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Religious Language - Coggle Diagram
Religious Language
Other views of the nature of religious language: religious language as symbolic with reference to Tillich; religious language as analogically with reference to Aquinas; the Via Negativa; the strengths and weaknesses of the differing understandings of religious language
Religious language as symbolic with reference to Tillich
Tillich
Existentialist approach to religious language
Religious language functions symbolically
Symbolism
Religious language symbolises the meanings, beliefs, and ways of living that people of religious communities share
Unlike signs, religious symbols don't just point to the things they signify
Participate in the reality they symbolise
Eg. crucifix
Represents Jesus' sacrifice on the crcoss
ALSO symbolises Christian belief in atonement for sin and everlasting salvation from death
Just like the crucifix, religious statements (eg. 'Jesus died for our sins') get meaning from the feelings they produce in the believer
Connect us to a deeper reality and truth that lies beyond/beneath the world of appearances
Religious language is not literal
Does not attempt to communicate objective truths
Non cognitive
Truth is not determined by reality
Truth is determined by the subjective experience of the person using such religious language
Has meaning because of the way it makes the believer feel
Religious language, for Tillich, performs 4 functions for religious believers
Helps communicate shared values
Unites people together in a community
Motivates that community/ its members into action
Reveals deeper metaphysical truths
God is humanity's ultimate concern
Physical matters and material concerns and irrelevant in comparison
Religious language as analogically with reference to Aquinas
Aquinas argued religious language functions analogically
He argued that because the world is a product of a creator, when we observe his works, it reveals things about the character of the creator
The order, causation, contingency, and primary precepts of the world suggest the creator (God) is unmoved, uncaused, necessary, a grand designer, and the source of moral laws
Religious language
Cannot make assertions about God based on direct, first-hand experience
Can make meaningful assertions by inferring things from what can be observed
Eg. God's creation
Works like analogies
Religious language is not literally true, but does refer to reality and its truth is determined by reality
Cognitive
Analogy of Attribution
Because the world can be attributed to its creator, it therefore shares some of its creator's attributes
The order, causation, contingency, and primary precepts of the world suggest the creator (God) is unmoved, uncaused, necessary, a grand designer, and the source of moral laws
Analogy of Proportion
What we observe by analogy is only a small proportion of the actual attributes of the creator
God is totally different from created things
The Via Negativa
God is beyond human observation and comprehension
We must be talking about what we imagine him to be, when we make assertions about God
Creates a problem for the kataphatic religious tradition
Moses Maimonides argues such language anthropomorphizes an idea of God
Replacing true belief with misunderstanding, falsehood, idolatry, and doubt
Apophatic tradition
No attempt to describe what is beyond description
Pseudo-Dionysus was a mystic who believed we could experience God in a personal way that went beyond language
We can't say what he is, but we can say what he is not
Attempts to give a sense of what God is by ruling out what God is not
Could be interpreted as promoting a cognitive, non-propositional theory of lnaguage and religious truth
Unusual
Sort of third-way between cognitive and non-cognitive
Non-propositional: By closing our mind off to the world we can feel God's presence
Cognitive: Because God is transcendent, we can't talk about him; all positive talk of God is cognitively false, made false by the way the world is
Using only apophatic language (negative language) to describe God
The strengths and weaknesses of the differing understandings of religious language
Religious language as symbolic with reference to Tillich
Strengths
Avoids anthropomorphism whist allowing believers to experience a deep sense of meaning in their lives through the use of symbol
Permits the use of one literal statement about what is meant by 'God' without the need for metaphysical concepts
Reflects what is known through religious experience
Helps us to understand what is meant by sin, salvation, etc.
Weaknesses
Tillich's idea of symbols participation in reality is not at all clear
The abstract concept of God as 'being-itself' is not held by most Christians, who think in terms of God as a separate and transcendent being
Many of the most important things that people want to say about God come from the rational thought and debate of philosophers
Religious language as analogically with reference to Aquinas
Strengths
Avoids the issues caused by the use of univocal and equivocal language
Use of observable experience makes the language cognitive
Encourages the believer to push beyond the limited meaning of goodness, etc. that relates to everyday experience
Weaknesses
What can be said about God is very limited, since God is essentially unknowable
Same approach could be used to argue for negative language about God. Eg. God is evil
The Via Negativa
Strengths
Avoids making God a 'thing'
Avoids anthropomorphism
Instead, focuses on God's transcendence
True to the mystic experience of God as ineffable
Weaknesses
Many people want to say positive things about God
It is difficult to worship a being referred to in only negatives
Flew's 'death by 1000 qualifications'
The end result of such language might not be the God of theism
This language might be helpful to mystics, but for most people it is just too remote
Stating that one's experience cannot be described might suggest that the experience was a product of the mind
The issue of whether religious language should be viewed cognitively or non-cognitively
Cognitive language
Reality determines their truth or otherwise
If religious claims were claims about reality or propositional revelation, this would mean they are examples of cognitive language
Objective claims that are either factually true or false
The truth or falsehood of the proposition is determined by the world
Most religious believers raged their faith statements as cognitive
Non-cognitive
The truth or falsehood of the statement is not determined by the world
Eg. 'Paris is beautiful in Spring'
Subjective
Hare; Wittgenstein
According to Ayer, religious language cannot be verified as being true of the world or by anything else, so it is neither cognitive not non-cognitive
Responses to these challenges: eschatological verification with reference to Hick; language as an expression of a Blik with reference to R.M. Hare; religious language as a language game with reference to Wittgenstein
Eschatological verification with reference to Hick
Claimed religious claims/ language are cognitive
They are therefore subject to verification
Parable of the Celestial City
Makes the point that there is truth to know and it will be revealed after death
Eschatological verification
Evauation of Hick's argument
Strengths
Heaven is a real possibility
Gives good support to the view that religious claims are cognitive
Weaknesses
Does not mean heaven is real or even a strong possibility
HOWEVER
Evidence for life after death
NDE
Memories of reincarnation
Religious claims cannot be falsified due to their nature
HOWEVER
Hick points to statements in mathematics that cannot be falsified
The atheists claim relating to life after death is similar: it could be falsified but never verified
Language as an expression of a Blik with reference to R.M. Hare
Responded to Flew by arguing not all unfalsifiable propositions are identical
The Parable of the Insane Student and the Oxford Dons
A student believes all his professors are trying to kill him; his professors deny this; however, neither claim can be disproven
Hare called such statements 'bliks'
Perspective
This is the way religious believers see the world and there is nothing that can be said against it
Hick's arguments against this
2 more items...
Unfalsifiable belief
The student has a 'blik'/ perspective that makes all the evidence support what he thinks
No amount of evidence is going to make this blink change
The perspective determines the interpretation of the evidence
Claimed religious language is non-cognitive
Evaluation of Hare's argument
Strengths
Explains why there are different 'factual' claims in the different religions
There are bliks, not cognitive statements
Explains why people are not convinced by evidence which challenges their views
Supports the view that religion gives a view that is used to interpret life in a range of distinctive ways
Weaknesses
Makes religion very subjective as it all depends on how you see something
Religious language as a language game with reference to Wittgenstein
'Meaning as use'
Meaning is found in the uses we make of language
Eg. 'blue' (colour) vs ' blue' (sad)
We use language by playing 'language games' with it
Language as non-cognitive
The truth of language is not determined by reality but rather by its use
Language games
Eg. doubt
Lying
Acting
Science
Religion
Forms of life
Science
Plays the language game of falsification
Participants are expected to subject claims about the world to rigorous doubt in order to find whether and how they might be false
In this game, language myst be cognitive
H.H. Price : 'Belief that'
Religious
Language game of faith
Doubt it to be avoided or resisted
Thus, language games are incommensurable (can't be evaluated against each other)
People living in different forms of life play different language games
Eg. MLE; polari
Different uses of language
Wittgenstein rejected both the verification and falsification principles, since he argues religious claims are not like scientific ones
Evaluating Wittgenstien's argument
Strengths
Allows a range of meaning for language rather than trying to put it in one 'box'
Allows for religious statements to be 'belief in'
Weaknesses
It is virtually impossible to enter into debate with those who are coming from another language game (eg. atheism)
Most religious believers believe that religious claims are cognitive
The challenge of the verification and falsification principles to the meaningfulness of religious language
Verification
Concerns our ability/ inability to verify the truth of religious propositions or claims
Eg.
eg. 'God is the Holy Trinity'
eg. 'Jesus is the Son of God'
These statements have the appearance of claims about reality
Most Christians would regard them as propositional revelation
This would mean they were examples of cognitive language
A J Ayer
The 'verification principle'
If we verify a statement, we check its truth against a body of evidence or facts
Demands that for a statements to have meaning, we must be able to check its claims against things that exist
Holds that there are two types of statement that are meaningful
Analytical propositions
Statements that contains all the information within the statement to verify it
'2+2=4'
True by definition
Synthetic propositions
Statements that can be confirmed through the use of the senses
'It's raining outside'
Empirically verifiable
Non-verifiable metaphysical statements about things beyond reality (eg. God) are completely meaningless
Two forms of the verification principle
Strong
An assertion only has meaning if it can be verified according to empirical informmation
A tautology
Empirical
Verification in practice
Weak
Accounts for universal empirical statements about the world that cannot be verified. Eg. 'all ducks are aquatic birds'.
Simply requires that we state what kind if evidence would be enough to make a statement meaningful
Developed to allow historical facts to have meaning
Verification in principle
Ayer denies the possibility of God's existence altogether
There is no way of empirically verifying his existence
'God exists' is not a statement that can be verified in neither practice nor principle
Evaluation of the Verification Principle
Strengths
Straightforward
Focuses on facts that can be directly or indirectly veified
Aligns with the scientific approach in its insistence on empirical support if any statements are to be meaningful
The weak verification enhances this
Points to the need to be clear in one's use of language
Weaknesses
Its straightforwardness does not mean that it is right
Makes the assumption that science tells us everything of importance about the world
Many would disagree with this
Karl Popper said the verification method is flawed science. Science works primarily through falsification.
Ayer's criticism of religious claims is not true of all religious arguments
Eg. the claim that the universe was created by an external creative intelligence is a reasonable hypothesis, based on the observation that human minds are creative
The verification principle itself is meaningless, since it is not empirically verifiable
According to Ayer, religious language cannot be verified as being true of the world or by anything else, so it is neither cognitive not non-cognitive
Hume
Argues no number of observations can verify a general statement
There are no relations between facts/observations in which we observe that would allow us to generalise from what we have seen to what we haven't seen
Karl Popper
His analysis of empiricism, deals a fatal blow to the Verification Principle as a test of meaningfulness
Verification is an unrealisable ideal
No empirical claim is verifiable even in principle, it is only ever probably true
Every empirical claim about reality allows the possibility of doubt/ the possibility that it could not be true
His falsificationism is a problem for verificationism
Argued if meaning depended on verification then the general laws of science would be regarded as meaningless as they aren't verifiable
Agreed with Hume that no empirical proposition can be verified
There will always remain the possibility that the statement is false
However, Popper pointed out that a single negative instance can decisively show a claim to be false
Falsification
Flew
Whenever religion faces a damaging criticism, it simply changes its beliefs to avoid the criticism
Because religion can do the for any criticism, it is unfalsifiable and this makes it meaningless
God and religious statements 'die a death by 1000 qualifications'
Developed the falsification principle from the thinking of Karl Popper
Evaluation of the Falsification Principle
Strengths
Points to the approach of some believers to religious beliefs, refusing to take challenges to their beliefs seriously, and rather finding some excuse for God
Weaknesses
Many aspects of experience are not in the same category as scientific fact
Flew's category is too rigid
Not all religious believers allow nothing to falsify their claims
The problem of evil is enough for many to lose their faith