Religious Language: Theology and Falsification
A. J. Ayer considered all religious language to be meaningless. He came to this conclusion through his Verification principle, which argued that a statement which cannot be verified is meaningless. In Ayer’s own words, “A statement is held to be literally meaningful if and only if it is either analytic or empirically verifiable”. He says that a religious utterance may be emotionally significant to the person saying it, but it is not literally significant. An example of this would be the statement “God is everywhere”. The person saying this may feel comforted in the knowledge that God is watching over them and their friends and family, but he has no way of proving that an Omnipresent God exists, so there is no useful empirical information in the statement. Ayer also pointed out that the statement “God exists” has as little meaning as the statement “God does not exist”.
There were many challenges to the principle of Verification. John Hick suggested that there is meaning in religious statements as there is truth in them which can be verified. He said that God’s existence can be verified in principle if true, but not falsifiable if false, eschatologically. He explained this with the story of the Celestial City. Two travellers are on a journey down a road. One traveller believes there is a Celestial City at the end of the road, the ruler of which has influence over all good and bad events on their journey, while the other traveller does not believe there is a Celestial City at the end of the road, nor an influential ruler. Whichever one is right at the end of the journey, their views could be verified. In my opinion the damning criticism of the Verification principle is that it cannot be verified. It is not a sound test for meaningfulness if the principle itself cannot be proved meaningful under its own test.
Falsification offers a similar approach to religious language, but from a different angle. Developed by Karl Popper, it states that an assertion is meaningless
There were many challenges to the principle of Verification. John Hick suggested that there is meaning in religious statements as there is truth in them which can be verified. He said that God’s existence can be verified in principle if true, but not falsifiable if false, eschatologically. He explained this with the story of the Celestial City. Two travellers are on a journey down a road. One traveller believes there is a Celestial City at the end of the road, the ruler of which has influence over all good and bad events on their journey, while the other traveller does not believe there is a Celestial City at the end of the road, nor an influential ruler. Whichever one is right at the end of the journey, their views could be verified. In my opinion the damning criticism of the Verification principle is that it cannot be verified. It is not a sound test for meaningfulness if the principle itself cannot be proved meaningful under its own test.
Falsification offers a similar approach to religious language, but from a different angle. Developed by Karl Popper, it states that an assertion is meaningless
Bibliography: Language Truth and Logic (1946) by A. J. Ayer The Problem of Religious Language - Sandra LaFave - West Valley College http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/flew.html http://www.dotrob.com/essays/essay5.html OCR Philossophy of Religion for AS and A2 – Matthew Taylor – Routledge Dialogue Issue 1 Article 2