1 - this has been written to make learning criticism and discussion as ‘learnable’ as possible. This is the reason for the lack of continuous prose.

“Why is there even a problem?”criticism and evaluation for the examBy James Burt

Religious language is often paradoxical - “God is x, but is not x”. The objects (things referred to) of some religious language are said to be beyond human experience - “God” for ex a m p l e. Re l i g i o u s l a n g u a g e i s o f t e n anthropomorphic - which is problematic if we are referring to something truly infinite. As Flew notes, words ‘refer so entirely and particularly to human transactions ... To try to apply them to something which is not an animal at all cannot but result in a complete cutting of the l ines of communication.’ (Davies 140). Swinburne is able to reject this move with a dualist definition of ‘person’. As a theistic personalist he is able to claim, with Scotus, that ‘unless there is a reason to suppose otherwise, clearly we ought to assume that theists are using w o r d s i n t h e i r o r d i n a r y m u n d a n e senses.’ (Davies 142). If we are unwilling to take this escape route we must take Flew’s point a little more seriously.

Some religious believers argue that we can speak about God by describing the things God causes.

Criticism: effects do not always, and do not have to resemble their causer

2nd Criticism: this proposition seems to lead to absurdity - it seems to require God to have created, which is a problem for theistic personalists who believe in a free God. Indeed most believers in God would find it a strange suggestion that God was not wise until there was a world to authenticate God’s wisdom. This is not the only (orthodox?) stance on this question.

Another understanding of re l ig ious language common amongst believers is that we interpret religious language best when we understand it as metaphorical. And this works rather well for some descriptions of God. It fares less well with others however. There are not many believers who would interpret, say, the statement ‘God is good’ metaphorically.

RELIGIOUSLANGUAGE

“Does it contain any a b s t r a c t re a s o n concerning quantity o r number? No . Does it contain any e x p e r i m e n t a l r e a s o n i n g concerning matters of fact and evidence. No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.” Hume

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2 - this has been written to make learning criticism and discussion as ‘learnable’ as possible. This is the reason for the lack of continuous prose.

We can define what makes language ‘meaningful’ in many different ways. For a statement to ‘mean’ something it seems to require real words, a grammatical structure and an attempt at communicating something... Cognitive theories of language hold that language is meaningful when it refers to something concrete and in the world. As such meaningful statements are true or false (false ones still mean something even if it is wrong).

You should know about A J Ayer (Language, Truth and Logic) and Logical Positivism - for Ayer - language that journeys beyond human experience is nonsense. The two independently sufficient criteria for a statement being meaningful is that it is either true by definition, or that it could (at least in principle) be verified (VP). This ‘in principle’ significantly increases the number of statements considered as meaningful.

Criticism: At a first look this appears to rule out all inductive statements including, amongst many other fields, theoretical physics.

Counter: Ayer suggests his VP should be interpreted as having a ‘strong’ and a ‘weak’ function. The strong version is as we have described, whereas the ‘weak’ version would allow statements that can be verified in terms of probability (rather than certainty) to count as meaningful.

Important: Ayer holds the central claims of the theist, and the atheist, to be essentially meaningless.

2nd Criticism: It certainly follows from Ayer’s VP that religious language is meaningless, but this is also true of poetic language, of aesthetics and existential statements. Most people consider these as meaningful in some sense. Lord Sutherland describes this skewed and limited understanding of language as similar to the totalitarian newspeak language invented in Orwell’s 1984.

3rd Criticism: The VP is meaningless by it’s own criteria for meaningfulness.

4th Criticism: John Hick thinks that religious language is verifiable and, as such, is meaningful. Though I will not be able to falsify an afterlife if there is not one (as I shall just be dead), I could in theory verify an afterlife if I find myself there! Hick thinks the majority of the claims of Christianity are ‘eschatologically verifiable’. If you wish to focus on this for the exam you should read into Hick’s thought experiments and the various counters.

Anthony Flew (contrary to Hick) argued that it was in fact falsifiability not verifiability that makes a statement meaningful. His argument relies on John Wisdom’s parable of the invisible gardener. The logic should be fairly familiar to you. Flew calls it ‘death by a thousand qualifications’. By this he means that the mounting qualifications eventually render falsification impossible. He cites Job’s faith, which was unshaken despite an onslaught of intense suffering.

1st Criticism: Some apparently meaningful statements appear unfalsifiable. Again these are often

super-reliable inductive statements like “all men are mortal”.

2nd Criticism: There are unfalsifiable statements or beliefs that are meaningful enough to orientate one’s whole life (plotting murderous teachers). We might call these basic.⊛ Hare calls them bliks.

3rd Criticism: Mitchell (resistance leader example) doesn’t think religious belief is unfalsifiable at all. He argues that evidence from one’s life (and reasoning) will make your belief more or less likely. People do ‘lose’ their faith, as well as ‘rediscovering’ it (I’ve put these in inverted commas as anyone in the reformed tradition would find this language deeply problematic: “Faith is not a set of car keys!” - Hurtado, New College 2005). He also holds religious language is verifiable (post-mortem).

Ludwig Wittgenstein, as you know, thought that the philosophical task was deeply connected to language. He began as a logical positivist with similar views to Ayer (who studied under LW), but later became a hugely important critic, asserting that their view of language was a gross oversimplification. He found the meaning of language was (in?) its usage. So the later Wittgenstein’s criterion for meaningfulness is that a statement is understood. Because Flew and Ayer were outsiders to the religious ‘language game’ they were unable to understand it. They use language as ‘factually significant’ and assume that is the only legitimate use. So, while a cognitive approach to scientific language might be appropriate, this is not the case when it comes to religious language (you may have felt this was the case with recent interest in the ontological argument).

Criticism 1: can statements really be meaningful if they are unconnected to the world? If my friends and I have a pixy identification society does that make our talking ‘meaningful? It probably does in a non-realist way but this does not seem to be what religious believers think they are doing.

Counter: Braithwaite’s non-cognitive theory on language (Sutherland on PhilosophyBites). He held that religious language communicated a preference or commitment to a ‘certain way of life’ (PIF 204). Religious statements are really moral ones, though he does differentiate the major religious narratives.

Criticism: This still doesn’t appear to be what religious people are doing when the say “Jesus is the son of God”. Of course there are Christians who mean exactly what Braithwaite asserts.

Another Critic of Ayer/Flew etc: Crombie defends the via negativa following Maimonides and Augustine. In doing so he adopts the position that, though God is beyond comprehension, it is still possible to use this word meaningfully. For him, the word ‘God’ refers to something not like anything else we know of; something immaterial, infinite etc.

Thinking about language...criticism and evaluation for the examBy James Burt

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that it was crazy to think that when the believer uses words to refer to God she uses them in the same way as if she were referring to another human. But he also held that the believer could move beyond purely metaphorical and negative language. To make his point he distinguishes three ways of using words (univocal - same meaning; equivocal - different meaning; analogical - similarity or proportional).

Aquinas held that ‘god-talk’ was analogical. It involves a certain resemblance but not univocality.

When talking of God ‘[words] must have a different meaning’ (Davies 142). Importantly it can be claimed that the analogical use of language is also, at least in a sense, literal. The two meanings are related causally. That is to say the commonality originates in creator creating, so good in creatures or creation, comes from the good ness of the creator.

Criticism: If something is completely beyond human experience then surely even analogical language can not have the ‘proportion’ of meaning which it is ascribed. 1 Corinthians 13.12 is super famous

Strength: this does sit well with the Judeo-Xian history of ‘God’ where God is ‘other’ than the universe.

Weakness: saying what something is not does not clearly lead to what it is. Of course it is true that a true negation statement ‘increases our chances’ of guessing what something is (think Noel Edmonds), but it rarely confirms it (not male=female examples are the exceptions not the general cases).

2nd Weakness: people that speak of God do not usually do so in negations.

Paul Tillich was an American theologian. He thought religious language was best understood as symbolic. It is important to note Tillich’s understanding of ‘symbol’ - it is a thing that becomes a representative or carrier of a meaning, where the meaning would be less if the symbol were swapped for another (“It points beyond itself, whilst participating in that to which it points...”).

Criticism: Vagueness - what does this actually mean?

Counter: Items like flags do seem to operate in the way he describes. What is less clear, however, is whether this warrants a move to claim all religious language is symbolic.

2nd Criticism: this seems to lead to non-realism concerning God, and an understanding of religious language that would not allow religious instruction.

Counter: apart from it would in one sense... students of religion are often told that to grasp the greater meaning of a biblical passage, say, they need to consult the tradition of interpretation associated with it - this is so as not to miss any of the symbolic meanings...

Bultmann became super-famous over what many called his ‘demythologising project”. RB understood the ‘modern’ and ‘scientific’ reader of scripture as faced with a great number of absurdities. His solution was to understand the Bible as a great work of mythic literature containing spiritual and moral instruction, if not any historical fact. For Bultmann, this is not a

retreat, but a respectful and suitable academic approach that reveals the important meaning of sacred texts.

Strength: There are certainly passages of scripture that appear to fit this description perfectly (find some in your revision).

Criticism: An increasing number of Christians hold that there are certain historical beliefs one must hold to be a ‘real’ Christian. Arguably this has support in some of the creeds.

Criticism: Plantinga claims that ‘God exists’ is an existential statement (rather than a symbolic or mythic one).

Aquinas is considered one of the most historically significant writers to discuss religious language. He thought

“A blind acceptance of New Testament mythology would be simply arbitrariness; to make such acceptance a demand of faith would be to reduce faith to a work"

Rudolf Bultmann

Paul Tillich"there can be no doubt that any concrete assertion about God must be symbolic”

4 - this has been written to make learning criticism and discussion as ‘learnable’ as possible. This is the reason for the lack of continuous prose.

“When people speak of “the living God” they do not simply want to say ... that he differs from a lifeless body.”

Aquinas

here, I would learn it but also have a proper think about what it might mean...

Counter: Aquinas sees ‘causes and their effects as intimately connected’ (Davies 149). And not in the way described on page 1 above. He thinks this justifies the move to natural theology - to telling about God from the world.

Criticism: Wittgenstein’s understanding of language renders analogy unnecessary (or perhaps that it is the norm). The same word can have a number of different meanings (say when referring to a human and to God). These words use, however, still requires justification. For Davies this requires careful examination of the arguments and evidence for believing in God in the first place (154).

Chomsky on Religious Language: Lakoff and Johnson argue convincingly that Chomsky’s near whole-sale adoption of Cartesian (and so also rationalist) assumptions lead logically and unavoidably to the view that humans are

distinguished by an inherent and essential ‘universal grammar’ or ‘syntactical ability’. Following this, Chomsky’s political writings ‘rationality and freedom take centre stage, while culture, aesthetics, and pleasure (eg religion, ritual and ritual objects, business and trade, music, art and poetry, and sensuality) play no essential role in universal human nature; for Chomsky, these things simply get in the way of proper politics and have nothing to do with reason and language.” (PITF 479).

Criticism: Chomsky’s understanding of syntax as independent of semantic meaning is almost completely falsified by empirical research, that it is not independent of culture nor the body (sense dependent).

2nd Criticism: Neuroscience. Chomsky’s theory requires him to posit a syntax module in the brain. This is supposed to have no inputs as this would prevent its autonomous nature. But neuroscientists have shown that there is no part of the brain that meets this specification.

an extra view from linguistics...Chomsky...

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