies entirely in its method of empirical verification.

What is the "Verification Principle"? : A statement is only meaningful if it is either a priori analytic (true by definition) or a posteriori synthetic (empirically verifiable).

Define an "Analytic Statement" with an example. : A statement that is true by definition and requires no empirical testing (e.g., "all bachelors are unmarried men").

Define a "Synthetic Statement" with an example. : A statement that describes the physical world and can be checked using sensory observation (e.g., "it is raining outside").

How does A.J. Ayer categorize religious claims in Language, Truth and Logic? : He argues they are completely meaningless because they are neither mathematically analytic nor empirically verifiable.

What is Ayer’s view on the statement "God exists"? : It is an empty utterance. It is not an insult or a falsehood; it is a pseudo-proposition that has zero literal meaning.

Explain A.J. Ayer’s distinction between "Verification in Practice" and "Verification in Principle". : Verification in practice means we can test it right now; verification in principle means we know what observations *would* test it if we had the technology.

Give an example of a statement that is verifiable "in principle" but not "in practice" for Ayer. : "There are mountains on the far side of the moon" (meaningful to Ayer because we know how to check it, even before spaceships existed).

What is the "Strong Verification" vs. "Weak Verification" distinction? : Strong verification requires absolute, 100% empirical certainty; weak verification only requires that observation makes a statement highly probable.

State the devastating self-refutation critique of the Verification Principle. : The principle itself is neither true by definition (analytic) nor empirically verifiable (synthetic), making its own definition completely meaningless.

Explain John Hick’s concept of "Eschatological Verification". : He argues religious language is verifiable in principle because after death, our conscious experiences will confirm whether God exists.

Explain Hick’s analogy of the Celestial City. : Two travelers walk down a road; one believes it leads to a Celestial City, the other believes it leads nowhere. Only reaching the end will verify who was right.

What is the "Falsification Principle"? : An assertion is only meaningful if we can state what empirical evidence would count against it or prove it false.

Who introduced the Falsification Principle to religious language? : Antony Flew in the famous 15-minute radio debate known as the "Theological Falsification Symposium".

Explain Antony Flew’s use of John Wisdom’s "Parody of the Gardener". : Two explorers find a clearing in a jungle with flowers and weeds; one believes a gardener tends it, but no traps, fences, or bloodhounds ever detect him.

How does Flew apply the Gardener analogy to theists? : The believer constantly qualifies their definition of God to adapt to negative evidence (e.g., "God loves us in an invisible way"), meaning the claim never changes.

Define Flew’s famous phrase: "Death by a thousand qualifications". : The process where a religious assertion loses all its meaning because the believer constantly changes the definition to avoid it being proven false.

What is R.M. Hare’s response to Flew’s Falsification argument? : He agrees religious language cannot be falsified, but argues it is still deeply meaningful because it functions as a "Blik".

Define R.M. Hare’s concept of a "Blik". : An unprovable, unfalsifiable, yet foundational worldview or framework through which an individual interprets all reality.

Explain Hare’s analogy of the Lunatic Student. : A student is convinced all university professors are plotting to murder him; no amount of kindness can change his mind, showing his worldview is an unfalsifiable Blik.

How does Hare use the Lunatic analogy to defend religious language? : Religious claims are not factual hypotheses like science; they are meaningful Bliks that dictate how believers live, act, and view morality.

How does Antony Flew counter-attack R.M. Hare's concept of Bliks? : He argues standard Christianity rejects Bliks; when a Christian says "God loves us," they genuinely think they are stating a literal, objective cosmic fact, not an interpretation.

What is Basil Mitchell’s contribution to the Falsification Symposium? : He argues that religious language *can* be challenged by evidence, but the believer's personal trust prevents them from abandoning the claim immediately.

Explain Basil Mitchell’s analogy of the Stranger and the Partisan. : A resistance fighter (the Partisan) meets a mysterious Stranger who claims to command the movement. The Stranger sometimes helps the resistance and sometimes acts as an enemy spy.

How does the Partisan react to the Stranger’s contradictory behaviour? : The Partisan stays loyal based on an initial encounter of trust, refusing to give up on him, but acknowledges that the Stranger's negative actions are real evidence against him.

How does Mitchell apply the Stranger analogy to the problem of suffering? : A Christian acknowledges that natural disasters are real evidence against a loving God, but their personal relationship of trust means they do not immediately abandon their faith.

What is the "Cognitive" vs. "Non-Cognitive" boundary in this debate? : Ayer and Flew view meaningful language as strictly cognitive (factual); Hare, Tillich, and Wittgenstein view religious language as deeply meaningful but non-cognitive.

What was Ludwig Wittgenstein’s early view on language in the Tractatus? : "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent." Early on, he believed language was strictly a picture of physical facts.

What was Wittgenstein’s late view on language in Philosophical Investigations? : Language is not a single, rigid tool; it is an organic collection of diverse social activities, which he called "Language Games".

Define Wittgenstein’s concept of a "Language Game" (Sprachspiel). : A specific, rule-bound social activity where words gain meaning entirely from how they are used within that particular community.

Explain Wittgenstein’s chess analogy for Language Games. : The word "King" in chess has no physical meaning on its own; its identity is defined completely by the internal rules governing how it moves across the board.

What does Wittgenstein mean by the phrase "Don't ask for the meaning, ask for the use"? : Meaning is not an abstract, external object; the meaning of a word is simply its practical application inside a specific community.

Define "Fideism" in the context of Wittgensteinian Philosophy. : The controversial view that religious beliefs are self-contained systems of thought that cannot be critiqued or evaluated by outside standards like science.

How do Language Games protect religious language from A.J. Ayer? : Ayer is playing the "scientific language game." He commits a category mistake by trying to apply scientific criteria to the completely different "religious language game".

What is D.Z. Phillips' adaptation of Wittgenstein's Language Games? : He argues that statements like "God exists" do not describe a physical being; they express a profound non-cognitive commitment to a specific way of living.

State a major critique of D.Z. Phillips' Wittgensteinian fideism. : It completely isolates religion from criticism. It means outsiders cannot challenge religious extremism, because they are just playing a "different game".

How do traditional religious believers critique Wittgenstein's Language Games? : They argue it reduces theology to a game. If "God exists" is only true *inside* the church game, it strips God of being the objective Creator of the actual universe.

What is the ultimate OCR exam verdict on Twentieth-Century Religious Language? : It highlights that if religious language must obey strict scientific verification it fails, but if treated as an internally consistent, life-directing framework, it remains deeply meaningful.