Religious language: verification, falsification and language games
Cognitive language: truth claims, asserting facts, something that can be true or false
Non-cognitive: do not describe facts and cannot be determined as true or false
Popper on Falsification – theory of religious language that states for a statement
to be meaningful you must have to be able to state what evidence might prove it to
be false
But God is transcendent, invisible, beyond physical experience – how can the
existence of something that can’t be senses be physically proven?
Flew parable
- Two explorers come across a clearing in a jungle and one says there must be a
gardener to tend the plot
- They conduct tests and experiments to see e.g., barbed wire with electrical and
fences but no gardener was found
- The explorer says the gardener must be invisible, intangible, insensible to
electrical shocks
- What would need to occur to be proof of disproving God
- Flew argues that religious beliefs cannot be rationally argued against since
believers make the debate impossible by their own terms
- If theists can conceive of a way to be proved wrong, then it may be possible to
prove that God exists but until then their beliefs are not based on rational
thought
- Believers end up modifying their statements about God when challenged –
statements no longer resemble their original claims e.g., God is all-loving, but
problem of evil, but ...
- Peter Vardy gives the example of a friend talking about her ‘boyfriend’ and no
matter how awful he is they will never accept they are not right together
R.M Hare
Hare suggested that when people use religious language they should not be
interpreted as truth claims in a cognitive sense but as expressions of bliks – non-
cognitive personal attitudes or commitments to a particular way of life
Falsification only works when asserting cognitive claims but religious language is
non-cognitive
Bliks are unfalsifiable and no evidence will demonstrate the falseness of a blik
We all have ideas about the world (bliks) which we are convinced of which no
evidence would count against e.g., a child saying they don’t like broccoli even if they ate
it without knowing and enjoyed it
- A religious belief can be a blik – if one is unable to consider what would prove
them wrong and consider the other side then it becomes a blik (blindly accepted
truth)
- Sane bliks are ones we all accept, or the majority can (e.g., God)
- Insane bliks are more unique
- Used the parable of:
A certain lunatic is convinced that all dons want to murder him. There is evidence
of the dons being nice and not trying or planning to murder him. Lunatic argues
the niceness is the dons just being cunning and in reality, is plotting against him.
We say the person is deluded and a lunatic because there is evidence against
but no certainty of its entirety
- Hick argues that Hare is wrong because he does not distinguish between what
is a sane or an insane blik. He considers God to be a sane blik but does not
justify why. There is an assumption that a belief in God is more sane than other
beliefs
Cognitive language: truth claims, asserting facts, something that can be true or false
Non-cognitive: do not describe facts and cannot be determined as true or false
Popper on Falsification – theory of religious language that states for a statement
to be meaningful you must have to be able to state what evidence might prove it to
be false
But God is transcendent, invisible, beyond physical experience – how can the
existence of something that can’t be senses be physically proven?
Flew parable
- Two explorers come across a clearing in a jungle and one says there must be a
gardener to tend the plot
- They conduct tests and experiments to see e.g., barbed wire with electrical and
fences but no gardener was found
- The explorer says the gardener must be invisible, intangible, insensible to
electrical shocks
- What would need to occur to be proof of disproving God
- Flew argues that religious beliefs cannot be rationally argued against since
believers make the debate impossible by their own terms
- If theists can conceive of a way to be proved wrong, then it may be possible to
prove that God exists but until then their beliefs are not based on rational
thought
- Believers end up modifying their statements about God when challenged –
statements no longer resemble their original claims e.g., God is all-loving, but
problem of evil, but ...
- Peter Vardy gives the example of a friend talking about her ‘boyfriend’ and no
matter how awful he is they will never accept they are not right together
R.M Hare
Hare suggested that when people use religious language they should not be
interpreted as truth claims in a cognitive sense but as expressions of bliks – non-
cognitive personal attitudes or commitments to a particular way of life
Falsification only works when asserting cognitive claims but religious language is
non-cognitive
Bliks are unfalsifiable and no evidence will demonstrate the falseness of a blik
We all have ideas about the world (bliks) which we are convinced of which no
evidence would count against e.g., a child saying they don’t like broccoli even if they ate
it without knowing and enjoyed it
- A religious belief can be a blik – if one is unable to consider what would prove
them wrong and consider the other side then it becomes a blik (blindly accepted
truth)
- Sane bliks are ones we all accept, or the majority can (e.g., God)
- Insane bliks are more unique
- Used the parable of:
A certain lunatic is convinced that all dons want to murder him. There is evidence
of the dons being nice and not trying or planning to murder him. Lunatic argues
the niceness is the dons just being cunning and in reality, is plotting against him.
We say the person is deluded and a lunatic because there is evidence against
but no certainty of its entirety
- Hick argues that Hare is wrong because he does not distinguish between what
is a sane or an insane blik. He considers God to be a sane blik but does not
justify why. There is an assumption that a belief in God is more sane than other
beliefs
