anthony flew and rm hare

Question 1

How does the extract begin?

Answer 1

• with Flew challenging theists on the verifiability and meaning of religious utterances

Question 2

What does Flew use the parable by John Wisdom for?

Answer 2

• as an analogy of how many theists refuse to allow real challenges to their beliefs, with the end result being that no number of criticisms can ever dissuade them from what they perceive to be the truth

Question 3

What does Flew essentially demonstrate in his analogy?

Answer 3

• in the religious person allowing no real evidence to count against their assertions of God’s existence, they make their beliefs unqualifiable and so erode their status as assertions

Question 4

What is the parable of the gardener?

Answer 4

• describes a garden filled with many flowers and weeds
• 2 explorers upon seeing the garden reach different conclusions, the ‘believer’ arguing that it must be tended to by a gardener and the ‘sceptic’ disagreeing
• they never catch any gardener and the believer comes up with more and more implausible reasons as to his lack of existence

Question 5

What ultimatum does Flew want to present to theists?

Answer 5

• “What would have to occur or to have occurred to constitute for you a disproof of the lover of, or the existence of, God?”

Question 6

What are the two ways Flew wants to push theists to?

Answer 6

1. accept that there is evidence which can point to disproving God - religion is meaningful BUT falsified
2. accept that there is no evidence that can disprove their belief - religion is unfalsifiable BUT meaningless

Question 7

How does Flew argue we test ordinary assertions as knowledgeable?

Answer 7

• by defining the boundaries at which we would regard them as false
• “For if the utterance is indeed an assertion, it will necessarily be equivalent to a denial of the negation of that assertion

Question 8

How does Hare begin his response?

Answer 8

• by immediately ceding ground to Flew’s challenge

Question 9

How does Hare use another parable to respond to Flew?

Answer 9

• relates to another parable of a lunatic who is convinced that all dons are out to get him
• despite his friends giving him evidence otherwise, he still adheres to this belief
• under Flew’s falsification, since no evidence counts against his theory, it must assert nothing
• YET at the same time to say that it is meaningless can be seen to be wrong in an important way
• the student/lunatic has plenty of evidence it just isn’t the evidence that the friends would accept as being valid

Question 10

How does Hare divide between the two perspectives on dons?

Answer 10

• as being different forms of bliks

Question 11

What is meant by a blik?

Answer 11

• a worldview that determines what counts as evidence

Question 12

What does Hare seek to demonstrate with bliks?

Answer 12

• these bliks underpin all everyday experience, to the extent that human beings cannot completely rely on observation of the world to settle differences between them

Question 13

How does Hare refer to Hume?

Answer 13

• he refers to Hume’s observation that because we only come to know cause and effect through empirical means, we can never deductively connect a cause with a particular effect

Question 14

How does Hare suggest that religious statements are bliks?

Answer 14

• religious talk comes from a blik that God is responsible for and part of the world
• a person without a blik about God’s existence will not naturally regard talk of God as an explanation for things in the outside world

Question 15

What does Hare note about Flew’s parable?

Answer 15

• Flew’s parable assumes everyone is a disinterested observer of the garden, whereas in reality, the assertions/utterances of the world hold a deep personal relevance to each person’s life
• in this way, the blik is not only a correct interpretation of religious belief but also an appropriate one considering how our bliks inevitably lead is to form personal attachments to different ideas and ways of perceiving the world