the falsification principle

falsification: the philosophical theory that an assertion is meaningless if there is not a way in which it can be falsified

karl popper:

• Falsification is firstly concerned with demarcating statements. This means religious statements can either be scientific or non-scientific.​

• If a religious statement is non-scientific, it cannot be tested or falsified and is therefore meaningless.​

• If a religious statement is scientific, it could either be falsified, or come in to conflict with our sense observations. Therefore, the statement would be undermined and thus meaningless.

anthony flew » “God dies a death by a thousand qualifications”:

• flew argues that religious believers will always ‘move the goal posts’ for God or endlessly ‘redefine God’ in the face of evidence against God eg if a loved one died a slow n painful death a Christian may respond by saying that ‘there is a greater purpose to the pain n that God will reward the person in heaven.”

anthony flew » “the parable of the gardener”:

• what is the difference between a world in which this gardener (God) exists, and a world in which it doesn’t? If belief in God is consistent with any possible discovery about reality, then its existence surely can make no difference to reality. It cannot be about reality. Religious language therefore ‘fails to assert’ anything. It is unfalsifiable and thus meaningless.

• criticism: St Paul claimed that if Jesus did not rise from the dead then faith is ‘pointless’ (1 Corinthians 15:14).

  • This means that Christianity could be proven false if we find evidence that Jesus did not rise from the dead, such as finding Jesus’ body.

  • This suggests Flew is incorrect to think religious language is always unfalsifiable as there are at least some believers whose belief is incompatible with some logically possible state of affairs.

  • Paul’s religious language passes Flew’s test of falsification and so would be meaningful.

john wisdom » the parable of the Gardener:

for Wisdom both people draw reasonable conclusions. the evidence is the same but their ‘feelings’ towards the evidence is different. it is not right for us to assess which person is right or more reasonable

rm hare - Bliks, parable of the lunatic n flew:

• a ‘blik’ is the term given to the basic n unprovable way in which we view n experience the world

• hare argues that bliks are not falsifiable as they aren’t scientific but that we could regard some bliks as sane (when the majority of ppl hold them) and that other bliks are insane (when a minority of ppl hold them)

• he uses the ‘parable of the lunatic n the dons’ to illustrate this

• flew accepts the concept of bliks, however he argues that religious beliefs n assertions/statements are not made up of bliks n so Hare hasn’t been able to defend religious language

basil mitchel - the partisan and the stranger:

• mitchell’s analogy suggests that religious beliefs are potentially at least statements about how the world is

• if this is a correct view of religious belief statements it means that they are meaningful as any claim about how things are in the world are potentially falsifiable

richard swinburne - the coherence of theism (toys in the cupboard):

• some existential statements cannot be falsified but this does not stop the statements being meaningful

• “some of the toys which to all appearances stay in the toy cupboard while people are asleep and no one is watching, actually get up and dance in the middle of the night and then go back to the cupboard leaving no traces of their activity.”

• this can be neither proven true or false (verified or falsified), but it can be understood and is therefore meaningful