Religious Experience Philosophers

Verification
1. Ayer
  1. You can't prove God exists
    1. The term 'God' has no literal significance as it is a metaphysical term referring to a transcendent being
  2. Why are you trying to explain God to people?
    1. Why are you trying to explain something which can't be proven to be true?
      1. This includes the Afterlife and the Soul
2. Vienna Circle (1920)
  1. Group of people who believe in Verification
  2. Applied the principles of science and mathematics to language
    1. Said language had to be based on experiences
Falsification
1. Hick
  1. "In order to say something which may be true, we must say something which may be false"
2. Flew
  1. Religious statements are meaningless because nothing can count against them.
  2. Religious people won't accept that God might not exist so people stop arguing with theists
  3. 'Dies a death of a thousand qualifications'
    1. They are blind to the truth (the suffering in the world)
    2. 'God is benevolent' doesn't match up with earthquakes etc. Therefore 'God is benevolent' means nothing
3. Hare
  1. Introduces the idea of Bliks
  2. No one can prove/disprove bliks as they are personal to self
    1. true to self
  3. The believer uses religious language to express a concept that is important to them
  4. The change these concepts have on that persons life can be empirically observed
4. Basil Mitchell
  1. Highlighted the fact that many religious believers do accept that beliefs can be questioned but nevertheless will continue to believe them in the face of evidence to the contrary
5. Dionysus
  1. the way to find out what God is like is to find out what he is not like
6. Cole
  1. '...by denying all descriptions of God, you get insight and experience of God rather than unbelief and scepticism.'

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Religious Experience Philosophers

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