A fine brash hypothesis may be killed by inches, the death by a thousand qualifications... It
seems to people who are not religious as if there was no conceivable event the occurrence of
which would be admitted by religious people to be a reason for conceding ‘There wasn’t a
God after all.’ Someone tells us that God loves us as a father loves his children. But then we
see a child dying of inoperable cancer of the throat. His earthly father is driven frantic in his
efforts to help, but his heavenly Father reveals no signs of concern. Some qualification is
made – God’s love is ‘not merely human love’. But then we ask: Just what would have to
happen to entitle us to say ‘God does not exist’? A believer’s statement has been so eroded
that it is no longer an assertion at all.
(Source: Quote from ‘The Philosophy of Religion’, Flew, A, Editor: Mitchell B,
By permission of Oxford University Press)
a) Clarify the ideas illustrated in this passage about falsification in religious language.
You must refer to the passage in your response (10)
One idea illustrated in the passage is that religious believers qualify their views due to a lack
of evidence. Flew argues that religious statements which are overqualified by the believer,
can’t be disproved and therefore the argument does not amount to much. This is because
believers start with an assertion, however it is reduced step by step and ends up as a picture
preference, or in other words, an act of their imagination. This is shown by the Parable of the
Gardener at the beginning of the extract; the explorer begins by believing in a
flesh-and-blood gardener until the idea faces some difficulties, which then reduces it to an
invisible, untouchable and undetectable gardener. Flew is demonstrating here how religious
believers think they believe in God, when in actual fact they have reduced or redefined him
into something so vague, that he will never be proved or disproved. Since the idea has
become so vague, it is also meaningless as the idea has been ‘killed’ by those who believe in
him. Religious belief has therefore died “the death of a thousand qualifications”.
Furthermore, Flew argues that “a believer’s statement has been so eroded that it is no longer
an assertion at all”. This reiterates how religious believers have overqualified their
statements of God to the point where they have lost their meaning due to their vagueness.
What’s more, the believer is also criticised for hiding behind statements that can’t be proved
or disproved, such as God suffers so we can develop, as a get out of jail free card. Often they
make excuses in their mind and refuse to allow anything to qualify against God’s existence.
Flew, however, places a great deal of emphasis on the fact that statements can only ever be
meaningful if they can be falsified. He argues that if a statement isn’t denying anything, then
it isn’t really claiming anything either.
Flew provides an example of a “child dying of inoperable cancer of the throat” by making a
link to the problem of evil. He is trying to highlight again how religious believers hide behind
statements that can’t be proved or disproved and thus have ‘killed’ them in the process by
making them meaningless. Many religious believers would hide behind the idea that God
allows this suffering of children because “God’s love is ‘not merely human love’.” or because
his love is inscrutable. Flew questions how much it would take for the believer to ever doubt
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