Religious Language
Verification Principle
Language is only meaningful if it can be checked by sense observation or a tautology
Influenced by science - emphasized confirming arguments through science i.e. experiments
The meaningfulness of statements are shown by the method by which you verify them
"My cat is black"- meaningful, can be verified but statements like "I am beautiful" - meaningless, different people think different things.
Ayer and Verification
Ayer supported the Verification Principle
Statements that are not verifiable are meaningless
'God answered my prayers' is an unverifiable statement- meaningless
He distinguished 'practical verifiability' = a statement which can be checked and tested in reality. And 'Verifiability in principle'
Strong Verification = anything that can be checked definitely and Weak Verification = can be shown to be probable by observation
Ayer's second edition
Religious believers would argue you can prove God's existence but they don't tell us anything about the world and so are meaningless
Changed the definition of verification; his distinction between strong and weak verification was not a real distinction.
'Basic statements' - a single glance about when having an experience it is reality.
AO2
It in itself is unverifiable - You can't demonstrate this rule through observation. Hick suggested that Religious talk isn't meaningless as its verifiable in principle (can verify after death)**
Strong Verification - Not possible to talk about history because its excluded - you can't say water boils at 100 degrees because you could repeat this and it would change
Meaningful but unverifiable - possible for a statement to be meaningful but unverifiable e.g. toys in the cupboard (Swinburne)
The Falsification Principle
"In order to say something which may be true, we must say something which may possibly be false" - Hick
Different Types
Popper - Einstein's theory is scientific as it is potentially falsifiable and this can be tested through empirical observations. Anything unscientific is meaningless.
Flew - Explorers in the jungle come across a clearing. One claims the gardener must be invisible, intangible and insensible. The other explorer argues that if it has these traits, what makes it different from no gardener at all? Religious people act the same as the gardener, they change their beliefs to keep him 'alive' He also claimed God 'Died the death of a thousand qualifications' their responses modify God to allow him to exist.
Hare - Lunatic and teacher. Lunatic things professors are plotting to kill him and no matter what people tell him, he doesn't listen. Coined term 'blik' to describe peoples views on the world. A 'blik' is unfalsifiable, no evidence can disprove it however you can have sane and insane bliks.
Mitchell and the Partisan - Stranger meets partisan.
AO2
- Evidence could strongly suggest a statement is false but that doesn't make it logically impossible to be true - Swinburne's example of the toys in the cupboard
- Someone might have had a religious experience yet their friend hasn't had the experience. Because they are in the minority its often not believed.
Wittgenstein's Language games
Via Negativa
Myth
Symbol
Aquinas and Analogy
Famously compares the way we use language to a game of chess
The rules in chess, state how the pieces move, however if you were to talk about 'pawns' outside of chess, it wouldn't make sense. E.g. to say its 'Sunny outside' in English would make sense, but it wouldn't fit in with the Spanish language games
He used language games to explain that words only make sense in the context of other words in that language game
They can only be meaningful if used appropriately
They aren't private but shared with groups of people - joking, cursing, story telling, thanking and asking
They can evolve, develop and drop out of use, but as long as its still being used, its meaningful.
Language games and Religious language
If a religious believer says 'God exists' this has meaning to them, but not an Atheist
If you are a member of the religious traditions, it has meaning
It gives a meaningful way of expressing religious language whilst explaining why talk of God to an Atheist is meaningless
A sign is something which points you in a certain direction while a symbol is something which communicates a deeper understanding than just words
Tillich used symbols to describe God
E.g. In every catholic church there is a lit candle to indicate Gods presence
Tillich says God is the 'ground of being' - he is the reason everything exists and the meaning behind everything. This being cannot be understood personally but can be shown through symbols.
- Symbols can lose their meaning, e.g. Hindu symbol was adopted by the Natzis
- They can be interpreted differently through generations
- Many Christians don't think religious language is symbolic, it has more than just symbolic meaning.
A myth is a story which communicated the values and beliefs of a culture.
Myths communicated the value of Christianity.
Genesis can be seen as a myth - not literal
Myths aren't concerned with literal truths - there is a debate about the literal truths of Genesis.
Like symbol but takes you beyond themselves to a different reality.
Batman tried to illuminate the spiritual nature of the NT.
AO2
There is no category to judge a myth.
It is difficult to de-spiritualize myths as is is in their definition.
Aquinas thought Religious Language was meaningful. He rejected Via Negativa
According to Aquinas, saying 'God is good' is not the same as saying 'Humans are good' because God's goodness is higher than ours
Univocal language is when one word means the same thing, e.g. son or warrior.
Aquinas said we should use Equivocal language to describe God, e.g. 'God is good' doesn't refer to goodness in what we think it means
Aquinas uses analogy to talk about God - it relies on the comparison between 2 things.
Analogy of Proportion - Refers to the nature of what something is. We can recognize that saying 'God is Good' means something better than saying a 'car is good'
Analogy of Attribution - Bull and Urine example and Baker and Bread example. You attribute the goodness of the bread to the ability of the baker.
Dionysus
Maimonides
Words limit our understanding of a transcendent God
He claimed instead of saying what God is we should say what God isn't
Positive terms are misleading because they are rooted in our language
No matter how rational we are, he argued we cannot rationalize God
Agrees with Dionysus
Religious language is meaningful when used negatively
Uses the example of a ship - by describing what a ship isn't, we learn what it is
Strengths and Weaknesses
Sometimes it doesn't help at all, saying a ant isn't a lion, doesn't help us understand what an ant actually is.
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