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Summary - H573/01 Philosophy of Religion - Religious Language $6.45
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Summary - H573/01 Philosophy of Religion - Religious Language

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Notes covering the H573/01 Philosophy of Religion topic of Religious Language, with explanation and notes covering all the necessary content for the exams.

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  • July 15, 2023
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Dillon Precious Religious Language


Religious Language:

 Is language meaningful or meaningless?
 For something to be meaningful it must universally be applicable as such.
 Vienna Circle:
o A group of English secular academics who sought to determine the difference between
meaningful and meaningless language.
o They were logical positivists, they sought to use logic to determine languages meaning.
o They developed the verification principle which meant that anything meaningful had to
be verified by experience, otherwise it was not meaningful. (Linked to Aristotle)
o Thus, they would conclude that religious language is meaningless.
 It is impossible to verify God through experience, in which case it does not pass
the verification principle. Some would argue that religious language isn’t always
about God but God as a conceptual being is the foundation of religion, thus
religious language remains meaningless.
o Objections to the Vienna Circle:
 Some religious people would argue that it is possible to experience God via
religious experience or natural ‘majesty.’
 However, this experience is rarely repeatable and thus not verifiable.
Faith is by its very nature unverifiable.
 Can you verify historical events since you were not there and thus cannot
experience it? Is history meaningless?
 The circle accepted this criticism and developed the idea of hard
verification (verified yourself) and soft verification (verified by someone
else).
 Objections from John Hick:
 Hick says that this the circle contradicts themselves as soft verification
could be used to verify religious language, such as through the bible.
 He brings up eschatological verification, the idea that when you die you
can verify God.

Falsification Principle:

 Developed by Anthony Flew in the 1950s.
o He was influenced by Karl Popper and bases his work on one simple question to
religious believers – “What would have to occur or to have occurred to constitute for you
a disproof of the love of, or existence of, God”.
o He claimed that religious language is only meaningful in so far as it can be falsified.
o Simply, Flew argues that a scientist deliberately seeks out to prove a theory by
attempting to discredit it.
o For example, if a scientist concluded that “all metal bends when heated sufficiently”,
one can imagine that the scientists would be willing to alter their theory if they were
faced with evidence of a metal resistance to any amount of heat.
o In other words, she could accept that there could be circumstances where their theory
could be falsified.

, Dillon Precious Religious Language


o Could a religious person ever accept the falsification of a statement such as “God loves
me” in the face of all adversity?
 Flew doesn’t think so.
 He argues that religious believers merely alter terms or meanings to suit
themselves.
 Religious statements are qualified to the point that the those their meanings –
“died to the death of a thousand qualifications” – Evans.
 Flew argued that religious believers do not allow anybody to “falsify” their
assertions, instead they simply change their beliefs to suit the questioner.
 Example:
 “If there was a God, and he is all good, the Holocaust must never have
happened”.
 “We cannot understand God, He works in mysterious ways, He must
have been testing us”.
 It basically points out how any objection raised to a religious person will simply be instinctively
dismissed no matter what you say.
o It is thus meaningless.
 Parable of the gardener.
o By constantly qualifying their statements, religious believers kill their claims – making
them meaningless.
o Via negativa – (working out what something is not) St John of the Cross.
o Process of elimination to work out what something is, by proving what it is not.
o Death by a thousand qualifications – the believer will never change their mind, as it is
based on faith.
o “It is easier to disprove something that it is to prove it”.
o Origins of the Falsification principle through Karl Popper - “…No matter how many
instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that
all swans are white”.
 “Science is more concerned with the falsification of hypothesis than with
verification”.
 Karl Popper believed that human knowledge progresses through falsification.
 A theory or idea shouldn’t be described as scientific unless it could, in principle,
be proven false.
o “A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything”. –
Friedrich Nietzsche.

Challenges to the Falsification Principle:

 Cognitive vs non – cognitive:
o Cognitive – refers to propositions based on knowledge. Facts are known to be true or
false based on knowledge.
o Non – cognitive – refers to propositions that cannot be proved true or false through
knowledge. Non – cognitive propositions include ethical or moral propositions, or an
expression of emotion.
 Religious statements are non – cognitive and meaningful.

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