RL2 A02

Question 1

what is one of the most significant criticisms of the verification principle

Answer 1

• it doesn’t pass its own test and so cannot be considered meaningful
• it cannot be verified by sense experience and so meaningless
• and if considered analytic its giving a new sense to the word ‘meaningful’

Question 2

what does the idea that all meaningful synthetic statements have to be empirically verifiable do

Answer 2

• rules out more than LPs intended
• they wanted to dismiss as meaningless all claims that were made about God while keeping scientific claims as meaningful
• but many claims of science like the existence of black holes cannot be verified by sense experience and we need artificial sense for a lot of things like x-ray
• phycological science also relies on statements like I feel terrible which can’t be tested

Question 3

what does the verification principle mean for history

Answer 3

• the statements should be considered meaningless as they can’t be tested using the senses

Question 4

how was the verification principle altered and why

Answer 4

• LPs accepted there was an issue as they were disallowing too much as meaningless
• the theory was thus weakened to allow indirect and weak verification
• later in life Ayer also accepted much of his book was wrong
• but there was still a desire to dismiss as meaningless all talk of God and other theological concepts

Question 5

what did Hick argue about the verification principle

Answer 5

• if we do accept that a claim must be verifiable to be meaningful religious truth claims are verifiable just eschatologically
• although we cannot test at the moment in this life whether God exists after death the claims will be verified

Question 6

what do critics of Hick say about his idea of religion been eschatologically verifiable

Answer 6

• critics argue eschatological verification is not an acceptable way out of the problem because even if there is an afterlife and we do have physical senses in it they won’t necessarily be the same as what we have now and so may not count as ‘empirical’
• and if there is no afterlife there will be no verifying

Question 7

what is the falsification principle

Answer 7

• a modification of the verification principle due to the v principle been accepted as unsound

Question 8

what does Flew say about Hare during his symposium in 1950

Answer 8

• his approach is fresh/bold
• any attempt to analyse Christian utterances as a blik rather than assertions about the cosmos is fundamentally misguided
• they would be unorthodox - if Hare’s religion is a blik surely he is not Christian at all
• if they weren’t intended as assertions many religious activities would be fraudulent or silly

Question 9

what is Flew arguing about Hare’s approach, what does he think the flaws are

Answer 9

• Hare’s approach of RL as non-cognitive has issues
• if RL is just an assertion of ‘picture preference’ talking about how someone chooses to view the world rather than speaking factually, there is no difference between religious and non religious claims
• religious believers also intend their claims to be cognitive
• when Christians say Jesus rose from the dead they mean this literally no just they prefer to see the world as if he did symbolically

Question 10

why can Hare’s non-cognitive approach be seen as convincing

Answer 10

• a non-cog approach to RL may allow new possibilities and make faith more vivid/personal

Question 11

what did Paul Tillich argue

Answer 11

• RL is not cognitive but non-cog and symbolic
• God is not a being but being itself
• symbols are not the same as facts and so it is wrong to criticise them as if they were
• symbols are unverifiable/unfalsifiable
• it doesn’t make sense to ask whether my love is like a red rose is true or false
• symbols need not be meaningless even if unverifiable as can be effective or ineffective ways of drawing people to the power of being
• in the same way a blik is meaningful to the person who has it

Question 12

what part of Hare’s approach do many find unconvincing

Answer 12

• Hare talks about the importance of having a ‘right’ blik (understanding the professors want no harm)
• but C.S. Evans points out Hare gives us no way of being able to judge whether a blik is right or wrong
• if there are no facts to support religious claims and they are just expressions of a preferred world view the whole idea of right and wrong becomes meaningless

Question 13

how does Mitchell’s response to Flew seem closer to the way religious people normally defend their position

Answer 13

• he argues we have to place our trust in things sometimes even when we lack sufficient evidence to know they are true
• he doesn’t think it possible to know when faith is reasonable or unreasonable
• we do not know when the existence of evil may start to count decisively against the idea of a loving god

Question 14

what are the problems with Mitchell’s approach

Answer 14

• his parable does not totally correspond to the believer’s trust in God as the partisan does have grounds for his trust
• religious believers often claim to have had RE but this perhaps cannot be considered the same as two physical people meeting face to face

Question 15

how can Flew’s position be criticised in other ways to those expressed by Hare and Mitchell

Answer 15

• argue Flew’s confidence in empirical evidence as the final test of meaning is in itself unfalsifiable
• Flew’s article ends “what would have to occur for you to disprove the love/existence of God”
• the believer could respond “what would have to occur for you to disprove the primacy of empirical evidence”
• If Flew could not think of any circumstances under which he would be prepared to say it is not necessary then perhaps his assertion that we need empirical evidence is also empty

Question 16

how can we use Anselm to criticise Flew

Answer 16

• in his ontological argument he said “the fool says in his heart there is no God” because the fool does not understand God exists in a way that is necessary not contingent
• if so the question of what evidence may be offered against the existence of God is a meaningless question
• it doesn’t need to be falsifiable
• however, this would not convince Flew’s followers
• God’s existence cannot be established from the assertion it is necessary

Question 17

what did Richard Swinburne argue in response to Flew

Answer 17

• we do not have to be able to specify what would count against an assertion in order for it to be meaningful
• we can’t specify what would count against scientific theories of the beginning of the universe e.g. as we don’t know enough about the scientific theories involved but they are still meaningful to us
• this is because we accept there is something that hypothetically at least could count against those theories if we only understood them
• for Swinburne’s objection to work we have to allow that something could count against God’s existence even if we can’t specify what

Question 18

what are the different respective contexts that Aquinas and Wittgenstein were writing from

Answer 18

• (A) in 13th century as committed Christian priest/leader
• (W) 20th century - Jewish background, agnostic philosopher
• (A) addressed manly other believing Christians attempting to explore what the Christian concepts mean in a philosophical way to aid faith/understanding
• (W) did not assume his readers had faith or that Christian beliefs are true

Question 19

what do both Aquinas and Wittgenstein share/have in common

Answer 19

• both shared concerns about the extent to which human language is adequate to convey ideas about God
• both investigated how such language may be meaningful
• both held belief that God is unknowable to the limitations of the human mind
• RL is to be understood in a certain way if it is to have meaning

Question 20

what was Aquinas’ argument

Answer 20

• RL has to be understood analogically
• when we use it to make truth claims we have to understand we aren’t using words from the finite human world in a univocal way when they are applied to God
• analogy gives us an indication of God but not such a clear picture he can be completely comprehended
• he uses RL cognitively making claims he thought were factually true

Question 21

what was Wittgenstein’s argument

Answer 21

• RL best understood by those within the game or Lebensform of religion
• those who use it regularly within a community find meaning in it which others outside the game may think meaningless
• non-cognitive approach
• assertions made in RL are not assertions that can be identified as true or false relating to facts but are mot like the rules of a game

Question 22

what has been the more popular approach to RL out of cognitive and non-cog

Answer 22

• cognitive approach
• e.g. Aquinas’ thinking of analogy
• when Christians make assertions about their faith they usually mean to imply they’re referring to facts
• unlikely to mean I prefer to look at the world this way using supernatural imagery
• they refer to a real being who has a love for human that is greater than but in some way comparable to the love humans experience

Question 23

what issues does a cognitive approach to RL create

Answer 23

• whether assertions made in the form of truth-claims can be regarded as meaningful if the person making the claim cannot produce any evidence to support it and does not know what would count as evidence for or against it
• challenges of Ayer and Flew are significant and need to be met

Question 24

what does a non-cognitive approach to RL like Wittgenstein’s suggest

Answer 24

• that there is nothing intrinsically meaningful or less about RL
• words/phrases do not simply have meaning regardless of their context
• for Wittgenstein meaning is given to words by those who use them in a particular Lebensform
• those not participating in the game of RL are not in a position to determine the meaningfulness of the language

Question 25

what are the issues with non-cognitive approaches to RL

Answer 25

• if a claim such as ‘God loves us’ is not asserting a fact and cannot be subject to the question is that true or false its difficult to see what such a claim is worth
• Wittgenstein’s approach does not help solve big questions like whether there is a God
• it places such questions outside the realm of what can be known
• but many believers argue revelation from God does give us facts that can be known even if they have to be believed with faith rather than due to empirical evidence
• some believers find the approaches threatening to faith

Question 26

what are the positives of non-cognitive approaches

Answer 26

• some find them liberating and refreshing offering new opportunities for modern people to relate to Christian ideas and providing new possibilities for (+) discussion in a multi-faith world

Question 27

what does the Bible contain for most Christians

Answer 27

• cognitive assertions
• it makes factual claims such as that God created the world
• claims Christians say are true and are open to being judged as either true or false
• there is not a body of evidence to draw upon to demonstrate the truth of the claims and thus faith is required to accept/commit to them
• but they are still offered as cognitive claims

Question 28

what do non-cognitive approaches to RL suggest about scripture

Answer 28

• perhaps religious texts are not making cognitive assertions that can be judged true or false but are doing something else
• perhaps they’re offering a ‘picture preference’ a figurative not literal way of looking at the world

Question 29

what have non-cognitive approaches to RL often being adopted as

Answer 29

• as a way of addressing challenges to faith presented by modern science
• science/empirical evidence makes it hard for many modern people to believe some claims of the bible as factually true (cognitive)
• e.g. Darwin’s evolution questioned Genesis as literal
• some see Genesis symbolically, poetic way of presenting cognitively meaningful truths
• others see them non-cognitively seeing them as serving function in community not historical fact

Question 30

what did Rudolf Bultmann argue about scripture been cognitive or non-cognitive

Answer 30

• he went further
• argued the writers of the NT were never trying to make record of accurate historical fact but had expressed their beliefs through the language of myth
• his work was considered radical though as it took a non-cog approach to the Gospels as well as to OT
• it suggested they were not cognitive assertions about facts and real events but could be interpreted differently

Question 31

what was the real point of the gospel message for Bultmann

Answer 31

• the need for individuals to reach a personal decision about the direction they wanted their lives to take in relation to God
• in his view the modern intelligent person could not take seriously the supernatural elements of the gospel such as the virgin birth
• but this did not have to mean that the whole of Christianity be rejected
• he advocated demythologising the NT and OT to enable Christianity to hold what he saw as its rightful place as an essential option in a fast changing world

Question 32

what approach did Robinson and van Buren take to RL

Answer 32

• also caused controversy by taking a non-cog approach to RL
• took up idea that biblical teaching might not necessarily be interpreted as being about facts but could more usefully be understood in terms of the choices and attitudes it offered to modern people

Question 33

what did a 1977 book called The Myth of God Incarnate suggest

Answer 33

• edited by Hick
• it became notorious because of its suggestion that the idea of Jesus being God incarnate could be a pictorial non-cog way of expressing meaning rather than been historical fact

Question 34

what is the overall way in which most Christian thinkers approach religious scripture

Answer 34

• cognitive - assuming their truth and looking for ways their teaching can apply to modern life
• those who have taken more radical approaches have often been considered not Christian at all as they appear to deny the factual truth of many of the key elements of the Christian faith

Question 35

what does a non-cog approach seem to do to key elements of Christian faith like the Virgin birth, resurrection of Christ and miracles

Answer 35

• reduces them to no more than general advice to be nice to other people and value relationships more than material possessions

Question 36

what do those who support a non-cog approach to the Bible point out

Answer 36

• that trying to force oneself to believe miracle stories is missing the point of Christianity
• belief is not just giving assent to a list of unevidenced truth claims but about personal choices/attitudes
• a non cog approach can free people to find meaning within the Christian faith in new ways

Question 37

what does Aquinas’ analogical view of RL do and is it valuable

Answer 37

• for (A) the revelation of God to individuals through RE. words of Bible and Church teachings provided sufficient evidence to support claims like ‘God loves us’
• philosophers today likely to argue we need more than just someone’s claim that God revealed truths to them and that we would not accept other truth claims like those of science on the basis of a reported vision or holy text
• but Christians will argue that religious faith demands a trust in the truth of a claim without evidence