AQA A Level: RS, Religious Language

Pseudo Dionysius

Via Negativa

- Words limit our understanding of a transcendent God

- Religious language is meaningful when used negatively

Maimonides

- We can know that God is not what he is

- Ship example: by describing what a ship isn't, we get closer to understanding what a ship is.

Antony Flew

- Argues that the negatives amount to nothing, so we are told nothing of God

Pierre Chardon

- We try to describe love even though we don't really know what it is.

- It still has meaning however little it may be

Wittgenstein

- Language Games

- Words get their meaning from their use

- Those outside of the game find these words meaningless

Aquinas

Analogy - we can't know or say what God is, but can know what God is like.

- rejects univocal and equivocal language

- Analogy of Attribution: we can tell things about something from what it causes

- Healthy urine, healthy bull

- DAVIES - Good bread, good baker

- Analogy of Proportion: from lesser objects like humans we can say God has a proportionate same quality

- Plants have life, humans have life, God has life

Hare

- Theory of bliks

- Religious Language is a blik

- Bliks affect behaviours so are meaningful

- Parable of the Paranoid Teacher

Ian Ramsey

Supports Aquinas' Analogy

- Models: term from human experience (e.g., 'good')

- Qualifier acknowledges God's essential difference (e.g., 'infinitely').

Karl Popper

Falsificationism

- He concluded that empiricism operates by falsification.

- A claim/belief is falsifiable if we can imagine what could prove it false

Flew

Application of Falsificationism to Religious Language

- Falsification Principle: a statement is only meaningful if it can be proven true or false empirically

Logical Positivists of the Vienna Circle

Ayer's Verification principle: a statement is meaningful if it is empirically verifiable through senses.

Tillich

- Paul Tillich thought that most religious language had symbolic meaning rather than literal.

- Symbol - grow out of the culture and collective unconscious minds of a religious tradition, participate in religion

- National flag example

- Cognitive

Randall

- Non Cognitive

- Symbols should be understood by what they do, their function

- Symbols as completely subjective in our mind and thus non-cognitive

Erika Dinkler Von Schubert

Crucifix means different things to different people making it meaningful

- Symbol as "a pattern or object which points to an invisible metaphysical reality"

Peter Vardy

The role of myths in religious language

- they communicate deep truths about human experience and belief systems rather than literal facts

Argues for a non cognitive approach to religious language

- he sees religious claims as more than factual claims

- they shape belief systems and guide moral behaviours.