4A - Problems with Religious language

What is religious language and what are the different categories which are associated with the term?

• The communication of ideas about God, faith, belief and practice.

• Peter Donovan - ‘‘religious language is the way words, often quite ordinary ones are used in some form or context of religious belief and observance.’’

Religious language includes categories:

• Descriptions of the nature and aspects of God, such as ‘omnipotence’.

• Descriptions of religious belief, such as ‘enlightenment’.

• Technical religious terms, such as ‘sin’ ‘salvation.

• Ordinary words that can have special religious meaning e.g. ‘good’

• The paradox - religious language is often thought to be paradoxical in nature e.g. how can we talk about something that is INFINITE (God) using only FINITE language.

What are some key terms?

• Cognitive/realist - Statements that can be verified or falsified.

• Non cognitive/anti-realist - Statements that cannot be verified or falsified but may be considered meaningful.

• Logical positivist - Describing the philosophers who supported the claim that language could only be meaningful if it could be verified by empirical means.

What are the limitations of human language?

• Our communication depends on language - the implications are significant.

• There are many assumptions that we make about the nature of communication that are taken for granted.

• One such assumption is that we can be understood.

• If this is not true, then our communication is ineffective.

• We assume that we can be understood and that we are able to understand/decode what others say.

Why might these limitations be more of a problem for religious language?

• All of our language is based on experience.

• Communication is about, amongst other things, sharing ideas, experiences and realities with each other.

• For these to be meaningful we must be able to relate in some way to what we are being told.

• In other words, we need to have some experience based upon which to build our understanding of the language that we share.

• Once we have an agreed common understanding of these things, then such statements become both understandable and meaningful.

What are 3 experiences that are likely to be shared by most people?

• Going to school.

• Having at least one caregiver.

What are 3 experiences that are unlikely to be shared by most people?

• Owning a mansion.

Why would people struggle to understand concepts such as infinite and timeless?

• The vast majority of everyday communication is about the physical world.

• However, there are also forms of communication that deal with aspects of our lives that are not found in the physical world.

• E.g. Emotions, ideas, ethical discussions and language about religion.

• Sometimes referred to as metaphysical.

• For some, such language is often dismissed - considered as not having the same level as meaning as language about the physical world because there can be no objective agreement on the experiences being discussed.

• Some consider it to have no value in the empirical world.

• As our language is based upon experience, and our experiences are generally confined to the empirical world and out interactions with in, our language is therefore somewhat limited in its scope to discuss things beyond this.

• This is because our experiences are rooted in 3 dimensional physical spaces.

• Language used to express ‘God’ within a religious tradition encounters the same problems.

• God as limitless and timeless appear more like mathematical, abstract claims than they do realities that we see and experience in the world around us.

• God is often seen to be transcendent, a spirit, beyond this world of experience or in the case of Buddhist nirvana, impossible to express.

• The main problem, then, remains that in religious language about God is unverifiable in relation to our common base of experiences that give language its meaning.

Why might religious language be considered unintelligible?

• Religious language is the method of communicating about religion.

• In simple terms that might be to describe physical objects with religious connotations such as places of worship, collections of sacred writings or describing the physical action that a religious believer might undertake during a specific religious ritual.

• In all such cases, the language understandable and relatable because it deals with the observable and experienced empirical world.

• However, once the religious language goes on to describe divinities that are worshipped, then suddenly what is being communicated may not be either understandable or relatable.

• For instance, how does a non-believer know what is meant by ‘heaven and hell are religious truths’.

What is the challenge in terms of religious language is not a common shared base and experience?

• For this reason, there are philosophers who consider that religious language is inherently problematic - purely on the basis of it not communicating ideas that can be agreed upon by all as possessing an empirically knowable ‘truth’.

• When talking about the traditional conceptions of God, there is no common or shared experience universally applicable to those with a faith commitment and those without.

• Our language is experience based - and our experiences are time limited (i.e. they are based within the confines of time - in that they have a past, present and future.)

• To talk about things beyond time - with concepts such as infinity or timelessness, means to talk about ideas that can only ever be expressed in abstract terms - at this point the empirical understanding of language breaks down.

• To reiterate: if I talk about the place of worship that I attend, then I can describe its physical location and features.

• What I am talking about can be 'known' by others via empirical and experience-based means,

• There is no problem with my description.

• Once I begin to talk about my belief of an infinite, timeless, transcendent divinity that loves me and has a specific plan and purpose for my eternal soul, then no empirical or experience-based means could establish the truth of what I have just said.

 

• All such language is specific to the individual or community that describe it and it is this fact, for many philosophers, that immediately removes it from the possibility of universal verification.

• This, in summary, is the inherent problem of religious language.

What is the difference between cognitive and non-cognitive language?

• Philosophers considering how language is used, generally divide it into 2 main forms.

• Cognitive and non-cognitive language.

• Cognitive language is any form of language that makes an assertion, which is usually factual in nature, in the sense that it can be proved to be true or false by objective means.

• These means might be through verification or falsification.

 

• Religious language however, is not as straightforward.

• When religious language is used in a cognitive sense then it is referring to a statement that is believed to be proven - such as in the statements used in the traditional theistic proofs - statements which claim to be able to determine that God exists as an external reality that can be shown to be true via empirically verifiable means.

 

• In contrast to this, language can also be considered to be non-cognitive.

• When language is non-cognitive, it is not used to express empirically knowable facts about the external world.

• It is not something that can be held up to objective scrutiny.

• This is because non-cognitive language is language that expresses opinions, attitudes, feelings and/or emotions.

• It is language which relates to a person's view of what reality may mean to them - and this may differ from the view of another, even though they may be experiencing the same reality.

• Both views are held to be valid - but in a non-cognitive sense.

• Non-cognitive language is often used in religious language, according to several religious philosophers, as it is language making claims about a believer's attitude towards the world around them, based on their religiously held beliefs.