Falsificationism Flashcards
Who invented falsification?
Karl Popper
What is the idea of falsification?
The idea that science doesn’t just work by looking for things to verify it but also works by looking for what will prove itself wrong, looking for falsifications of itself.
Who applied the falsification to religious language?
Antony Flew.
What did Flew say about falsification and religious language?
For a belief to be meaningful it must be falsifiable, meaning we must be able to imagine how it is false.
Why is a unfalsifiable belief meaningless?
All of our beliefs on reality could be false, so an unfalsifiable belief can’t be about reality therefore it is meaningless.
What is the analogy of the gardener?
Someone may claim they hired a gardener but every time that claim was tested, they dilute the original concept to avoid the possibility of it being proven false (the gardener is invisible etc) the consequence being that the original claim of a hired gardener is diluted into saying nothing about reality at all.
What does the gardener analogy tell us?
The gardener is God, the concept of God has died a ‘death of a thousand qualifications’. Ultimately there is no difference between a reality in which the gardener exists and where it doesn’t.
What is Mitchell’s critique of Flew?
Flew unfairly characterises religious beliefs as irrational, blind to evidence against their beliefs.
What does Mitchell argue that believers accept?
Religious people tend to accept that there is evidence against their belief such as the problem of evil.
Mitchell’s story of the Partisan.
The partisan had faith that a stranger was their leader despite seeing them fight for the other side. Analogy for maintaining faith despite seeing evil in the world.
What is the response to Mitchell?
Just because some religious people accept there is evidence against their belief there is not enough to make it falsifiable.
What does the response to Mitchell argue about religious people?
They may accept there is evidence against god however they do not believe it is enough to disprove god and therefore it is not falsifiable and therefore it is still meaningless.
