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Example Exam Questions & Answers: Religious Language
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A compilation of seven practice exam questions and exemplar answers for the religious language topic - AQA A-level Philosophy.
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Religious language practice questions1. Outline the distinction between cognitivism and non-cognitivism about religious language
2. Explain the empiricist/logical positivist challenges to the status of metaphysical (religious)
language (i.e. Ayer’s vp)
3. Outline Hick’s eschatological verification as a response to Ayer’s vp
4. Outline what it means for a statement to be falsifiable and why this is important regarding
meaningfulness
5. Outline Flew’s attack on the cognitivist view of religious language
6. Explain Mitchell’s response to Flew and the falsification principle
7. Explain Hare’s response to Flew and the falsification principle
1. Religious language includes statements used within religion such as ‘God exists’. The
cognitivist position regards statements like this to describe the world and either be true
or false. In other words they are propositional. On the other hand, the non-cognitivist
position holds that such statements express attitudes and are non-propositional.
2. Religious language refers to claims, symbols, and actions within religion, e.g ‘God
exists’. Ayer, an empiricist philosopher, regards religious language as meaningless. This
is because according to him, only cognitive statements, which meet the criteria of ‘the
verification principle’, can be genuinely meaningful. The verification principle (VP), goes
that a statement is meaningful, if and only if it can be verified either synthetically or
analytically. Synthetic verification refers to the concept of knowing about a fact via sense
experience. This kind of justification relies on being public though and any type of
‘religious experience’ tends to be personal or ineffable. So religious language would
have to be true analytically (by definition), which it just is not, according to Ayer. Part of
God’s definition is not that he exists, so a claim like ‘God exists’ is not verifiable, hence it
is non-cognitivist and meaningless. If you consider verifiability to be the hallmark of
meaningfulness, religious language cannot be meaningful then.
3. Religious language refers to claims within religion, e.g. ‘God exists’. The status of such
language, regarding its meaningfulness, can be considered to rely on the verifiability of
it. Ayer concludes that RL is not verifiable, so Hick responds with the concept of
‘eschatological verification’ in defence. He points out that whilst we cannot verify God or
an afterlife exist in life, we can confirm them retrospectively. He sets up a parable, in
which a traveller who believes a road will lead to a ‘celestial city’ walks beside one who
believes it will not. The hardships they experience on the journey reflect the evil in life, so
whilst the believer considers this to be a test of endurance (similar to a test of faith), the
sceptic takes it at face-value. Another way the parable reflects life, is that in the end the
answer will be made clear. Just as if the celestial city exists it will be verified when they
get there, the afterlife will be known to exist once you die. So whilst this verification is
only possible retrospectively, it still counts towards RL and its status as cognitive and
meaningful.
4. Falsifiability refers to the ability to potentially discount a statement. So a claim such as
‘all swans are white’ is falsifiable because to disprove it all you have to do is find a
non-white swan. This is important regarding meaningfulness because if there are no
grounds for falsification, then a claim cannot consist of assertions. Non-falsifiable
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