Religious language: twentieth-century perspectives

Question 1

What is the definition of cognitive language?

Answer 1

Truth claims, asserting facts, something that can be known as either true or false

Question 2

What is the definition of non-cognitive language?

Answer 2

Does not describe facts and cannot be determined as true or false

Question 3

Who supports Verificationism?

Question 4

What is the Vienna Circle?

Answer 4

A group of men who met to discuss issues arising in logic

Question 5

What did the Vienna Circle do and believe?

Answer 5

Looked at the work of Auguste Compte to understand the way humanity has gained knowledge and understanding

This had always been God

Both Compte and the Logical Positivists concluded that this led to an ‘unenlightened age’, instead promoting a ‘positivist’ age where only empirical knowledge can be seen as reliable

Question 6

What did Ayer write?

Answer 6

Language, Truth and Logic

Question 7

What did Ayer believe about the meaningfulness of language?

Answer 7

They are only meaningful if they are analytical or synthetic

Question 8

What are analytical statements?

Answer 8

True by definition, tautologies, mathematical

Question 9

What are synthetic statements?

Answer 9

Not part of a definition so additional information is needed

Question 10

Summarise the Verification Principle

Answer 10

If a statement is not analytical or synthetic, then it says nothing about reality and is not ‘factually significant’

Question 11

What does the Verification Principle suggest about the meaning of religious language?

Answer 11

Religious language, religious experience cannot be empirically verified and thereby meaningless

Thus, religious belief is meaningless

Question 12

Ayer quote about religious language?

Answer 12

Religious language has been ‘devoted to the production of nonsense’

Question 13

How does Swinburne criticise Ayer’s Verification Principle?

Answer 13

People generally accept that ‘all ravens are black’ but there is no way to confirm this statement- yet it is still meaningful

Question 14

What are weaknesses of Ayer’s Verification Principle?

Answer 14

Would mean that the way we have interpreted history to gain historical facts and knowledge would be redundant

Fails its own principle

Not everything has to be true or false to have meaning- art, literature

Question 15

How did Hick criticise Ayer’s Verification Principle?

Answer 15

Eschatological verification

Parable of the Celestial City

Question 16

What is weak verification?

Answer 16

Verification in principle

Question 17

What did Ayer say about his weak verification?

Answer 17

far too liberal

Question 18

What article did Flew write?

Answer 18

Theology and Falsification

Question 19

What did Flew do?

Answer 19

Was part of the Falsification symposium

Drew on the work of the logical positivists but rejected verifiability, instead promoting falsifiability

Question 20

What are some strengths of Falsification?

Answer 20

This is how alibis work

Question 21

What parable does Flew employ?

Answer 21

John Wisdom’s parable of the Invisible Gardener

2 explorers find a clearing in jungle

Skeptics - the gardener does not exist

Religious believers - the gardener is invisible, insensible, etc.

Question 22

What point does Flew make through John Wisdom’s parable of the Invisible Gardener?

Answer 22

Religious believers constantly expand and move the goal posts (falsifications) of their religious belief

Question 23

What does Flew say about God?

Answer 23

He dies a ‘death by a thousand qualifications’

Question 24

What did R.M. Hare do?

Answer 24

Was part of the Falsification Symposium

Agreed that Flew had succeeded in denoting the meaningfulness of religious language

Question 25

What does R.M. Hare believe about religious language?

Answer 25

They are expressions of personal attitudes or commitments to a particular way of life

Question 26

What term and parable did R.M. Hare use?

Answer 26

'blik' Parable of the Lunatic and the Dons

Question 27

What is a 'blik'?

Answer 27

An unfalsifiable conviction

Question 28

What parable does Basil Mitchell employ?

Answer 28

The Parable of the Partisan and the Stranger partisan meets stranger - who says they are part of the resistance despite evidence, the partisan believes the stranger is a member of the resistance

Question 29

What is the difference between R.M. Hare and Basil Mitchell?

Answer 29

'bliks' are not grounded in anything, but Mitchell suggests they are

Question 30

What is a weakness of Basil Mitchell?

Answer 30

The partisan meets the stranger face to face, but we don't meet God in this way (perhaps eschatological verification is this face-to-face meeting)

Question 31

What is a Basil Mitchell quote?

Answer 31

Religious believers have to take care not to create a 'vacuous formulae which experience makes no difference'

Question 32

What is a Wittgenstein quote?

Answer 32

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent

Question 33

What was Wittgenstein's relation to the Vienna Circle?

Answer 33

He strongly influenced them, but was not a member of the Logical Positivists

Question 34

What example did Wittgenstein use?

Answer 34

Chess rules state how the pieces move but to talk of a 'queen' or 'pawns' in any other context would be nonsensical

Question 35

What does lebensform mean?

Answer 35

Form of life

Question 36

What does Wittgenstein believe about the meaningfulness of religious language?

Answer 36

They are 'groundless', so non-cognitive, but still meaningful

Question 37

How does D.Z. Phillips support Wittgenstein?

Answer 37

There is no need to justify the rules within a game to someone who is outside of the gameH

Question 38

How does Peter Donovan support Wittgenstein?

Answer 38

Religious language doesn't make sense if the 'statements are taken away from their context' This explains why atheists do not understand religious language