Why is religious language so difficult to define and unserstand?
- 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.
What is the cognitivist belief about religious language?
- Religious language is meaningful.
- It expresses a belief conforming to the world.
- It can be verified or falsified.
What is the non-cognitivits belief about religious language?
- They express some kind of other mental state. Belief, emotion, ‘blik’.
- Not making statements corresponding to the world, and aren’t verifiable.
What are the three ways which religious language is given ‘meaning’ in the A-level syllabus?
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.
What is Ayer’s belief about the meaning of religious language?
- 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.
What is the difference between Ayer’s theory on ethics vs his theory on religious language?
- 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.
What is the criticism of Ayer’s theory on religious language concerning the harshness of the Verification principle?
- V.P. Rules out too much
- What about other non-verifiable elements of life (Beauty, art, poetry etc)?
What was Ayer’s reply to the criticism stating the V.P. rules out too much?
- 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.
What is the second issue with Ayer’s Verification principle concerning its self refutability?
- 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)
How did Ayer reply to the issue that his verification principle fails itself?
- 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.
What is the third issue with Ayer’s verification principle concerning John Hick?
- Hick was a cognitivist about religious language.
- He believed in the VP. However, he believed religious language passed the VP.
- Celestial City Example
What was Hick’s theory of the meaning of religious language?
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.
What parable did Hick use to illustrate his point about eschatological verification?
- The Celestial City.
What is the issue with Hick’s theory of religious language concerning the retaining of one’s identity after death?
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.
How did Hick respond to the criticism that his theory of retaining identity was assumptive?
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.
What is the issue with Hick’s eshatological verification concerning the recognition of God after death?
- 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.
What is the third issue with Hick’s exchatological verification?
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.
What are the three stages to hick’s proof of identity retention after death?
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.
What is the ‘University Debate’?
A debate held by the Philosophers, Flew, Hare, and Mitchell, interacted within the ‘academic magazine ‘University,’
What wa Flew’s view on the meaningfulness of the religious language?
- 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.
What was Flew’ challenge to the reader of ‘University Magazine’?
He challenged the believers to find a piece of evidence against God that they would not qualify, and therefore keep unfalsifiable.
What are the issues with Flew’s view?
- 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.
What was Basil Mitchell’s repsonse to Anthony Flew?
- 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.
What are the three routes which a believer can take in terms of evidence against the existence of God?
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)
