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Religious Language (Views on the Nature of Religious Language (Tillich'…

- - - - Like Aquinas' analogical language, Tillich's symbolic language requires you to have prior knowledge of God before you can compare him to a symbol
      - Hick rejects the idea that theological claims come from the unconscious mind, as for example, the cosmological and design arguments for the existence of God did not come to Aquinas and Paley unconsciously, they required them to think and reason, which requires a conscious mind
    - - It can help us to understand the nature of God by relating religious language to everyday language
  - - - The Analogy of Attribution: Aquinas suggests that since the universe and everything in it has a causal relationship with God, we can make assertions about God by observing how he created the world: for example, we can observe that God created good in humans, and therefore we can conclude that God himself is good.
      - The Analogy of Proportionality: both a human and God can be described as powerful, but in different proportions, as the power of a human is very minor in comparison with the power of God, and therefore when we make an statement or an analogy to describe God, we have to be aware that the proportions will be on different scales
    - - The analogical approach to religious language defeats the problem of anthropomorphising and limiting God, as an analogy is not meant to be taken literally
      - Analogies help us to describe God by comparing him to everyday things that we have experienced, which helps us gain an understanding of God's nature, without anthropomorphising him or limiting him
    - - It does not tell us anything about the nature of God, since one would have to already have prior knowledge of God in order to compare him to anything
      - Some people disagree with Aquinas' analogy of attribution, arguing that it can also be applied to evil, since God created evil in humans and therefore, by the analogy of attribution, God is also evil
        
        However, Aquinas would argue that evil does not exist in itself, and it is simply the absence of good, just like darkness is the absence of light, and therefore God cannot be accused of making evil in humans
  - - - Brian Davies argues that it is ridiculous to claim that you can gain an understanding of what something is like, by eliminating what it isn't, as this reduces it to nothing, just like in Flew's parable of the gardener
      - It is arguable that we cannot use religious experience to support the Via Negativa, as we do not know that religious experiences are genuine
      - The Via Negativa has little value for religion as you cannot worship a God who you cannot describe or attribute any qualities to, as you wouldn't know what type of God you were worshipping. The Via Negativa would eliminate any descriptions of God as 'all loving,' 'all knowing' or 'all powerful,' and therefore the whole Christian idea of God would have to be changed
    - - Avoids the problem of limiting God through anthropomorphism
      - Supported by religious experience and the James' idea that God is ineffable
      - Unlike symbolic language and analogical language, the via negative does not require. you to have any prior knowledge of the nature of God in order to be able to describe him
- - - - Strengths
        
        The verification principle is straightforward in what it demands
        
        Supported by science - idea that we should observe the world empirically, using evidence to back up our claims and making factual observations only
        
        It points out that some people make religious statements without attempting to falsify them in any way, so it stops people from making random and ridiculous claims with no supporting evidence
      - Weaknesses
        
        The demands of the verification principle are too narrow, and it strips all sorts of statements of their meaning including moral and ethical statements, aesthetic statements, and statements about religion, which to many people are not meaningless at all, as people may feel very strongly about these things and they may have a big impact on their lives, and therefore they do have meaning for that person
        
        Although the VP is in line with science in the sense that it demands that claims are backed up with evidence, science itself has theories that are generally accepted as factual, even though they have not been proven or observed, such as quarks
        
        It could be argued that the events recorded in the bible are verifiable in principle, as the events recorded claim to be eyewitness accounts, and therefore some religious statements do meet the requirements of the verification principle, and statements such as 'Jesus performed miracles' are verifiable in principle and therefore meaningful
        
        The main objection to the verification principle is that it fails to meet its own requirements, and is therefore meaningless in itself, as it is neither analytic or empirically verifiable
        
        Ayer argued that the verification principle cannot be used against itself, as it is a recommendation or a convention, rather than a factual assertion
        
        The verification principle is generally considered a weak argument, and most philosophers tend to prefer the falsification principle
  - - - Popper's ideas can be illustrated further by Antony Flew's Parable of the Gardener, in which two men walking in the forest come across a plot of land, and one of the men thinks that a gardener must tend to this plot, and the other disagrees. They watch for the gardener, but they never see one, so the believer says that he must be an invisible gardener. They put up a fence and guarded it with blood hounds, but there was still no sign of the gardener. The believer still insists that there must be a gardener, who cannot be seen, smelt or heard. Flew's parable is used to demonstrate the idea that a believer in God will not accept any evidence to falsify their belief, and if you argue that a gardener cannot be seen, heard, felt etc, then nothing will remain of your original assertion, and therefore, such statements are meaningless, as they fail to meet the requirements of the falsification principle. Flew says that the concept of God 'dies the death of a thousand qualifications'
      - Like the verification principle, the falsification principle has a very narrow view of what is meaningful, as illuminates any statements about emotions, aesthetics or religion, which may be very meaningful to people as such beliefs could have a massive influence on their lives. Not everything has to be scientific to have meaning