Religious Language and Verification (Clack and Clack)

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RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE

DAVID HUME- Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

'Commit it then to to the flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion', if it does not contain any reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence, or if it does not contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or numbers. (if it has no grounding in experience, and is not checkable by experience)

The problem: we learn what words mean by their application in a worldly, human context. Eg, we learn what 'wise' and 'kind' mean by seeing example of wise and kind people, and by witnessing accounts of wiseness and kindness. We also tend to speak of God as being 'wise' and 'kind', however this results in a problem, we are inclined to say that God is substantially unlike human beings, or any other things in the world. If this is the case, and our words can only represent worldly things, how can we use our words to speak of something so unworldly like God?

Solutions:

Moses Maimonides: was aware that the nature of God would be misrepresented if attributes were taken from the human context and applied unambiguously to Him. Maimonides maintained that God was entirely unknowable, so we can only talk meaningfully about what he is in terms of what he is not. (via negativa) It avoids the consequences of saying 'God is wise' in the same way as saying 'Socrates is wise'. When we say that God is living, we are simply saying that God is not dead. Maimonides believed that this system of predication can eventually arrive at a sound conception of the nature of God. He uses the example of the ship, he arrives at the idea of the ship in terms of what it is not, ie, it is not living, it is not in natural, it is not 2D, it is not round.. until he eventually gets to the idea of a ship (even if he has never experienced a ship before). Similarly, it is possible to come closer to knowledge of God through consideration of what God is not, even with no experience of God.

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