1 Explore what is meant by verification and falsification in the context of religious language. (8)
The verification principle was dreamed up by the Logical Positivists to support their claim that religious language is meaningless. The idea is that unless an assertion or claim can be verified by one or more of the five senses then it is unverifiable. They went on to divide statements into 3 groups: either analytic (true by definition e.g. all bachelors are unmarried men), synthetic (verifiable by testing e.g. it is raining outside) or mathematic (2+2 = 4.)
This principle was then appealed to when assessing the meaningfulness of theists’ statements or assertions about God. For example the claim ‘God exists’ falls into none of the categories of meaningful statements and is therefore regarded as meaningless. Likewise to suggest that ‘God loves me’ is not verifiable either.
AJ Ayer for the LPs soon realised that historical statements also became meaningless if the principle were applied so rigorously and formulated the ‘weak verification principle.’ By which he acknowledged that for historical claims it is sufficient to call a statement like ‘Harold was shot inn the eye by an arrow at the Battle of Hastings’ verifiable if, in the event that we had access to a time machine and were able to go back to the event, we would be able to discover for ourselves whether or not the claim was true.
Anthony Flew also in response to the critics of the verification principle proposed the falsification principle. In it he suggested that a claim can be deemed to be verifiable if we can discover what might actually make it false. For example we cannot actually prove that we cannot travel faster than light so if we can discover what might make the claim false (like discovering that there are things which travel faster than the speed of light) then the claim becomes meaningful. (Not necessarily true but meaningful!!)
Unfortunately he realised that believers were not very likely to give any regard to evidence to the contrary of their beliefs. The story of Job in the Bible is a good example of a man who believed god loved him despite all evidence to the contrary when he lost his wife, family, health, home, livelihood – everything except his life, yet still he believed. This, Flew said, was what made religious claims so meaningless! He updated John Wisdom’s ‘Parable of the Gardener’ adding in a detailed list of all the traps that the two explorers set to trip up the so-called Gardener. When he set none of them off the theist refused to entertain the notion that he didn’t exist and the atheist in despair asked ‘but what is the difference between a gardener who is invisible, intangible and undetectable and no gardener at all?’ Obviously the comparison is with God. As Basil Mitchell put it the believer has three choices when faced with evidence which challenges their faith: adapt their beliefs to accommodate the new information; reject the new info out of hand or reject the belief.
{{ put it this way – you believe your husband loves you; your best friend says she saw him with another woman do you a) refuse to believe it b) face him and forgive him or c) throw him out!!?}}
But for believers who won’t allow any evidence to count against the existence of god makes their claim that God exists meaningless.
1 Explore the key features of Flews idea of falsification. (8)
1 Explore what is meant by verification as an approach to religious language. (8)
1 Explore the key differences in Ayers thinking between weak and strong verification. (8)
1 Explore the context of Logical Positivism and the Vienna Circle. (8)
1 Explore the context and ideas of the Vienna Circle. (8)
1 Explore the key features of logical positivism. (8)
1 Explore what is meant by verification in the context of logical positivism. (8)
1 Explore the aims and purposes of logical positivism. (8)
1 Explore implications of Hume's fork and the reducing of knowledge to analytic and synthetic statements for the claim that religious language is meaningless. (8)
1 Explore the view that religious claims are meaningless. (8)
1 Explore the view that religious claims cannot be verified in principle. (8)
1 Explore the view that religious claims are false because nothing can count against them. (8)
1 Explore hares idea of ‘bliks’ as unfalsifiable ways of framing our interpretation of the world. (8)
1 Explore the strengths and weakness of verification. (8)
1 Explore the strengths and weakness of falsefication. (8)
1 Explore the strengths and weakness of realist and anti-realist views on religious language. (8)
1 Explore realist and anti-realist ideas in religious language. (8)
1 Explore Swinburne's defence of the view that Christians can assume they are realists and not anti-realists in their religious language. (8)
1 Explore Hicks use of eschatological verification as a defence of religious langauge. (8)
1 Explore the strengths and weakness of eschatological verification. (8)
1 Explore the ideas of AJ Ayer in religious language. (8)
1 Explore Michell's idea of belief as significant articles of faith which may be significantly challenged but not easily abandoned. (8)