Religious Language

Cognitivist

Religious claims:

• express beliefs about how the world is

• can be verified true or false

• are factually meaningful

• supported or established by reasoning

• objectively true

Theists and atheists can be cognitivists

Non-Cognitivist

Religious claims:

• don’t try to describe the world

• aren’t factual - cannot be true nor false

• express an attitude or commitment towards the world

  • are to do with what one values

  • way of living

Logical Positivist

Linguistic philosophers (AKA Vienna Circle)

Proposed that knowledge is based on verifiable facts

Uses science, logic & maths as it’s model

Theory of meaning built on these closely defined sources of knowledge

Left the arts, ethics, religion & metaphysics as meaningless

Verification Principe

Set of criteria that a statement must meet to be ‘meaningful’

• Analytically true

  • true by definition

• Empirically verifiable

  • evidence in the world establishes it as true

Cognitivist approach = language is only meaningful if factual

Ex. Bachelors are unmarried men is meaningful - analytically

A J Ayer’s Argument that Religious Language is Meaningless

1. Define Verification Principle

   Religious language doesn’t meet the criteria:

   For religious language to be meaningful at all, it must be cognitivist

2. Not analytically verifiable

   → Existence is not a predicate

   → Not a logical contradiction to deny God exists

3. Not empirically verifiable

   → There isn’t sufficient evidence in the world which would establish God’s existence

   → We don’t even know the means of how to do it / the empirical conditions under which I could say ‘God exists’ is true or false

   → ‘God exists’ makes no predictions about our empirical experience.

   God is beyond the empirical

4. Religious language is meaningless

   → Potentially supports a non-cognitivist interpretation.

   → Religious claims are attitudes one takes regarding the world

   → Religious statements are pseudo-statements

Evaluation of Verification Principle

Strength:

1. Fits w/ scientific understanding of reality

Weakness:

1. Unable to verify the Verification Principle → Self-defeating

2. Aims to eliminate metaphysical statements, but the idea of ‘meaning’ itself is metaphysical

   The framework of logical positivism is undermined by its own criteria

3. Overly restrictive of meaning - makes all historical statements meaningless as they can’t be empirically verified

   → WEAK VERIFICATION PRINCIPLE

   developed to deal with problems - Scientific laws & historical statements can’t be verified

   A statement can be ‘verifiable in principle’

   • Must know what evidence/ data would be needed to verify it

   • It must be possible in principle to obtain such data

4. Weak Verification Principle could open the door to God…

   → Teleological Argument infers God’s existence from experience of the world

   Verifying complexity & purpose in the world could be used to verify God

Eschatological Verification - John Hick

1. Accepts the basic principle of logical positivists

   Describes the core idea of verification as the removal of rational doubt

2. Argues that ‘God exists’ can be verified as its possible to describe an experience where rational doubt can be removed

   Ex. Parable of the Celestial City

   _{Two men are walking along a road and disagree if the Celestial City exists. Upon reaching the bend, one will be proven correct.}

   _{Road = life & Two walkers = atheists & theists & Bend = death}

   In principle, after someone dies they will encounter & recognise God, thus removing rational doubt - unambiguous experience

3. Eschatological verification is a way in which religious claims are verifiable & so are meaningful

4. The life of both the theist & atheist is a matter of interpretation - its only after death the truth will be revealed

Evaluation of Eschatological Verification

Strength:

1. Uses Ayer’s claim that something must be verifiable in practice or in principle

   → We know in principle, its possible to die and see God

2. Convincing if we do have this experience

Weakness:

1. Overlooks the lack of a human body after death, and therefore lack of normal empirical means of investigation

   → We don’t know what constitutes empirical verification after death

2. Appeals to the future to justify his argument, so hold no real proof in the present

3. That there is an afterlife is just a possibility

   Lacking certainty means we can’t justifiably claim that its verifiable in principle

   Hick only shows that religious language is possibly verifiable

Falsification Principle - FLEW

A statement is meaningful IFF it’s

1. analytically true

2. falsifiable

A statement is falsifiable if it can be shown to be untrue, by producing counter examples (as an example)

Easier to falsify than empirically verify:

Verifying ‘pure water boils at 100 degrees’ would require an endless amount of tests, but falsifying it takes one counter example

Ex. ‘All swans are white’ is falsified by producing a black swan

Used to claim religious language is meaningless

Flew’s Argument from Falsification

1. Define Falsification Principle

   A test of whether a claim asserts anything

2. Shows religious language to be meaningless, as it’s neither analytically true, nor falsifiable

   They’re not genuine assertions

3. Parable of the Invisible Gardener

   _{Two people return to a dilapidated garden to find some flowers thriving. One man explains this by a gardener, while the other is sceptical, so they wait to see if its true… yet no one appears.}

   _{The believer then says the gardener must be invisible = continues qualifiying when presented with contradictory evidence}

4. Religious people can’t say what could prove thier belief in God false

   Death by a thousand qualifications

   Won’t accept contradictory evidence

5. Even if religious believers say something could disprove their belief, we’re justified in thinking that’s mere pretence

6. Failed attempt at cognitive meaning

Evaluation of Falsification

Strengths:

1. Copes well with generalizations

   “All swans are white” - no experience will ever prove it trye, but only one black swan will falsify it

2. Parable of the Gardener illustrates ‘God of the Gaps’ phenomenon

   Many beliefs about God have been shown to be false with science ex. genesis creation

   Rather than accept its falsity, Christians have edited their belief

3. Good test of rationality - a person w/ a rational belief based on evidence can explain what it could possibly take to change their mind

Weakness:

1. Existence claims are very difficult to falsify, along with claims about the future & probability

   ‘There’s a yeti’ is easy to know how to verify, than falsify as we can’t search everywhere at once

2. Religious belief is falsifable

   St Paul claimed that if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then faith is “pointless”

   St Paul’s religious language passes falsification so is meaningful

   → Response: if we did find Jesus’ body, Christians might make excuses as to why its not a valid test…

3. John Frame inverses the parable, imagining a visible gardener who claims to be a royal one, yet the sceptic refuses to believe that, despite evidence

   → Shows atheism is also unfalsifiable

   → Falsifiability isn’t a valid test to distinguish between meaningful & meaningless language

Surely a falsification principle which requires a meaningful statement to entail some decisive refuting empirical evidence is unacceptable…

But weaking it makes it no different to Ayer

Mitchell’s Response to Flew

1. Accepts that Flew’s cognitivism, for an empirical claim to be meaningful we must allow something to count against it

   → Flew was right: some religious people merely have blind faith

2. BUT… majority of theists have evidence for God in their relationship w/ God, experience of God & effect of religion in their lives

3. They also recognise evil counts as evidence against God.

   For some people, terrible evil will outweigh the strength of evidence they had for God and lose their faith → Their belief is falsifiable

   But the level or amount of evil required to falsify a belief cannot always be known in advance

4. So… religious belief can be (& often is) based on the rational weighing of evidence… is empirical

5. Parable of the Partisan

   _{A member of the resistance meets a Stranger who deeply impresses him, and is convinced of his sincerity. Sometimes the Stranger is seen helping the resistance, other times he’s seen in police uniform handing over patriots.}

   _{Yet the partisan still believes that in spite of appearances, the Stranger is on his side. Sometimes in exasperation, his friends ask what he would have to do for you to admit you were wrong? But he refuses to answer}

6. Like this, a theist doesn’t continuously look for reasons to disprove their faith. Faith doesn’t need to be tested every step of the way

   The theist does occasionally doubt his belief rather than ignore the evidence but they’re yet to see conclusive evidence which falsifies their beliefs

Evaluation of Mitchell

Strength:

1. Belief isn’t a contrant process of altering belief

2. Many examples of religious people abandoning their faith due to evil

3. There’s no conclusive proof against God or for him

Weakness:

1. Experience of and relationship w/ God is not valid empirical evidence

2. The problem of evil is insoluble - Flew

   We can’t find any justification of evil that’s compatible w/ a supremely good God

3. The evidence is too compelling

4. We wouldn’t be able to know which religious believers have an unfalsifiable blind faith, and which simply don’t know their falsification in advance.

   → Can’t justifiably claim x is falsifiable is it’s falsification can’t be given

Hare’s Response to Flew - Bliks

1. Agrees that many religious statements are unfalsifable

   BUT → Flew is mistaken in treating religious language as if they offered “some sort of explanation as scientists often use the word”

2. Non-Cognitivist

   RL doesn’t attempt to describe reality, but expresses a person’s feelings & attitude

   BLIK = a strong conviction of the world that no evidence can count against & has a strong impact on their life. Like phobias

3. Meaningful in other ways. A disagreement in bliks can’t be decided by empirical evidence (unfalsifiable) but is meaningful

4. Parable of the Paranoid Student

   _{Paranoid student thought his professors were trying to kill him. His friends introduced him to the most gentle dons they could find, but each time the lunatic replies that it was only his diabolical cunning.}

Evaluation of Bliks

Strengths:

1. j

Weakness:

1. Doesn’t go against Flew or Ayer’s criticism as it proves they’re not factually meaningful

2. Theists make assertions & factual statements about the world

   Ex. Swinburne’s design argument

3. Analogy suggests theist’s beliefs are like those of lunatics so are far from rational or meaningful

4. Unclear whether Hare thinks Bliks (or religious lang) is cognitive or not

5. Hare doesn’t explain how we can distinguish between a ‘deluded blik’ and a ‘right’ blik (that of his friends…)

Wittgenstein’s Language Games

1. Non-Cognitivist & Anti-Realist

2. Unites believers in a common practice

3. Anyone can be initiated into the rules of the game

4. Good defence of religious language - still meaningful

   → Meaningful to those who are religious and enter into the language game of religious - has its own form of life

   → Meaning of words come from the context in which they’re used. As long as each person understands the language game, then it has meaning.

Weaknesses:

1. People from different faiths will play their own language games, so is it really accessible?

2. People can be easily excluded…

Swinburne’s Critique of Logical Positivism

Uses a more scientific criteria for meaning: If we understand the words in a sentence & the significance of their combination, it’s meaningful to us

Ex. We know what it would mean for toys to come alive when no one’s watching. But we have no way to currently test that, nor imagine a test in principle .

We may not currently know how to verify or falsify God, but as long as the concept can be understood, it’s meaningful

Strength:

1. Science often operates on his criteria, not Ayer’s or Flew’s

   Physicists create mathematical models (dark matter, string theory) which we can’t verify or falsify yet are meaningful to these scientists

Weakness:

1. Confuses understanding w/ cognitive meanining

   Toys coming alive/ String Theory may be understandable, but lack cognitive meaning, which is about what represents reality - true/false (factually significant)