RE: Religious Language

Question 1

What is cognitive language?

Answer 1

it conveys facts and is based on observation and experience.

Question 2

What is non-cognitive language?

Answer 2

conveys information that isn’t factual. Emotions, feelings etc.

Question 3

What did Moses Maimonides say about describing God properly?

Answer 3

• The Torah is an imperfect way of describing God as it uses human language.
• any attempt to use human language to describe God is anthropomorphic.
• When it comes to describing God, ‘silence is the best praise’.
• we can demonstrate the nature of God by saying what he’s not.

Question 4

What did Basil the Great say in favour of the Via Negativa?

Answer 4

‘our intellect is weak but our tongue is even weaker’.

Question 5

How does the Via Negativa allow us to understand God properly?

Answer 5

• avoids anthropomorphism: doesn’t place any limitations on God’s power. it shows that God is beyond human understanding.
• William James said that religious experiences can’t be described using human language. the Via Negativa gives people a more accurate way of describing what happened to them.
• Peter Cole argues that it provides insight and understanding of God. We cannot speak directly about him as we’ve never truly experienced him.

Question 6

How doesn’t the Via Negativa allow us to understand God properly?

Answer 6

• Anthony Flew said that it ‘defines God into nothingness’. we argue God out of existence by ‘a thousand qualifications’.
• Brian Davies said that it gives no indication of what God actually is.
• W.R. Inge said that God cannot be reached by process of elimination. it’s not easy for someone with no experience of God to understand what we mean if we only speak of him in the negative. he can’t be reached by process of elimination if he’s outside our experience.
• It’s not consistent with the Bible as it makes positive statements about God.

Question 7

What did Paul Tillich define a ‘sign’ as?

Answer 7

an indicator or something - it gives information.

Question 8

what did Paul Tillich say a symbol does?

Answer 8

• refer to a deeper meaning beyond themselves.
• encourage people to respond
• help us to understand difficult concepts
• connect people with god.

Question 9

Who were the logical positivists and what did they believe?

Answer 9

• german speakers trained as mathematicians and scientists.
• influenced by Lutwig Wittigenstein.
• stated that many people, including philosophers, encourage people to speak in a language that is nonsense.
• published a manifesto called ‘the scientific view of the world’.
• believe in analytic and synthetic statements.

Question 10

what are analytic and synthetic statements?

Answer 10

analytic: tell us what words mean. they’re factually meaningful as you can verify/falsify by analyzing the words used.
synthetic: say something about the world, factually meaningful as their truth can be checked

Question 11

What is the strong verification principle?

Answer 11

a statement is meaningless if it can’t be verified by either experience or observation.

Question 12

what did friedrich waissmann say in favour of the strong verification principle?

Answer 12

‘a statement which cannot be verified conclusively isn’t verifiable at all. It is just devoid of meaning.’

Question 13

What does the weak verification principle state and what are the 2 modifications?

Answer 13

revised version of the strong principle as AJ Ayer said that it had ‘no possible application’.
2 modifications:
-probability that it can be verified.
-doesn’t need to be absolute truth.

Question 14

how is talk about God meaningless? (include different scholars)

Answer 14

-strong verification principle:
no empirical evidence or observation to support the existence of God.

-weak verification principle:
can be proved in principle of by probability, but the probability of this statement being true is very low.

-AJ Ayer:
supported weak verification principle.

-John Locke, David Hume:
empiricists, believed that true knowledge can only be known through our senses.

-waissmann
no way of verifying the statements so they’re ‘devoid of meaning’.

Question 15

how is talk about God meaningful?

Answer 15

-paul Tillich:
signs and symbols. said that symbols open up levels of reality that are otherwise closed to us. help us to talk about God for this reason.

-John Hick:
we can verify statements about God in principle so religious language is meaningful.

-Moses Maimonides:
we can’t directly talk about God due to our inferior intellect but we can talk about him meaningfully in the negative.

-Aquinas:
analogies allow us to simplify and understand complex concepts. this is a meaningful form of religious language.

-Ian Ramsey:
models and qualifiers as an extension on analogy. the model must be qualified to avoid any misconception.

-Brummer and D.Z Phillips:
to treat sentences of faith as scientific sentences is an error of understanding.

Question 16

what is the falsification principle and who thought of it?

Answer 16

• Karl Popper was the inspiration behind it

- it states that statements are meaningful if it’s possible to say what would make the statement false

Question 17

how did Anthony flew develop the falsification principle?

Answer 17

-a statement may be verifiable if it is known what empirical evidence would prove it’s false.

Question 18

what did Flew say about the falsification principle and religious people’s responses to challenges towards their religion?

Answer 18

• religious people refuse to accept that their statements can be falsified, this makes their statements meaningless.
• they ‘shift the goalposts of statements about God’.
• as they keep doing this, their statements become less believable and their argument ‘dies the death of a thousand qualifications’.

Question 19

how did RM Hare respond to the falsification principle?

Answer 19

‘BLIKS’

• said that certain views are unfalsifiable but can be meaningful - paranoid student analogy.
• a ‘blik’ is a view about the world that may not be based upon reason or fact and that cannot be verified/falsified, it just is and we don’t need to explain it.
• he said that we all have fundamental beliefs on which we base our actions and which we will never give up.

Question 20

how did basil Mitchell respond to the falsification principle?

Answer 20

RESISTANCE FIGHTER ANALOGY

• claimed that religious belief is based on fact despite it being neither verifiable or falsifiable.
• said that believers have a prior commitment and trust in God based on faith, they don’t let evidence undermine their faith for this reason.

Question 21

how did John Hick respond to the falsification principle?

Answer 21

ESCHATOLOGIAL VERIFICATION

• Christianity believes that our journey through life doesn’t end in the grave, it’ll continue in a different dimension (heaven or hell)
• all aspects of religious belief will be made clear by God as they can’t be verified now.

Question 22

how is the falsification principle more convincing that hare and Mitchell’s arguments?

Answer 22

• Flew appeals to John Wisdom’s parable of the gardener, religious people qualify claims to suit their agenda, can ‘overqualify’ them.
• Brian Davies supports him: religious people refuse to believe that claims can be falsified, statements about God lack credibility

Question 23

how are Hare and Mitchell’s arguments more convincing than the falsification principle?

Answer 23

• Hare and ‘bliks’: they’re not founded on any factual basis and can be falsified, but they still have a profound effect. However, Flew would respond by saying that anyone can say they’re using a blik to defend their position, such as murderers, for example. He said that it’s ridiculous to accept these statements as meaningful.
• Basil Mitchell: religious belief is based on fact, despite it not being straightforwardly verifiable. believers have a prior commitment to trust in God based on faith.
• Hick and eschatological verification: if I die and find myself in an afterlife, the religious language of Christianity will have been verified.

Question 24

describe Wittigenstein’s theory of language games.

Answer 24

• started as a logical positivist, decided that it was too narrow minded.
• the meaning of a statement can be found be looking at the context in which it was used.
• these contexts are called language games.
• you need to be in the language game to understand the meaning. you don’t understand it if you aren’t familiar with the way it’s used.

Question 25

how are language games successful in religious language debate?

Answer 25

• overcomes the challenge of the verification principle: shows that religious language can and does have meaning without the need for empirical evidence to support it.
• Religion is a way of life: Richard Braithwaite supports him by arguing that religious language is about how we live our lives. It can be verified as it results in a change in behavior and a moral commitment to live life a certain way.
• DZ Philips and Peter Vardy: words gain their meaning by the way they work with other words in the language game. Help the believer to speak meaningfully about their own belief.

Question 26

How aren’t language games successful in religious debate?

Answer 26

• no value to the non-believer: Language is supposed to be open to everyone, but language games make it exclusive to certain groups.
• anti-empirical: they have the danger of making religious belief anti-empirical. language games suggests that language isn’t based on fact and can only be understood by a select few.
• Kai Nielson: language games is simply fideism (faith without proof). He accuses Wittigenstein of being too simplistic, if someone disagrees with your statement, you could just argue that they aren’t a part of the language game.

Question 27

what are the positives of using analogy to make sense of religious language?

Answer 27

• analogy has an empirical base, which is the world. if we accept that God created the world (analogy of attribution) then we can use human language to describe him using things within the world as a basis.
• it can help to explain difficult concepts such as God’s agapeic love. Using an analogy about God’s love allows us to better accept us.
• it avoids anthropomorphizing god, this is because words about God aren’t meant to be taken seriously. This means that analogy would be accepted by Descartes, Anselm and Boethius as it allows us to understand God’s timelessness.

Question 28

what are the positives of using language games to make sense of religious language?

Answer 28

• religious language shows commitment to a specific way of life.
• DZ Philips and Peter Vardy argue that words gain their meaning by the way they work with other words in that specific language game. it allows people to speak meaningfully about their belief.
• Richard Braithwaite: it can be verified because of the profound effect it can have on people’s lives. This verifies religious language as it serves as evidence.
• Braithwaite also said that Christians do not require evidence of bible stories in order for them to have an effect. they just rely on these stories as an influence.