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Post 20th century religious language - Coggle Diagram
Post 20th century religious language
Aquinas
Cataphatic way involves saying something about god is cognitive way, god exists in the same way loving. You could say aquinas and cup it use different language games so they can’t critique each other.
Strength- hick argues that teachings and actions of Jesus give us clearer ideas of how sad what to say about god.
allows us to be positive about god avoiding anthroprophorising.
Weakness- believers use language to express truth and reality, so Wittgensteins approach does not work for them.
Religious language can’t be criticised or challenging due to language games.
Wittgenstein
Language games- language is used in a similar way to games, there are similarities between the phrases we use in different contexts. We say football, rugby, monopoly are games. But are all played differently.
Later developments- don cuppit argued that all language, including religious language is non cognitive (non- factual statement that cannily be said to be true or false) because ‘triune’ and ‘false’ have no universal meaning, the meaning depends on the form of life in which they are used.
Since god only exists in some forms of life, god is not objective reality or something real, outside of those faiths. Language games does not describe reality, each game makes its own.
Phillips- disagreed with cupitts conclusion about god, claimed god was a reality beyond the scope of philosophy. The philosophers task is not to comment on the truth of religious statement but simply to question and clarify their meaning.
This is applied to religious language, the meaning of religious language depends on the game in which it is spoken and understood. This is a shared understanding, often unspoken, God is love is meaningful for those wishing the christian language but not those in an atheist game.
Strength- Those outside language games cannot criticise it, they can only play different games. Language games depends on context
Weakness- analogy is to vague, language games doesn’t reflect reality.
Analogy’s makes the assumption that there is a similarity between finite humans and infinite god.
This prevents discussion between games, such as science and religion yet such interactions are valuable because they challenge thinking, prompt developments, and prevent us from becoming introverted
A.j. Ayers approach
Logical positivist- analysis of language specifically scientific statements, t decided whether a statement was meaningful or not. Using the verification principe (strong) to categories statements. A statement os meaningful if it can be verified by an actual experience, or it is true by definition.
Talking about god or ethics was meaningless because it was not true by definition or cannot be verified by immediate sense experience .
Weakness- you cannot make statements about history because there are no observations possibly today to verify facts. Such as scientific laws are meaningless.
Swinburne- argued that universal statements such as ‘all ravens are black’ cannot be verified in practice, yet we consider them to have meaning. Therefore he is not for strong verification principle and weak principle but in the middle.
Was not part of the logical positivist, and developed weak principle which accepted statements that were verified in principle.
Under weak principle statements are not meaningless because they could be verified by something other than a personal experience.
Statements about god, ethics and the arts remain meaningless because they cannot be verified, and therefore aren’t worth discussing.
Falisication symponium
Flew- the parable of the gardener is used to shows that by qualifying or adding to their statement, the original assertion has completely changed.
Hare- the parable of the teacher is used to argue that religoeds statements aren different from scientific explanations because of blinks, blinks can have a great effect but cannot be altered because any contrary ev9idence is ignored.
Mitchell- parable of the stranger is used to challenge the idea that ‘god is all loving’ they dont discount evidence against their statements as it would be a failure to faith and logic, but says that belivers do not allow evidence to decisively count against their statement.