“All talk of God is nonsense.”

The Verification Principle is nonsense, therefore this statement is nonsense. ‘Talk of God’ is religious language which is defined as any language which describes the beliefs or practises of a religion, e.g. Eucharist, Mass ect. It can also be defined as any language describing God. E.g. Holy, sacred ect. However, religious language, like anything, comes with its problems. The main problem of religious language is that ordinary language cannot get close to God. How do we describe an extraordinary God using only ordinary language? If we cannot do this, then can we ever really describe God? For example, if we describe an owl as wise and then also describe God as wise, this implies that the owl and God’s wisdom is the same, which it isn’t. The second problem with religious language is that by using ordinary language, we are in danger of limiting God. By using the same language to describe God as we do to describe humans, we are guilty of Anthropomorphism. This is the attribution of human form or other characteristics to anything other than a human being. The Verification Principle can be used as an effective method for counteracting these problems.

The Verification Principle is a principle most commonly associated with a group of philosophers called the Logical Positivists. They debated language and rejected as meaningless any language that they saw as non-cognitive.
Cognitive language is language that can be proved true or false to give us knowledge. For example, ‘Sophie’s eyes are blue.’ This is a cognitive statement because there is a known way to prove it true or false and knowledge would be gained from it. There are two types of Cognitive statements, Analytical and Synthetic. Cognitive analytical statements are those which can be analysed. E.g. ‘A Queen is a female monarch.’ These statements are true by reason and therefore do not need empirical evidence to prove them true or false, making them A Priori, whereas Cognitive Synthetic statements are those