FP Evaluation Flashcards
FP main strength?
Flew shows that religious claims are empty, because all contradictory evidence to those claims will be dismissed by the believer.
These claims cease to be real assertions; ‘they die the death of a thousand qualifications.’
Main weakness of the FP
Religion is not simply about the mere acceptance of facts.
It attempts to confine ‘meaningfulness’ to factual propositions, but there is a whole realm of human experience that cannot be defined this way.
Weakness of FP (Popper)
Popper’s Falsification Principle was concerned mostly with scientific statements. But, statements about God are metaphysical, so it is inappropriate to demand that they should be empirically falsifiable.
FP Weakness (believer’s assertions)
Flew’ argument that religious believers will allow nothing to falsify their assertions is not really true.
For example, the extent of the problem of evil has led many believers to question or reject their belief in God.
Challenge to FP: Hick’s eschatological verification
In ‘Theology and Verification’, Hick argued that the Christian God is in principle verifiable because it is verified eschatologically.
Eschatology is the doctrine of ‘the Last days’, so Hick is claiming that the ‘facts’ of the Christian religion will be verified after death/
What two claims does Hick make concerning religious language?
1) RL claims are cognitive/factual
2) Those claims are subject to eschatological verification.
Hick’s Parable of the Celestial City
Two men make a journey, one believes that it will lead to a celestial city, the other believes it leads nowhere.
‘And yet, when they do turn the last corner, it will be apparent that one of them has been right all along, and the other has been wrong.’
Hick is saying that there is no evidence with which to determine whether or not there is a celestial city. However, there will be a truth in the end, one way or another.
