Philosophy
Critically assess the claim that all religious language is meaningless. (35)
Religious language has been argued about by many philosophers with regards to whether or not the ways in which we speak about religion are meaningful. This issue of religious language is concerned with the methods by which man talks about God in conjunction with theist or atheist ideologies. For some, religious language is meaningful and full of purpose while others see it to being incomprehensible and pointless.
If we are to take the logical positivist approach then we would view all religious language as meaningless. For logical positivists the entire discipline of philosophy was centred on one task, which was to clarify the meaning of concepts and ideas. In turn, this led them to look at statements and inquire just what the “meaning” of them was, and what sort of statements really did have any “meaning.” A group of philosophers that known as the Vienna circle took a univocal approach to language, that is to say, that we mean the same thing when we talk about God and man.
The logical positivists formulated the verification principle which saw assertions which are only verifiable through observation or experience, can be deemed meaningful. In this case, other assertions are either analytic or meaningless utterances. This approach was built on the work of both John Locke and David Hume, who argued that all philosophical matters must be approached with a strict empirical system. Thus, according to the verification principle, meaningful assertions fall into three categories. The first category is analytic statements. These are logical propositions as they are true by definition and contain there truth within the premise and are necessarily true. The second were mathematical statements, which have to be necessarily true throughout the universe. The final criterion is synthetic statements. These are empirical propositions which are verifiable through empirical examination, and, thus can be tested to be either true or false. Thus, statements often to do with God, would be completely meaningless, for example “God is omnibenevolent” as it can’t be justified by any of the above three sections. As put by Moritz Schlick “the meaning of the presupposition is the method of verification…we know the meaning of the statements if we know the conditions under which the statements is true or false.”
According to the verification principle, then, religious language is rendered meaningless for the following three reasons. Any discussion of God cannot be based on empirical evidence and since religious experiences are subjective and not universal, they do not for the basis for empirical propositions. Science is objective as we can perform experiments and gain a set of results, which can then be repeated over to achieve roughly the same data. Following from this, they viewed religious language to not be univocal and therefore the meaning of an assertion is unclear. For example, when I say “God is Good” I mean something very different to simply saying “Ollie is good,” both use good as a description of either God or Ollie but both have entirely differing translations, and thus can’t be univocal. This would mean that religious language has to be equivocal; this is to say that the same word within language can have different means like the word “bat.” Therefore, as religious language talks about infinite existence and the like, we often interpret this in different ways, and come to different understandings or conclusions. A J Ayer, like logical positivists, believed that empirical methods had to be used to assess whether a proposition was verifiable in principle, and therefore meaningful. As he put it “the criterion which we use to test the genuineness of apparent statements of fact is the criterion of verifiability.”
In spite of this, several problems arise when applying the verification principle to any statements which we want to justify through empirical evidence. For example, a strong application of the verification principle would mean that we cannot make any historical statements. Say I wanted to prove that Columbus sailed the ocean in 1492, in theory, no one person can verify this statement through empirical evidence. If we apply this to all statements, then scientific laws to become meaningless because we can’t actually prove their validity through empirical evidence, instead we just assume these laws about the world, such as Isaac Newton’s Law of Gravity. Perhaps the biggest problem with the verification principle is you can’t actually verify the principle itself, thus the accuracy of the whole system becomes incomprehensive and counter intuitive. These above problems led to the development of weak verification as proposed by Ayer. He stated that “a proposition…is verifiable in the weak sense if it is possible for experience to render it probable.” Ayer felt that we do not have to conclusively prove something through observation; we only need to show how it might be verified. Thus, weak verification allows us to make meaningful statements about the past, emotions and scientific predictions, but religious language still remain meaningless.
However, it can be disputed that the premise that religious statements are meaningless under weak verification is in fact incorrect. John Hick said that religious statements were meaningful as they are subject to eschatological verification. He gives an example of two travellers on a road arguing whether it leads to the celestial city or not, eventually, over time, they will find out. With religious statements, although there is no clear answer, for example, as to whether God exists, under weak verification, in theory, you can eventually find out whether or not the statement God exists is actually true. Moreover, religious statement about Jesus can be seen as meaningful, like his resurrection. Through the bible it provides evidence of such events happening and to support this further, roman historians have also written about Jesus. Also, design within the universe which suggests evidence that statements like “God is the Creator” are actually meaningful as we can empirically observe the creation of the world around us. Keith ward goes on to say that weak verification excludes absolutely nothing as all experiences are allowable because of the criterion of “verifiable in principle.” He uses the example of “God exists” which is verifiable in principle since if I were God, I would be able to prove my own existence.
Perhaps, one would side with Ludwig Wittgenstein and his theory of language games. Originally, Ludwig argued that the purpose of language was to enable us to interpret the world. He developed a “picture theory” of meaning, whereby our concepts derive meaning because they correspond to a mental image of an external reality. However, later in his work Ludwig viewed his “picture theory” as demonstrating methods of science much like the verification principle. He changed his view and instead of language deriving its meaning from reference to external objects, instead it derived it from its context. In order to understand the meaning if a statement, you first have to understand the context or form of life. An example of this is the offside rule within sport. The word has meaning to all of us whether it is in football, rugby and American football. However, within each discipline the rule differs and outside sport entirely the term has no real meaning. Much like sport, the same applied to religion. For those that follow religion it will make sense as they practice it daily gaining more meaning each time, but those that don’t it makes almost no sense at all.

It wasn’t actually Ludwig Wittgenstein who developed this idea of “religious language games,” but instead it was D Z Phillips who talked about it. Phillips took Wittgenstein’s idea and developed the “religious language game,” saying that those outside the game couldn’t understand what was going on inside it. What is deemed reasonable depends on what is going on inside the game, thus it would mean atheist can’t criticise religion, much like a rugby player can’t criticise offside within football. Phillips felt that to understand religion you had to look at the practice rather than the doctrine, this is what gives religion meaning and life. The limits drawn from this are going to be cultural, meaning that there is no neutral way to make a decision over which is more true. Therefore, it’s not that other religions are false, but instead that we don’t understand each and every one individually. For Phillips, therefore, religious language is more like moral language than factual language allowing for it to still obtain meaning. Phillips argued that some of the problems caused by religious language actually exist because we take the language literally, for instance, if we take the word “soul” and take the meaning to be literal then we are faced with all sorts of philosophical, religious and psychological problems. However, if we use the word within a phrase such as, “selling his soul,” we see the true meaning of what the word is trying to convey. Thus it means that religious statements cannot be understood literally, but instead they have a profound meaning for those who take them. Don Cupitt was a nonrealist; he thought that there was no absolute right or wrong for anything. He held that all social reality is a linguistic construction and that the world we know is constructed by our language, which is always changing. He believed that “there (was) no such view as a view from nowhere.” Thus, everything is nonrealist in the world, including religious language. Things like worshipping God become meaningful, therefore, as it help shape your life and provide guidance even if not completely factual.
Many have critiqued Wittgenstein’s view saying that it resembles that of fideism, that the beliefs of religion do not have rational foundations and are therefore removed from scientific and rational criticism. Furthermore, since religious believers are involved in other language games in their lives, there must be common ground between religious language and other language game, which would mean that non-believers should be able to understand religious language and then decide whether it has meaning or not, instead of dismissing it immediately. In actually fact, non-believers might actually have a better understanding of religious language than those who follow it. This is because they have an objective view of the use of religious language, meaning they won’t influenced by a personal feeling in following it.
The falsification principle comes from Karl Popper in the area of the Philosophy of Science, and it saw religious language to meaningless. It used scientific works by providing theories about the world which could then be falsified, and then, eventually, these theories could be superseded by better ones. It is important to note that, for Popper, a theory that is impossible to disprove is not a theory at all. Thus Antony Flew applied this theory to the use of religious language, and since religious claims couldn’t be falsified they had to be meaningless.
The famous Oxford University of Symposium on Theology and Falsification brought together Flew, Hare and Mitchell to discuss the meaningfulness in religious language. Flew begins by saying that religion is not necessarily wrong but rather it doesn’t hold any meaning. He claimed that what often happened in religion is “a fine, brash hypothesis may this be killed by inches, the death by a thousand qualifications.” Thus, if we use the example of a young child dying in agony, and there is no apparent intervention from God, a believer may respond by saying “God’s love is not merely a human love.” However, the non-believer may interject by suggesting whether there is any difference between saying God loves and God doesn’t love. What he is trying to get at here is the assertion “God loves us” means something, and then an assertion that “God doesn’t love us” must also mean something. It’s important to note, that what flew believed was that if knowing what the world would be like if God does love us, then there must be a contrast to the way things wouldn’t be if he didn’t love us. Therefore the statement “God doesn’t love us” must mean something in the sense that if it were true, there is a certain way the world would be. Thus, flew concludes that because religious statements let nothing count against them, it tells us nothing. For example, it is like saying “it will either rain tomorrow or it won’t,” religious claims sound like they make sense but in fact they don’t tell us anything meaningful.
Hare responds to Flew, by using his parable of a lunatic who believes that all his teachers at the university are trying to kill him. Despite this being unlikely, this is still the way in which the lunatic saw the world and absolutely nothing could change his view of the world. Hare argues then we differ with the lunatic not over the assertion but over something else. Hare proposes the word “blik” as a means of naming that other thing or world view, the way in which we personally perceive things. The importance of a “blik is that they are not falsifiable and it does not make any factual claims or statements. Thus, a blik is simply based on a belief which means there is no evidence or agreement which can demonstrate the falseness of a blik. So, hare argues that the beliefs of a believer are part of his world view; they are the way that he sees the world, and are therefore meaningful. Religious beliefs are not assertions and as such, they are immune to verification and falsification.
Mitchell’s theory was more straight forward then that of Hares. He agreed that statements about God should be assertions, and he insisted that the existence of evil does count for an assertion against God. Mitchell uses a parable about a wartime resistance leader, who encounters a stranger, and even though he has never met him before he trusts the stranger. Even when the stranger acts against the resistance he still trusts him/her as he was told it is all part of the “plan.” Mitchell suggests that flew has overlooked the theory that is attitude which is more than just treating religious statements as a manner of speaking. Therefore, the believer in God, like the believer in the stranger, has attitude of trust. Although the evidence provided, itself, is ambiguous sometimes God seems to perform loving acts and sometimes God lets bad acts, such as natural, disasters occur. The trust is not without a sense of tension and conflict, if it were, it would be the sort of meaningfulness statement that flew attacks. But the believer has committed themselves to not abandoning their belief, because the believer has adopted the attitude of faith. In this sense, it is a very black and white situation, but people will still side one way or the other and thus for many religious statements they could be meaningful, for a religious person, as they have a prior commitment to God.
Nevertheless, some philosophers have disputed the entire falsification principle, believing that it is not a legitimate means for disputing the meaningfulness of religious language. Some philosophers have argued that religious statements are not cognitive, meaning they are not truth-apt, and it is wrong to treat them as such. Moreover, this idea of statements that can only be falsified are ones that have meaning are incorrect, we can still have a meaningful statement even if it can’t be falsified. Swinburne gives the example of the toys in a cupboard. He said that we cannot prove whether the toys move around in cupboard when we are not watching them. We might not be able to falsify if they move or not, but we can still understand the idea of them moving. Mitchell made the claim that religious statements are not neutral claims; instead they have commitment to God through faith. However, there are plenty of examples of people of faith who have undergone terrible experiences which have counted against their belief, and as result, their faith has lapsed. Therefore, we could conclude that it is possible to empirically falsify belief under these terms. Some have argued that Hare’s argument misses the point. The issues is not whether a sane person can convince a lunatic that the lunatic’s blik is wrong; he cannot. The issue is rather, what arguments could both the friend and the lunatic use to convince the detached observer which one is right. In this case, it is likely that the observer will side with the friend, rather than the lunatic because the friend will present a more convincing argument.
Overall, there are many competing theories for an understanding of religious language with their strengths and weakness, proponents and their detractors. In my opinion I feel that religious language itself does actually have meaning because much like Wittgenstein’s language game theory it is solely dependent on the practice of religion, and if you do practice it then, without question, it will have meaning. Nevertheless I do agree with Flew’s theory for the need of contrast when suggesting assertions, which in turn dispute language as meaningful. But, even with this in mind, I feel you to refute religious language as meaningful entirely, is completely wrong, as with anything there is also some form of interpretation in any given situation.