Concepts

Question 1

Why is religious language so difficult to define and unserstand?

Answer 1

• It describes God as having human attributes.
• It is sometimes contradictory.
• It can be metaphorical
• it can make metaphysical statements beyond human understanding.
• It has peculiar usage.

Question 2

What is the cognitivist belief about religious language?

Answer 2

• Religious language is meaningful.
• It expresses a belief conforming to the world.
• It can be verified or falsified.

Question 3

What is the non-cognitivits belief about religious language?

Answer 3

• They express some kind of other mental state. Belief, emotion, ‘blik’.
• Not making statements corresponding to the world, and aren’t verifiable.

Question 4

What are the three ways which religious language is given ‘meaning’ in the A-level syllabus?

Answer 4

1) Cognitively, through propositional value. Or, truth-value.
2) Non-cognitively. It expresses some other emotion or belief.
3) It has no meaning, and we should eliminate it from our speech.

Question 5

What is Ayer’s belief about the meaning of religious language?

Answer 5

• Non-cognitivist.
• Logical positivist.
• (Vienna Circle)
• Religious language has no meaning, because it is not:
  a) A tautology
  b) Verifiable be empirical evidence.
• Religious statements have no factual significance and are therefore ‘pseudo-statements’
• All metaphysics is beyond human experience.

Question 6

What is the difference between Ayer’s theory on ethics vs his theory on religious language?

Answer 6

• Ethics is an emotive expression of one’s beliefs. Therefore, he is non-cognitivist realist about ethics.
• Religious language has no wider meaning, and it’s easier to remove it from everyday talk altogether.

Question 7

What is the criticism of Ayer’s theory on religious language concerning the harshness of the Verification principle?

Answer 7

• V.P. Rules out too much
• What about other non-verifiable elements of life (Beauty, art, poetry etc)?

Question 8

What was Ayer’s reply to the criticism stating the V.P. rules out too much?

Answer 8

• Some things have a wider, non-cognitive significance. E.g., ethics being an emotive expression.
• Religious language has none of this, as people are trying to make a genuine assertion about the world.

Question 9

What is the second issue with Ayer’s Verification principle concerning its self refutability?

Answer 9

• The Verification Principle defeats itself.
• It is not a tautology
• It is not verifiable by empirical evidence.
• Therefore, it has no theoretical weight, as it is self-refuting. (It cannot pass its own test)

Question 10

How did Ayer reply to the issue that his verification principle fails itself?

Answer 10

• He states that the verification is in and of itself a kind of tautology, as it serves as a definition of ‘meaning,’. The predicated which are contained in ‘meaning’ are contained in the V.P. and therefore the theory is not self-refuting.

Question 11

What is the third issue with Ayer’s verification principle concerning John Hick?

Answer 11

• Hick was a cognitivist about religious language.
• He believed in the VP. However, he believed religious language passed the VP.
• Celestial City Example

Question 12

What was Hick’s theory of the meaning of religious language?

Answer 12

His version of ‘verification’:
- Conditions can be met where rational doubt can be removed.
- He believed in eschatological verification.
- ‘The end of times,’ - Greek.
- When we die, we will either see or not see the face of God, and then we will have verification of whether there is a God or not.

Question 13

What parable did Hick use to illustrate his point about eschatological verification?

Answer 13

• The Celestial City.

Question 14

What is the issue with Hick’s theory of religious language concerning the retaining of one’s identity after death?

Answer 14

Hick claimed that we would believe a copy of a person showing up in a different place would be considered to be the same person. This is not guaranteed, and which we also cannot verify, which would defeat his argument entirely.

Question 15

How did Hick respond to the criticism that his theory of retaining identity was assumptive?

Answer 15

In most abrahamic religions, it is stated that God will not create a copy of your soul to be in heaven, he will resurrect the body’s of believers, not create new ones, so we don’t have to worry about retaining identity according to revealed theology.

Question 16

What is the issue with Hick’s eshatological verification concerning the recognition of God after death?

Answer 16

• There is no guarantee that we can recognise God. It is understood widely that God is beyond human comprehension, and therefore is heaven and God is real, there is no guaranteeing that we’ll understand what he is. Therefore, we cannot verify God’s existence.

Question 17

What is the third issue with Hick’s exchatological verification?

Answer 17

He addresses and utilises the Verification Principle. Therefore, we can criticise the VP as a criticism of Hick:
1) It’s too harsh
2) It defeats itself.

Question 18

What are the three stages to hick’s proof of identity retention after death?

Answer 18

1) If someone dissapears in America, a copy reappears in Australia, they are the same person.
2) If a person dies in America, and a copy reappears in Australia, they are the same person.
3) If a person dies and reappears in heaven, they are the same person.

Question 19

What is the ‘University Debate’?

Answer 19

A debate held by the Philosophers, Flew, Hare, and Mitchell, interacted within the ‘academic magazine ‘University,’

Question 20

What wa Flew’s view on the meaningfulness of the religious language?

Answer 20

• Non-cognitivist eliminativist.
• Falsification principle:
  There are conditions which can be met to show the falsity of the claim, meaning it can be true or false.
• He believed believers would not allow their propositions to be falsified as they would only ever qualify their beliefs, therefore they are not truth-apt. This means they are meaningless.
• Used John Wisdom’s ‘Invisible Gardener’ Parable. and advances it to demonstrate the unwillingness of the believer to change beliefs.

Question 21

What was Flew’ challenge to the reader of ‘University Magazine’?

Answer 21

He challenged the believers to find a piece of evidence against God that they would not qualify, and therefore keep unfalsifiable.

Question 22

What are the issues with Flew’s view?

Answer 22

• Hare states that even though it fails the falsification test, it should be considered meaningful in the wider sense.
• Mitchell says that religious language does pass the falsificaton test.
• The falsification principle fails itself
• It’s also too harsh.

Question 23

What was Basil Mitchell’s repsonse to Anthony Flew?

Answer 23

• Evidence like the Problem of Evil (PoE) Counts against God.
• He uses the parable of the Partisan to illustrate this.
• The fact that the resistance leader may be a betrayer is falsifiable, as there will be an answer to the question. However, the trust of the partisan gives him faith to maintain his belief in the leader.

Question 24

What are the three routes which a believer can take in terms of evidence against the existence of God?

Answer 24

1) Abandone the belief as soon as any evidence against it is apparent.
2) Be concerned with the evidence, but look for solutions in faith. (Mitchell)
3) Ignore the evidence, vacuously continue believing. (Flew)

Question 25

What are the criticisms of Basil Mitchell’s theory of religious language?

Answer 25

1) F.P. is too harsh
2) F.P. fails itself
3) Flew believes Mitchell is wrong in the way he believes believers react when they hear evidence against the existence of God.

Question 26

What is Hare response to Flew’s theory of religious language?

Answer 26

• Non-cognitive (Religious statements have a wider meaning)
• Religious statements cannot be falsified, but that’s not a problem.
• He began the concept of ‘bliks’. This is a belief which makes the foundational formation of our belif system, of which we do not doubt.
• E.g., ‘Every event has a cause,’
• Or, ‘God exists’
• Believers simply have bliks about their existence.
• Parable of the paranoid student is used here to illustrate this.

Question 27

What is the criticism of Hare’s theory of religious language concerning Flew response about religious misguidance?

Answer 27

Flew believes that bliks are not related to religious statements. This is because religious people are trying to assert truths about the world, and do not believe they are simply expressing a belief.

Question 28

What is a defence of Hare against Flew’s criticism of his theory of religious language?

Answer 28

Many anti-realists about Christianity such as Cubitt believe that religious statements are assertions of value, showing that this belief is compatible with realist and anti-realist beliefs of religious language. This shows that Flew may be being too harsh.

Question 29

What is the second criticism of Hare theory of religious language concerning the irrationality of Bliks?

Answer 29

• Bliks are presented as irrational in Hare’s theory.
• ‘The lunatic’ or ‘the paranoid student’ makes the idea of having bliks irrational, and attaching this to religious beliefs makes a controversial inference.
• Is Hare’s argument that bliks are irrational, and by proxy so are believers?

Question 30

A response to the criticism of Hare stating that he claims bliks are only possessed by irrational people.

Answer 30

• Everyone has bliks.
• They’re not only possessed be irrational people:
• E.g., ‘every event has a cause,’
• ‘God exists’
  are both examples of a blik.
• A further criticism may be ‘How can we tell what the right bliks are?

Question 31

What is the third issue surrounding Hare’s theory of religious language concerning the cognitivist nature of the verification principle?

Answer 31

• If we take a strictly cognitive approach to religious language, Hare’s argument falls apart completely, as by both the verification principle and the falsification principle, it completely crumbles.
• VP and FP are too harsh, they reject too much etc.