20th Century religious language

Comte

• Comte believed science led people to abandon old ways of explaining things and replaced this with more accurate, scientifically ideas.

• A claim was only meaningful if it could be tested using sense experience. E.g. ‘Lisa is allergic to nuts’, we can test if this is true or false. if it could not be proven, it is meaningless.

• The logical positivists then concluded in order for a synthetic statement to be meaningful, they had to be verifiable using empirical evidence.

Who were the logical positivists?

• Also referred to as the ‘Vienna Circle’, and inspired by Comte they believed it was time to move away from seeing things as designed or guided by God and instead, develop more of a scientific way of understanding.

Verification principle

• If a statement is neither analytic nor empirically verifiable, it says nothing about reality and therefore is meaningless.

• This follows the thinking of David Hume, who suggested if a statement lacks abstract reasoning (such as that found in maths) or experimental reasoning, then it says nothing at all.

• We must know under what conditions we can class something as ‘true’ or ‘false’. This way of judging meaningfulness is called the verification principle. we don’t have to physically test, but we need to know what test

Denotive language

When a word stands for something, a label for it such as the word ‘window’ standing for a wall with glass. The word has clear, literal meaning that can be taken at fact value.

Connotation

When a word carries other associations with it. ‘Window’ may have connotations of opportunity or finding a space in a busy period. They may mean different things in different contexts. May also evoke a meaning that is not intended by the speaker.

Applying it to God

• There is a debate surround words applying to God, if someone says ‘God created the heavens and the Earth’, do they mean literally, or both cognitively and symbolically where ‘God’ is a word for something that unimaginable, etc?

• it may be a connotative and cognitive way where they may be trying to encourage others towards showing a greater respect or expressing their own awe.