The verification principle offers no real challenge to religious belief (35)
“The verification principle offers no real challenge to religious belief.” Discuss [35]
The verification principle is a significant concept used by many philosophers in order to determine whether a religious statement is meaningful or not. This was highly influenced by logical positivism: group of 20th century philosophers called the Vienna circle and was then further developed by British philosopher A.J Ayer. Religious language refer to statements such as ‘God exists’ and ‘God loves me’. Whilst these metaphysical claims are often rendered as meaningless by verificationism, one must take into account the strengths and weaknesses.
Ayer, in his first edition of ‘Language, Truth and Logic’ (1936), asserts that a statement is meaningful if and only if it can be verified by the sense observation or a tautology. By this he means that they are either a priori (before sense experience) analytic, where the predicate is entailed by the subject, or a posteriori (after sense experience) synthetic, where the predicate is not entailed by the subject. An example of a priori analytic statement would be that ‘all unmarried men are bachelors’ and this is also a tautology as it is true by definition. An example of a posteriori synthetic statement would be that ‘John is a bachelor’. For Ayer, if a statement cannot be verified in this way, then it is factually insignificant and thus, meaningless. He affirms that religious statements fall into neither category of priori analytic nor posteriori synthetic. This therefore, according to Ayer, provides a strong challenge to religious belief.
For Ayer, religious statements are a priori synthetic in that we assume its truth without having had actual experience and also, they do not have the predicate entailed in the subject and this concept can be explained with the statement ‘God exists’. We assert this truth without having had actual experience and the term ‘exists’ is not entailed in the subject. Ayer rejects this idea therefore in both
The verification principle is a significant concept used by many philosophers in order to determine whether a religious statement is meaningful or not. This was highly influenced by logical positivism: group of 20th century philosophers called the Vienna circle and was then further developed by British philosopher A.J Ayer. Religious language refer to statements such as ‘God exists’ and ‘God loves me’. Whilst these metaphysical claims are often rendered as meaningless by verificationism, one must take into account the strengths and weaknesses.
Ayer, in his first edition of ‘Language, Truth and Logic’ (1936), asserts that a statement is meaningful if and only if it can be verified by the sense observation or a tautology. By this he means that they are either a priori (before sense experience) analytic, where the predicate is entailed by the subject, or a posteriori (after sense experience) synthetic, where the predicate is not entailed by the subject. An example of a priori analytic statement would be that ‘all unmarried men are bachelors’ and this is also a tautology as it is true by definition. An example of a posteriori synthetic statement would be that ‘John is a bachelor’. For Ayer, if a statement cannot be verified in this way, then it is factually insignificant and thus, meaningless. He affirms that religious statements fall into neither category of priori analytic nor posteriori synthetic. This therefore, according to Ayer, provides a strong challenge to religious belief.
For Ayer, religious statements are a priori synthetic in that we assume its truth without having had actual experience and also, they do not have the predicate entailed in the subject and this concept can be explained with the statement ‘God exists’. We assert this truth without having had actual experience and the term ‘exists’ is not entailed in the subject. Ayer rejects this idea therefore in both