20th Century Religious Language Flashcards
What does cognitive mean?
Statements about God that can be true or false. I.e. “God is omnipotent” is cognitive because it is true by definition.
What does non-cognitive mean?
Statements about God that are not subject to truth or falsity. I.e. “God exists” can’t be proven or disproven.
What is Verificationism/the Verification Principle?
The belief that statements are only meaningful if they can be verified through the senses. There are strong and weak forms of the principle. It is the approach of logical positivists.
What was the Vienna Circle?
A group of philosophers in the 1920s and 1930s. They argued that some statements were meaningful and others were not. A claim is only meaningful if it can be verified by actual experience. This means scientific claims are meaningful, but religious and ethical claims are not.
However, this form of the verification principle seems to rule out discussions on historical accounts and claims about art or beauty.
What is Ayer’s Verification Principle?
He agrees with the Vienna Circle and Hume in that religious language should not be a matter of metaphysics. He argues that for a statement to be meaningful, it must either be a tautology, something that is true by definition (a priori) or something that is verifiable in principle (a posteriori.)
We are not required to prove something conclusively. It just needs to be verifiable to be meaningful. Ayer uses the example of “there are mountains on the far side of the moon,” which at the time of writing couldn’t be verified. But it is a meaningful statement because we could orbit the moon and verify it.
How could one support Ayer’s Verification Principle?
- Ayer offers a significant improvement over the verification principle proposed by the Vienna Circle. It widens the definition of what is meaningful to scientific laws and historical claims.
- Some philosophers argue that ethical and religious claims are rightly excluded as they are different to other types of statement.
- Ayer softens the demand for absolute verification of a statement. A statement may not be completely provable, but it is acceptable if it could be shown beyond reasonable doubt. This is known as weak verification.
How could one reject Ayer’s Verification Principle?
- Ayer is not correct to rule out all religious statements. Swinburne notes that some religious events, i.e. the resurrection of Jesus, would be verifiable if true.
- THE VERIFICATION PRINCIPLE FAILS ITS OWN TEST! The claim that “statements are only meaningful if they are tautologies or verifiable in principle” is neither a tautology nor verifiable in principle itself!
HOWEVER: Ayer refutes this by saying the Verification Principle is a theory, not a statement, so doesn’t need to pass the test.
How does Hick challenge Ayer’s rejection of religious statements?
He supports verificationism but believes in eschatological verification, in that all religious statements are meaningful after death.
He uses a parable of two travellers on a road (life.) One believes in the celestial city (afterlife) and the other believes the road just ends. When they turn the final corner and the celestial city is there, one of them will be proven right.
What is Falsificationism?
The principle that a statement is a genuine scientific assertion if it is possible to say how it could be proven false empirically.
Why did Karl Popper develop the Falsification Principle?
He wanted to distinguish between science and psuedo-science. Popper argues that when scientists make a claim, they invite other scientists to try and prove it false. If it cannot be subject to tests that could prove it false, it is not a genuine statement.
What is Flew’s parable of the garden?
Two men find a beautiful garden in the middle of a rainforest. One man believes that there must be a gardener, whilst the other one doesn’t. They set up trip wires, guard dogs and electric fences around the garden, but no gardener is caught.
As each method fails, the believer’s qualifications for the gardener keep changing. The gardener is immortal, invisible, immune to shocks, scentless, soundless, can teleport etc.
What does Flew conclude about the parable of the garden?
Religious claims about the world aren’t really claims because they can’t be tested.
When challenged, the believer waters down their claim. They shift the goalposts so much that Flew claims religious statements suffer “the death of a thousand qualifications.”
What is Hare’s parable of the lunatic?
A lunatic is convinced that all the professors in the university want to kill him. His friends arrange for him to meet the kindest professors they can find, but the lunatic replies that this just shows the professors are cunning; they are trying to lull him into a false sense of security.
What does Hare’s parable of the lunatic mean?
Hare is defending religious belief on the grounds that Flew misunderstands the language involved. Flew is wrong to apply science to theology.
Hare argues that we have ‘bliks’ (our basic beliefs.) The lunatic’s blik was the idea of all the professors being out to murder him. Religious belief is a blik and cannot be empirically tested.
How does Hare’s theory of ‘bliks’ fail?
It claims that religion itself is a ‘blik’ which makes it sound like a delusion or a personal belief only. When a believer claims “God loves me”, he isn’t claiming a subjective truth, but rather a claim on reality as a whole.
