Religious Language is Meaningless essay plan
- Created by: G
- Created on: 01-06-14 19:38
Religious Language is meaningless Discuss (35)-
Without it- Religion would die out, couldn’t pray, helps you understand religion, couldn’t evangelise-convert to Christianity and share your faith with others. The criteria for meaningfulness is whether you can show something to be true or false. If religious language is gibberish= no religious truths. Cognitive-Facts/knowledge. Non-cognitive- feelings, most as RL can’t be tested.
Logical Positivists- got together to discuss the problems of religious language. Formed a group called the Vienna circle consisting of A.J Ayer, Ruldolf Carnap and Moritz Schlick- test called verification principle to see if religious language was meaningful. Statements can only be meaningful if it can be demonstrated.
Analytic Propositions- true by definition, mathematical or required by the definition of the words. Tautologies- statement true by definition you don’t have to go outside the statement to prove it’s true.
Synthetic propositions- true by confirmation of the senses-have to see it etc.
‘A statement which cannot be conclusively verified is devoid of meaning’
Ayer-all religious claims are non-cognitive, impossible to verify so they are meaningless. Can’t tell us anything but not false.
Doesn’t stand up against its own test-meaningless. Can’t test historical facts. Makes you think about meaningfulness. God-ontological argument prove facts about God logically.
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