Religious Language part 1

Religious Language part 1

1. Strong Verification

   • 2. Verificationism is a philosophical movement which claims that language is only meaningful if it can be verified by sense-observation or it is a tautology. The verification movement was influenced by science which emphasised the importance of confirming any statement by observation. If you cannot demonstrate a statement with self-observation then the statement is factually meaningless by which they mean that the statement literally has no meaning in a factual sense.
   • 3. Language that talks about God is meaningless for a verificationist as there is no way to demonstrate the truth or falsify of God-talk by observations and experiments
   • 4. Evaluation
     • 1. Many statement that people make are meaningless, even when most people think they are perfectly making sense. Swinburne (God-talk is not evidently Nonsense) gives the example "all ravens are (at all times) black, there is no way to ever confirm this statement. Counter of this weakness is many ravens you look at there is always a possibility of there being one more raven that is not black. Therefore, according to the verificationism the statement is meaningless
     • 2. No statement can be made about history. If we say that the Battle of Hastings occurred in 1066, there is no way in which you can verify this fact by observation. Therefore it is factually meaningless according to verificationism whereas we know that the Battle happened and and its meaningful.
     • 3. Scientific laws are also meaningless. To say the gravity is constant at all places on earth is impossible to verify as I can only be one place at times.
     • 4. The expression that people express through Arts is also meaningless as it cannot be observed
   • 5. The idea of strong verification was developed by logical positivist and their group was known as Vienna Circle. Empiricists such as Locke and Hume had argued that truth and knowledge were to be found in that which was observable via our senses. And the Vienna Circle built upon the idea and shared the view that science would provide knowledge and areas such as meta-physics, religion and ethics should be avoided.

2. Weak verification

   • 1. The weak verification principle, as proposed by A.J. Ayer, states that something cannot be held to be true until it can be scientifically verified. If something cannot be verified through the senses - it cannot be verified. SO Ayer would argue that GOD cannot be verified analytically or synthetically, so religious language is meaningless.
     • Evaluation - 1) Keith ward argues that - Just because we cannot verify God, it doesn't mean God isn't verifiable. One of his quote is "If I were God, I could verify my own existence". The counter argument for this is - it relies heavily on the assumption of God in the first place. 2) Karl Popper simply argues that we cannot verify everything scientifically.
     • Evaluation - 4) John Hick argues that we can verify the afterlife in principle. Referring to heaven as celestial city, Hick argues that once we reach to the celestial city then we can verify the afterlife. However, If heaven doesn't exist in first place then how can you verify it at all. Also it's heavily relies on the assumption of afterlife. Hick calls this eschatological verification. (its an analogy that shows that people can find out whether heaven exists or not at the end of the journey)
     • Evaluation - 3) Some thinkers argue that a number of religious statement are verifiable in principle, for instance statement relating to the life of Jesus. Also many thinkers argued that the weak verification itself is unverifiable as it is not a tautology and no amount of evidence can establish whether it is true that only things experienced are meaningful. Counter argument is - Ayer argued that the verification principle only applied to statements or propositions, not to whole theories.
   • 3) Ayer version of the verification principle enables us to make statements about the past and other people's emotion and to make predictions in science. Hence history and science are meaningful, religion and ethics are not.
   • 2) Ayer's principle is known as weak verification. The principle states that in order to be meaningful, a statement may not be provable : however it may be possible to show that it is probably true beyond any reasonable doubt.

3. Falsification

   • Falsification has its origins in Karl Popper's Philosophy of Science. Any theory that it is impossible to disprove is no valid theory at all.
   • Anthony Flew argues that religious language cannot be falsified and it is not a genuine statement at all. Flew used the scenario of Stu and Lou's garden where the believer end up with a assertion that there is an invisible, intangible gardener who works secretly. Flew argues that a believer will continue to believe in God, no matter what disaster strikes. A believer will argue that God loves them, is testing them or 'moving in mysterious ways'.
     • Evaluation - R.M Hare believed that the religious beliefs

4. 1. There are many way in which people talk about God and a wide variety of language is used. The problem for any theist is how one can talks about God in a meaningful way if God is transcendent and ineffable. For other people, the problem about God-talk is whether it means anything at all

5. Realist view - Words have objective meaning

6. Anti-realist view - Words have subjective meaning

7. Frequently debated question is - whether God has any meaning