RMPS
Language, Religion and
Philosophy
August 1998
HIGHER STILL
RMPS
Language, Religion and
Philosophy
Support Materials
*+,-./
LANGUAGE, PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION
Sense and nonsense about God by John Hull
Introduction
While there are a significant number of book and other resources on this topic which
will be useful to both teachers and students, this book is being recommended as a basic
text book for the unit. It covers most of the content of the unit and provides some
useful questions and suggested answers which will be a very worthwhile resource for
those who are teaching and studying it.
The following is a brief outline of its content in relation to the sequence of the unit and
the learning outcomes.
OUTCOME 1
Demonstrate a detailed understanding of some of the main issues in the use of religious
language.
The main purpose of this outcome is to highlight two basic features:
i) The exploration of the variety of language use in general
ii) The demonstration of the variety of uses in the following way:
Chapter 6 (The Uses of Language) This provides a useful introduction to the unit in
that it concentrates on the variety of language use and how language must be
contextualised before it can be properly understood. The social significance of
language is covered as well as the way people use language and the various meanings it
has (following the later Wittgenstein). The symbolic and transferable use of language
to a different context e.g. solid used of a building and the character of an individual.
Chapter 7 (On the meaning and use of religious language) This is a natural
development from chapter 6 and looks at what religious words mean, and the symbolic
nature of such language is emphasised. The meaningfulness of religious
statements/language is also considered. The introductory chapter on Nonsense
(Chapter 1) could also be used at this stage as a general introduction to the oddities of
language use.
Chapter 2 (On the meaning of language) In this chapter an emphasis is placed on
contextualising language rather than seeing it in isolation. The chapter raises the issue
of verification of language and is a natural link with Outcome 2 which considers issues
of the meaningfulness of religious language in relation to the parables of The Road,
The Gardener and The Stranger.
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OUTCOME 2
Analyse different views on the meaningfulness of religious language and evaluate these
(with reference to one/two parables).
Chapter 3 (God) considers the way in which religious beliefs and statements might be
verified or shown to be meaningful. It considers the significance of the statement “God
exists” and looks at the difference between analytic and synthetic statements (see
below) and whether the phrase “God exists” actually means anything at all which could
be verified. Reference is made to the parable of The Gardener (and this could be
related to other support materials on this issue).
Chapter 5 (On criticisms of the Verification Principle) is more difficult, but could
be used by teachers with more able pupils if desired. The basic approach of this
chapter is to show how language has a number of valid uses which go well beyond the
limitations of what the verification principle was suggesting. This brings the more
recent work on the meaning of religious language into profile (for example the later
Wittgenstein).
Chapter 4 (Some Replies by Theists) then looks at the issue of the meaningfulness
of religious statements (rather than whether they are true or false in an empirical way).
This has implications for recent developments in the use and meaning of religious
language and how religious language has taken on a significantly non-factual
interpretation. (This could be linked up with Outcome 3 where various interpretations
of religious language are considered in a more detailed manner). This chapter
concentrates on reinterpreting religious language into more existential terms in order to
make it more relevant to the modern world.
OUTCOME 3
Analyse different interpretations of religious language and evaluate their contemporary
relevance and significance.
In the support notes for this outcome, the five interpretations of religious language are
outlined and developed. However, in Chapter 4 some useful material in relation to
more existential and secular approaches as developed by theologians such as RG
Smith, John Robinson and Paul Van Buren and picked up by those such as Tillich,
Bultmann and Cupitt are included. This can therefore provide a useful backcloth to the
various interpretations to be dealt with in
Outcome 3.
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SENIOR STUDY SERIES
Sense and Nonsense about God
John Hull
SCM Press LTD
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The Senior Study Series consists of short booklets intended for use with students in
sixth forms, colleges of education, universities and adult church and local education
groups.
Each booklet is written by an experienced teacher and provides an outline of the
questions raised by its subject and skeleton material to form the basis for constructive
discussion.
The verse on page 9 is quoted by the kind permission of JM Dent and Sons Ltd and the
trustees for the copyright of the late Dylan Thomas.
334 01490 5
First published 1974
by SCM Press Ltd, 56 Bloomsbury Street, London
in conjunction with the Christian Education Movement
© Christian Education Movement 1970
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Contents
Note for the teacher or lecturer
1. Nonsense
2. Meaning
3. ‘God’
4. Some replies by Theists
5. Criticisms of the Verification Principle
6. The Uses of Language
7. ‘God’ Again
For further reading
For the teacher or lecturer: Notes on the discussion questions
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NOTE FOR THE TEACHER OR LECTURER
In many discussion about religion, the main question is ‘Does God exist?’ But in
recent years the central problem has been not so much the existence of God but the
possible meaning of the very phrase – ‘God exists’. But how, one might ask, could
there be any doubt about what is meant? Are the words not plain enough?
This study outline, written by Dr John Hull who lectures in Religious Education at the
School of Education, Birmingham University, provides a simple introduction to the
problems of the meaning of religious language. It does not discuss the grounds for
believing but aims to show the conditions under which statements about God can be
meaningful. Sections and paragraphs are numbered for the convenience of cross
referencing. Each student should be provided with a copy of the outline before the
classes or meetings begin. Those who refer to the books mentioned at the end and
those already familiar with them will quickly notice that the studies are entirely
dependent upon them, both in general and in many points of detail. When books are
mentioned in the text, copies should be available to the groups for reference to be
made to them during discussion.
Thanks are expressed to Professor Ninian Smart, who kindly looked through the
manuscript, and made a number of helpful suggestions.
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1
NONSENSE
1.1 The curtain goes up, the orchestra play, and on come the Diddy People. They
open their diddy mouths and out comes their diddy song, ‘Nick nocky nick nack
nicky nocky noo.’ People laugh and clap. But nobody turns to his neighbour and
says, ‘Do you agree?’ or ‘I’m not going to clap that! It just isn’t true.’
1.2 The diddy song cannot be true of false because it does not say anything capable of
truth or falsehood. It makes not assertion. Its function is not to convey
information, but to act as a slogan, a comedian’s catch phrase, an entertaining
song. So here we have the first way to recognise nonsense. Nonsense is incapable
of being true or false because it does not say anything which could be true or false.
1.3 Nonsense, however, need not take the form of nonsensical words like ‘nocky’.
Normal words, the meaning of which everybody knows, may be arranged in
ungrammatical form so as to produce nonsense. ‘Sat cat mat the on the’ is an
example. Once again, if I said to you, ‘Do you agree that sat cat mat the on the?’
you would not be able to agree or disagree. You would perhaps enquire as to
whether you had heard me correctly. But if you replied, ‘No, on the contrary, I
think that mat the on the sat cat,’ you would not have contradicted me.
Nonsensical statements are incapable of contradiction. They cannot conflict with
anything since they asset nothing.
1.4 Can normal English words be used in a grammatically correct way and still
produce nonsense? Suppose I asked you ‘Don’t you thing this coffee tastes too
red?’, you could answer neither yes nor no. You could only ask me what on earth
I meant. You would seek clarification, because although the words of my
question were arranged in a normal manner, with the verbs and adjectives and
nouns in the normal places (unlike the cat example), I would be using one of these
words in a very unusual way. I was asking for a judgement about the flavour of
the coffee in terms of a word which could only refer to the colour. Ordinary
words used in the wrong sense or in the wrong context may produce nonsense.
1.5 There are many examples of this last kind of nonsense in the writings of Lewis
Carroll. In Alice through the Looking Glass, the messenger is asked whom he
passed on the road. He replies, ‘Nobody.’ ‘Quite right,’ said the King. ‘This
young lady saw him too. So of course Nobody walks slower than you.’ The
indignant messenger protests, ‘Nobody walks faster than I do.’ ‘He can’t do that,’
says the King, ‘or he’d have been here first.’ Here the word nobody is being used
by the King as if it was in the category of proper names. The work can mean
persons in general; their presence being denied (Nobody at all) or it can mean a
proper name (Mr Nobody). The confusion over the two senses leads to amusing
nonsense.
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1.6 You can talk a lot of grammatically correct nonsense by combining words with
contradictory meanings. If the maths master asks you to draw a four-sided
triangle you will not even be able to start the task. This is not because you find
the task too difficult, or because your knowledge and experience are inadequate
(as might be the case if he asked you to draw a plan of the workings of an atomic
power station) but because you will not know what he means. No conceivable
reality, however odd and complex, could fit the description ‘Four-sided triangle’,
because the description consists of two words which are by definition
incompatible.
Summing up
We have found three kinds of nonsense.
1. Nonsense which depends upon the use of words which have no recognisable
meaning. Nicky nocky (paragraphs 1.1 and 1.2).
2. Nonsense which depends upon words which have a recognisable meaning but are
used in ungrammatical contexts. Lamb Mary had little a (paragraph 1.3).
3. Nonsense which uses words with recognisable meanings in grammatically correct
contexts, but in such a manner that the normal meaning of the word seems not to
apply. ‘Does gravity run faster than virtue?’ Sometimes the meanings of the
words will actually conflict. ‘Draw me a straight curved line’ (paragraph 1.4–1.6)
In every case, the test is not, ‘Does it sound funny?’ (it might contain unfamiliar
vocabulary, or be in Japanese) but ‘Is it capable of being true or false?’ If it is not even
capable of falsehood, it cannot be a wrong statement, but merely nonsense.
Discuss
1. ‘Once it was the colour of saying
Soaked my table the uglier side of a hill
With a capsized field where a school sat still
And a black and white patch of girls grew playing’
(Dylan Thomas, Collected Poems 1934–52, J. M. Dent 1952, p89.)
Is this nonsense? Plato distrusted poets because he thought that the power of
charming words led to the belief that something profound was being said, whereas in
fact nothing was being said at all. Was his suspicion justified?
2.
‘Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains and
waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the
point where I was that mountains are not mountains and waters are not waters.
But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For its just that I see
mountains once again as mountains and waters once again as waters.’ (Alan
Watts, the Way of Zen, Penguin Books 1957, p.146.)
Is this nonsense/How do you tell the difference (if any) between nonsense and
paradox? Are there some things you can only say with paradox?
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NOTES ON THE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Chapter 1
1. Words can be used in non-literal ways and retain their meaning or even, as with
vivid figures of speech, add to their meaning. So when the poet says 'a school sat
still' we are not puzzled, as we would be if it was complete nonsense. He clearly
means to contrast the solid immobile block of the building with the moving mass of
uniformed (black and white) girls playing around it. There is no need to insist that
schools cannot sit. But what about 'the colour of saying'? This looks very much like
the sort of case discussed in paragraph 1.4. However, we do speak of a saying as
being colourful, and we have expressions such as 'blue jokes'. So perhaps the
phrase means 'the quality of the conversations we used to have around the table'.
Note that even if nothing is being asserted or claimed, a feeling or mood may be
evoked. The poet may be throwing a few snatches of memory together to try and
re-create the fragmentary nature of our childhood memories. If his poem creates a
mood, then it cannot be true or false. The mood may be sincerely expressed or it
may be a pretence, but it cannot be logically true or false, any more than a piece of
music can be true or false. Only assertions can be true or false (see chapter 2). In
so far as pieces of music, or perhaps poems of this nature, contain no actual
assertions, they have no actual sense and are in fact types of nonsense. But because
something is nonsense it does not mean it is useless! Nonsensical statements can be
strangely moving to the emotions, nonsense can be relaxing, wildly funny, even
exhilarating. Even those who think religious statements are nonsense (see chapter
3) are agreed that it is an impressive and even useful kind of nonsense.
2. This is not nonsense but a terse and paradoxical statement of three stages of opinion
or attitude towards the world which the Zen believer has passed through. First, as a
unreflective man, he takes everything at its face value. Next, he sees through the
externals of life to its deeper reality and its underlying significance – mountains are
now not mountains. Finally, he comes to see that it is the ordinary things of life
which are, after all, of true meaning of life. He returns to the point from which he
set out, but with a deeper understanding – mountains are now mountains again.
Compare this with Donovan's hit song, 'Once there was a mountain and there was
no mountain, then there was.' The difference between nonsense and paradox is often
hard to tell. In general, paradox tries to assert something very precisely, so exactly
that the ordinary words are not exact enough. For example, if asked to say whether
the Mona Lisa is a beautiful woman, you might reply, 'Well, in a way she is and in a
way she is not.' Although it sounds like a straight contradiction, this reply is really
saying that the word 'beautiful' is not sufficiently exact to describe the enigmatic
appearance of the lady. Paradox can be a way of calling attention to two
contrasting aspects of a situation, e.g. 'the poor little rich girl' indicates that the girl
is emotionally impoverished in spite of her great wealth. The expression 'Parting is
such sweet sorrow' similarly points out that there are some aspects of separating
which are sad and others, such as the sudden realization of unexpected tenderness,
which are joyful. See on this paragraph 5.14.
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No, there is no meaningful sentence which can be said only in paradox. If the
paradox has a genuine meaning, it will be possible to unravel the meaning and so
express it in a non- paradoxical way. The result will of course, as you see from the
cases above, be less succinct than the paradox, and much less striking and less
thought-provoking. Genuine nonsense resists the attempt to unravel it.
Expressions such as 'round squares' hide no profound meaning and examination
shows that this is because the ideas are mutually exclusive.
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2
MEANING
2.1 Nonsense is the absence of meaning. Let us now look at the positive side of the
problem. Where do we find meaning?
Individual words, in strict isolation, have little or no meaning. Even a very
concrete noun, such as ‘dog’ has little meaning out of context and in isolation. If I
came up to you in the street and muttered in your ear ‘Dog’, you would wonder
what I meant. Was I trying to say, ‘Look out for the dog!’ or. ‘There is a dog.’ or
‘I want a dog.’ or what? You would assume that there was some kind of link in
my mind between the sound I had uttered and the particular class of creatures
called dogs, so what I had said would give you some information about my mind
at that moment. But this would be psychological information about me; what I
had said could not take on a logical significance (as distinct from psychological)
until I used the word to assert something, e.g. ‘Look!’ or ‘Hooray!’, but usually
the word has to be place in a sentence before it asserts anything, e.g. ‘There is a
dog’; ‘I want you to look.’
2.2 Meaning depends upon assertions. Meaning is usually located not so much in
isolated words as in sentences telling how the words are being used. If this is true
of nouns like ‘dog’, ‘man’ and ‘planet; it is even more true of words like ‘but’,
‘or’ and ‘however’; for such words derive all their significance from the sentence
they are in. The same applies to abstract words such as home, relationship and
contradictory.
2.3 We have already seen, however, in paragraphs 1.4-1.6 that not all apparent
assertions are meaningful. Is there a further test by which we may know that ‘He
is a teenage werewolf’ is a meaning assertion, but ‘He is ruppiltybloop’ is not?
For both sentences have the grammatical form of assertions. But in the case of the
former assertion, one can think of a variety of tests which could be carried out on
the unfortunate subject. One could look at his birth certificate, to see if he is
indeed a teenage. One could call in medical and zoological experts to determine
any lupine characteristics. But how could one carry out tests for the ruppiltybloop
assertion? Not knowing what could characterise such a creature, there would be
no way of telling what would count for the assertion and what would count
against it. It would therefore be revealed as a meaningless assertion. This brings
us to a most important principle: The meaning of any statement is determined by
the steps by which one could verify it. This is sometimes called ‘The Verification
Principle’. Statements which can be verified, in fact or in theory, are meaningful.
Statements which cannot be verified, because you would not even know what to
look for are meaningless.
2.4 It is sufficient to guarantee the meaning of a statement if the steps by which it
could be verified are determinable in principle, even though it may be impossible
to carry them out in practice. For example, the statement ‘There is life on Mars’
cannot be verified in practice at the time of writing, but it is easy to think of many
ways in which it could be verified. The problem is technical, not logical.
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2.5 Note also that the statement ‘The moon is made of cheese’ is not nonsense in the
logical sense in which we are using the word. For although you might reply
‘That’s nonsense!’ if someone asserted that the moon was cheese, you would
mean that the evidence against the proposition is so overwhelmingly strong that
only a fool could continue to hold it. And yet, the very fact that it is possible to
accumulate evidence against the proposition shows that it is not logically
nonsense. You will recall that the distinguishing characteristic of the nonsense
examples in the first part of this study in paragraphs 1.1 and 1.3 was that it was
impossible to provide evidence either for or against them. But in the case of the
moon being made of cheese, we can say very exactly what we would consider
evidence for and against the hypothesis. So it may be silly , or against common
sense to say the earth is flat, but it is not logical nonsense. We know what would
count for or against it.
2.6 Let us suppose someone says to you ‘There is an elephant under the desk’.
However unlikely this may seem, we can think of various factors which would
count for and against it, and it is not therefore nonsensical. You might say, ‘An
elephant wouldn’t fit under the desk’, and the answer might be that it was a special
type of little elephant. But suppose you then stooped down and had a look and
you were then told, ‘Oh, you won’t see it! The breeding process which produces
these elephants also makes them invisible.’ You might gingerly stretch out your
hand and feel nothing and your friend might then say, ‘And I don’t think you will
feel him - these elephants have the quality of yielding like air to any attempt to
touch them.’ In exasperation you would enquire by what steps the existence of
the elephant could be decided one way or the other. If your friend replied that it
could not be proved, there was nothing which could count one way or the other,
even in principle, but that it was a matter of faith, you would be quite correct if
you then dismissed his claim as mere nonsense. For if the meaning of a statement
is to be found in the steps by which it might be verified and if the statement about
the elephant will allow no such steps to be even imaginable, the statement has not
meaning. One might just as well say that there was a ruppiltybloop under the desk
or that there was a ruppiltybloop mider the bigrust.
Summing up
The meaning (logical significance) of a sentence is the method of its verification.
Discuss
Which of the following statements are meaningful and why?
1. The universe is expanding.
2. The angel Gabriel appeared to Mary.
3. Unicorns are found in Central America.
4. The battle of Hastings was a crisis in English history.
5. The sum of the angles of a triangle is 180 degrees.
6. The Clarinet Quintet by Brahms is one of his most lovely works.
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NOTES ON THE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Chapter 2
1. Could anything count against this statement? No immediate observation made with
the unaided senses could do so. If you went outside at night and watched the stars
and reported that there was no apparent expansion, a scientist would not accept
your finding as counting against his theory. However, the scientist would be able to
name certain phenomena which would count against his theory, and this would be
true no matter how abstract and generalized his theory was. It would be enough for
him to name the type of phenomenon even if no scientific instrument existed which
was precise enough to measure the effect he had in mind.
If a scientist held a theory and refused to admit that anything could possibly make
any difference to it, then we would be correct in regarding his theory as logical
nonsense.
2. If we believe literally in angels and we want that belief to be a meaningful one, we
must be ready to state what will count for and against the belief. If one saw a being
like a man but with wings and shining white, that would count in favour of the
theory. So would reliable reports of trustworthy people who had seen, or thought
they had seen such creatures. What would count against angels? If no angels. were
seen for centuries one might simply say that angels were getting shy, or that men
were too sinful to be honoured by a visit. If one person claimed to be seeing an
angel but photography and radar subsequently revealed nothing, that would count
against angels (to say that angels are photograph-proof and that their voices have
the peculiar quality of being not recorded by tape recorders is to start on the
slippery slope towards nonsense, as we saw in the case of the little invisible
elephant). It seems then that belief in literal angels is meaningful. Whether it is also
true that in fact there are angels is another problem. It is meaningful (although as
far as we know, false in fact) to assert the existence of unicorns. If we do not take
angels literally the other alternative open to us is to say that this is the record of a
certain experience couched in terms appropriate to the age. It might be a poetic
way of saying that Mary had reached an important stage in her life. Statements of
this sort could be verified in principle by examining the rest of Mary's life and seeing
if this particular incident was significant in her later history. So in theory the
verifying could be carried out, even though the necessary historical materials are not
available in this case. We would then conclude that the sentence is meaningful but
its truth or falsity cannot in fact, like the question of life on Mars, be determined.
3. Meaningful and false. We know exactly what to look for – horses with horns on
their heads. All expeditions. to Central America have so far failed to find any. It
remains meaningful however, since we know what sort of evidence would make us
change our minds.
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4. A tricky one because it contains two problems. First, did this battle take place?
That is easy, for we know what would count for and against an event being
described as a battle. We would look for men hitting each other with weapons. If
they were found to be sitting quietly playing cards this would count against the
proposition. So in theory it is verifiable. In fact there is quite a lot of evidence in
favour of this particular battle – the Bayeux tapestry etc.. The second part is more
difficult. We have to decide if this battle was a crisis in English history. We would
have to decide what would count for. and against a battle being a crisis. We might
gather historians together and ask them to draw up lists of characteristics of critical
battles. If this could be done then the idea of critical battles would be meaningful.
We would then have to establish whether. the battle of Hastings meets, these
conditions or not. So each part of this sentence – the fact statement about the
battle, and the value judgment about its importance – has to be subject to (a) the
principle of verification to establish meaning-fulness and (b) the facts of the case to
establish truth or falsehood.
5. This can be verified by looking up a dictionary to see what the words in the
sentence mean. The sentence is in fact a definition of a triangle, and its truth
follows inevitably from the rules of geometry and, in a way, books of geometry are
books of rather elaborate definitions. Statements such as these are called analytic
statements and the principle of verification does not apply to them since, given the
correct use of the words they deal with, they cannot logically be false. They do not
assert anything about the world at large, only about the rules of language or maths
or what have you. See paragraphs 3.3 and 3.4.
6. Procedure is similar to that for statement 4. You would ascertain the
meaningfulness of the description 'lovely' by getting musical experts to draw up a
list of qualities which would count for and against the description being applied to a
piece of music. Then, assuming you could get agreement on the first stage, you
would see if this bit of music had those qualities. Of course, it might be the case
that assertions in the field of aesthetics were not in fact meaningful assertions. In
that case, this, sentence would have psychological significance but not logical
significance.
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3
GOD
3.1 Bearing in mind what has been said about the verification principle, let us consider
what kinds of proposition can be tested or verified. The first type of proposition
consists of statements about simple matters of particular fact, i.e. empirical
statements (which means ones which can be tested by reference to the experience
of the senses). If it is claimed that rain is falling, I test the meaning (as well as the
truth) of the statement by sticking my head outside. The statement, ‘It is raining’
can thus be translated into the expression, ‘I get wet’. Statement 4 in the
discussion material of chapter 2 about the unicorn is of this type.
3.2 The second kind of testable sentence is one dealing with statements of general fact
such as scientific theories. These may often be highly abstract and may not be
testable by direct sense experience, This would be the case if a theory postulated
some new sub-atomic particle which could not itself be seen, touched, heard, etc.
However, no matter how abstract and general it may be, the scientist will be able
to state some conditions which support his proposition and will name others
which if they occurred would count against his theory. Statement 1 in the
discussion material of chapter 2, about the expanding universe, is of this type.
3.3 The third kind of statement consists of the statements of basic principles of maths
and logic which are true by definition and may be tested simply by looking up a
dictionary to see what the words mean. This kind of statement is called analytic
because it consists of an analysis or re-definition of a word. Sentences such as
‘All bachelors are unmarried males’ as well as ‘The sum of two and two is four’
are telling us something about the way we use words such as ‘bachelor’ and
‘four’. You will notice that these statements do not tell us anything new about
states of affairs. The convey no actual information. They only tell us what words
mean. Contrast them with statements of the first two types and you will see the
difference. For the sentence ‘Mr Jones is a bachelor’ tells me something new
about the world around me and does not merely define a language symbol. I may,
for example, know that all bachelors are unmarried males but not know whether in
fact there are any bachelors about or not. Even if there were no bachelors, it
would still be true to say that the word bachelor means a single man.
3.4 Analytic propositions have another interesting feature. Just as they tell us nothing
about the actual world of experience, so they cannot be refuted by anything which
might occur in the world of experience. If I came to you and said, ‘What do you
think! I’ve just been talking to Mr Jones, who turns out to be married and yet is
certainly a single male. He must be an exception to the rule,’ you would
understand that I did not know the correct use of the words ‘married’ and ‘single’.
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These terms are mutually exclusive, so that the expression ‘a married single man’
is nonsense, like ‘a round square’. No, the truth that bachelors are single males is
not derived from examination of actual single males but from a definition. It is
impossible therefore that any actual fact can count against an analytic statement.
They are immune from danger of falsification. But they win their immunity at the
high price of saying nothing about anything apart from themselves.
3.5 Into which of these three classes does the proposition ‘God exists’ fall? If we say
it is an analytic statement, that is, God exists by definition, then we are merely
saying something about the use of the word ‘God’. We might in the same way say
‘God is love’ is true by definition, since (we might argue the word God means the
same as the word love. But we must remember that analytic statements do not tell
us about the world beyond themselves, and yet when a religious person says he
believes that there is a God, or that God is love, he surely intends to be saying
something about his view of reality. He thinks he is talking about a state of affairs
outside himself, and not merely acting as a sort of religious word-book.
3.6 If such propositions are not analytic, then they must fall into the other classes
which were discussed at the beginning of this chapter, paragraphs 3.1 and 3.2.
These are called synthetic statements, because they synthesize or put together two
or more different aspects of reality so as to yield new information, e.g. the apple is
ripe. The relationship between the two terms is not a necessary one, as it is with
analytic statements, but an observed one. And we have seen that although
synthetic statements have the obvious advantage of telling us something
meaningful about the world, they have to face the risk of being wrong. The apple
may, after all, not be ripe.
Now if the believer claims that his statements about God are synthetic statements,
he falls into a number of difficulties.
3.7 The first one is that religious believers usually claim to know with absolute
certainty. A true believer does not say that on the whole he is inclined to think
that there is a God, nor that it is firmly held opinion that there is a God. He rejects
the word ‘opinion’ altogether as being unsatisfactory, and speaks of ‘knowing’.*
*We should distinguish between factual knowledge of the external world
(certainty) and an inner feeling of confidence (certitude). Which does the believer
mean when he says he knows God?
All synthetic statements, because they are in principle open to falsification, must
fall below the level of absolute certainty. Certain philosophers, however, such as
the Cambridge moral philosopher G.E. Moore, claim that statements such as
‘keeping promises is part of our duty’ are synthetic. That is, they give us real
information about external reality and yet because they spring from a sort of moral
instinct or intuition they are incapable of being proved false. We just KNOW they
are true. See pp. 54f. for some comments on this. Could the believer claim that
belief in God was a kind of intuition or a self-evident truth?
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Some truths are so highly probable that we rarely if ever doubt them - satisfied by
a probability however high? Perhaps the believer could reply that what he claims
is not certainty but certitude. The difference is that the former is objective, and
the latter subjective. The believer claims to experience complete inner security or
a feeling of absolute certitude. Is he compelled to claim also that his inner must
correspond to a state of affairs outside himself, e.g. the reality of God? In other
words can he be content with certitude and admit he has no absolute objective
certainty?
3.8 There are other more serious difficulties. Is saying, ‘I believe that man is my
father’? Religious people sometimes say that their belief is a simple matter of fact
confirmed by experience as immediate as that which leads us to believe in the
reality of our parents. But what the religious person usually means is that he has
had certain kinds of inner emotional, mystical, perhaps moral experiences and that
from these he concludes that there is a God.
(a) If he agues that he had experienced God directly, then ‘God’ becomes a word
he uses to describe a certain human experience. But most Christians think there is
more to God than that. If God is just a part of human experience then in what
sense can he be called Creator? If he is what we experience, he can have no
existence apart from our experience.
(b) On the other hand, if he is using his experiences as a proof of the existence of
God he runs into other problems. For his claim becomes rather like a scientific
theory.. He claims that a supernatural being is causing certain sensations in him.
By what mean could this claim be verified? If we ask the believer how his
experience would have to change before he would abandon his belief, he will
probably reply that even the great saints have known the dark night of the soul and
that he would continue to trust God even if his experience failed to be so vivid.
Would not the sceptic ultimately have to conclude that there is little to choose
between saying that the experiences are caused y God and that they are caused by
X or by Oberon, King of the Fairies?
3.9 When the believer speaks of God in broader terms, his statements sound much
more like scientific theories of the more abstract type, e.g. ‘God is the Creator of
Heaven and Earth’, or ‘god is Universal Love’. But when we ask the believer
what changes would have to appear in the universe before he would abandon his
belief, there seems to be no answer. If he is taxed with the latest cosmological
theory, he will say that his belief is that God created everything and he is willing
to leave the manner of it to scientist. If the suffering of the world is pointed out to
him, he replies by saying that it is all for a mysterious purpose. Nothing is
incompatible with a statement, that statement cannot in fact be about states of
affairs at all.
It seems at this stage of our discussion that religious statements do not fall into
any of the classes of meaningful propositions which we outlined at the beginning
of this section. This consideration has led a number of important and influential
philosophers to the conclusion that religious statements are literally meaningless.
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Talk about God, they claim, is in the class of logical nonsense since talk is
incapable of verification. The fact that the word is revered and charged with
emotion should not prevent us, they say, from seeing that it has no meaning. One
might, they say, as well speak of Gid or Gad as of God.
Summing up
Certain philosophers claim that there are only three classes of meaningful statements:
a) Particular matters of fact
(synthetic statements)
b) General matters of fact
c) Truths of definition (analytic statements)
Statements about God do not seem to fall into any of these classes. Whatever
emotional comfort people may draw from reciting them, they appear to have no logical
significance. Incapable of verification, they seem therefore incapable of bearing
meaning. Neither true nor false, they would be mere nonsense. (See chapter 4 for
what the believers say in reply and paragraph 5.12 for other classes of sentences.)
Discuss
1. Professor Antony Flew reproduces a famous parable by John Wisdom about two
explorers who find a clearing in a jungle which looks as if someone may be looking
after it. But no gardener is ever heard or seen. The believing explorer is not
convinced even when an electrified fence is set up and patrolled with dogs. There
are no shrieks, the dogs never give cry. ‘But there is a gardener who comes secretly
to look after the garden he loves.’ The sceptical explorer despairs. ‘But what
remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible
intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from
no gardener at all?
See New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. Antony Flew and Alisdair
MacIntyre, SCM press 1956, ch. VI p. 96.
What reply does the religious believer have to the point made in this story?
2. ‘Suppose I were to tell a story about a square circle. There clearly can be no such
entity, but I might go on to say who invented this curious object, what his early
struggles were like and so forth, I might say how the square circle was lost at one
time and what crusades and pilgrimage’s were undertaken to recover it, what
battles were lost and won, what fortunes made and forfeited. This story might be
told with more liveliness by some than by others, some would give it more colour
and romance, some would tell it with much more eloquence and passion to it, some
would tell it with much more intelligence and consistency than others and with a
profounder understanding of human nature. But at the heart of it all there would be
utter nonsense, for we cannot even conceive of anything being square and round in
the same respect. So we have in religion inspired poets, gifted hymn writers,
thinkers who far excel others in shrewdness and consistency, men of great
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psychological insight and so forth. But at the heart of all this is irredeemable
nonsense and the time has now come to expose it and rescue what we can of the
trimmings if we like.’ (H. D. Lewis, Teach Yourself Philosophy of Religion, EUP
1965, p.71. By the way, Professor Lewis does not himself think that this is a correct
description of belief in God.) is this the plight of the believers?
3. ‘... a branding of religious assertions as “nonsense” need not be anti-religious. It
can be interpreted as an attack on those who in the name of religion are perverting
religion. It can be interpreted as a return to the truth about religion ... what is
essential about religion is its non-rational side, the part that cannot be ... put into
words.’ (T. McPherson, ‘Religion as the Inexpressible’ in New Essays in
Philosophical Theology, p.133.)
Is this true, or partly true? What are the non-rational or inexpressible aspects of
religion and why are they important
‘I know God exists because I talked with him this morning’ (Billy Graham). Discuss
NOTES ON THE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Chapter 3
1. The believer could admit the force of the parable and agree that his belief in God is
logically without meaning. Damaging although this admission seems, it is a course
which a number of thoughtful Christians have taken (see chapter 4). Paul Tillich,
the important American theologian who died in 1965, believed that God was not an
entity, a being, or a god, since that would be to put him in a class with others, i.e. a
class of entities, of beings, of gods. God is not a spiritual 'individual' and the protest
of the atheist is justified. Indeed, it is just as atheistic to assert the existence of such
a god as to deny it. In fact, God is the ground of being, the power of being, or
being- itself. God is therefore not manifest in the clearing any more than in the
jungle. He is the depth of all that is. To what extent do you think this view helps
the Christian retain a meaningful faith? Other Christians might reply that the parable
treats God like a scientific hypothesis which explains how the world works. God,
they believe, can only be known through God, i.e. only as he reveals himself, not as
we force him to disclose himself by a process of laboratory tests. He reveals himself
not in particular scientific phenomena but in history and in the moral and spiritual
experience of men. and particularly in Christ without whom nothing Christian can
be said of God at all. The leading Christian thinker in this school, and indeed the
modern creator of this type of theology was the great Swiss theologian, Karl Barth.
David Jenkins, in Guide to the Debate about God (Lutterworth Press 1966), deals.
with many of the modern Christian reactions to the kind of situation the parable of
the jungle outlines and his book will repay careful reading and discussion.
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2. This is the same kind of situation as in the first question, with the added suggestion
that the Christian idea of God contains conceptions which are as mutually exclusive
as the ideas of roundness and squareness. Clearly, if the idea of God is selfcontradictory, the idea could only be retained at the price of a complete sacrifice of
the reason. One might, for example, maintain that the proposition 'God is perfectly
loving and perfectly powerful' does contain a contradiction in view of the evident
suffering of God's world. On a much more crude level, one might maintain that
God could not be three and one simultaneously. Christians must therefore try to
expose the misunderstandings (if that is what they are! ) of their idea of God which
have lead to accusations of this sort. Don't be sidetracked on to the question of
whether in fact there is a God (see paragraphs 4.1 and 4.2). All we are concerned
with here is whether it is meaningful to make an assertion about the existence of
God. It cannot be meaningful in any logical sense if it is self-contradictory. Of
course, even if the Christian can show that the idea of God is. not selfcontradictory, it is still open to the atheist to maintain that although he now
understands what the Christian means, he does not in fact think there is such a
being. The situation would then be like the case of the missing unicorn.
3. Most Christians would agree that it was at least partly true. Most would probably
not agree, however, that it was wholly true. By 'non-rational' McPherson probably
means 'that which is not particularly relevant or available to the enquiry of reason'.
He does not mean that which is actually irrational, i.e. contradicted by reason.
Non-rational elements of religion might be the feelings of benevolence to mankind
which the religious man cultivates, or other feelings, such as humility, and gratitude
towards life, or reverence towards life. Worship is in a sense non-rational since it is
the expression of an attitude rather than the making of propositions. Mystical
experience comes in here as well. Many might feel that these aspects of religion are
indeed the most important ones, and that without them religion would be a barren
set of statements not affecting the personal life. The real issue here, however, is
whether these attitudes and experiences can still persist without the propositions
about God, Christ, eternal life and so on. McPherson evidently thinks they can and
must (see paragraphs 4.5, 4.6 and 4.7).
4. The important problem this raises is to what extent talking to a human being is like
talking to God. A human experience of communication is here being used to
describe religious experience. This is obviously an analogy or illustration and must
not be taken too literally. For example, human talking is genuine communication,
but 'talking' to God is not genuine communication since 'your heavenly Father
knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask him'. God is not informed by
what we tell him! Consider how often this is got around in prayers, not only by
actually telling God, but by reminding him (!) that he knows – 'Thou knowest, O
Lord...'
To what extent does the experience of talking to someone provide proof of his
existence? Surely what proves your existence is not that I talk to you, but that I see
you, watch your response, hear your voice coming back and so on. Talking to God
is not like hearing a heavenly telephone since it is private and the 'voice' cannot be
identified or verified by anyone else. It is subjective.
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The speaker is then asserting that he has a feeling of certainty which grows out of
his religious experiences. We should describe this as creating certitude not
certainty. For a feeling of reality in speaking to someone, however vivid, can be
based on unreality. Consider the experience of talking to a friend only to find he
was asleep all the time, or shouting out to him in the next room, only to find, when
you had told him a long story, that he had quietly slipped out of the back door.
You have a way of checking up to see if your feeling of communication
corresponds to a real communication, but in talking with God, there appears to be
no way of checking up on whether our feelings correspond to reality. Hence the
New Testament saying, 'We walk by faith, not by sight.'
Billy Graham's statement would therefore appear. to be a moving indication of deep
religious faith and vivid religious experience but not to convey a proof or to suggest
a method of verifying 'God' statements. The unbeliever could maintain correctly
that it is psychologically interesting, but little more.
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4
SOME REPLIES BY THEISTS
4.1. The kind of objection to belief in God which we have been thinking about is much
more subtle and damaging than the objections which used to be produced by the
atheists of the nineteenth century. For the debate between believers and
unbelievers a century ago, or even fifty years ago, was about evidence. The
unbeliever denied that the believer had adequate reasons for his belief and the
believer countered by trying to show that his reasons for faith were sufficient. But
both sides were agreed on what they were arguing about. There was a broad
agreement about the meaning of terms such as ‘infinite Being’ and ‘Almighty
God’.
4.2. The debate during the last thirty years or so has moved at the deeper level of the
nature of the very language in which the debate about God was being carried on.
The philosophers whose views were outlined in the last chapters (they were often
called logical positivists) maintained that once the rules governing meaningful
assertions were understood, it would be seen that the arguments both for God’s
existence and against them were equally vain, since the basic vocabulary itself was
nonsensical. These modern philosophers do not deny the existence of God, they
maintain simply that they cannot see any possible meaning in the claim that God
exists.
4.3. The modern debate about God centres less, therefore, on the truth of claims about
God and more on their meaning. Christians have been trying to show not so much
that their claims are true, but that the things they say do at least have a distinct
meaning, whatever the final judgement about the truth or falsehood of their claims
may be. It is rather like the situation when you are making up your mind about the
justice or injustice of a certain Act of Parliament. You read the wording of the
Act and find that your first task is to try to understand the particular legal jargon
which is used. There might be certain legal expressions used in rather a special
way and you would have to grasp the nature of this legal language before any
sensible discussion of the fairness of the Act could start. So it is with religious
language.
4.4. Those who have defended belief in God from these charges against religious
language are broadly correct. Various suggestions are then offered as to how
Christianity may manage, or even prosper, without any need to speak of
supernatural realities such as God, the soul, and eternal life. The second group
rejects the charges themselves, claiming that the attitude towards language is too
simple or that there are various errors of logic in the approach of the philosophers
concerned. In the rest of this section we will look at some of the suggestions
made by the first group. Suggestions made by the second group are dealt with in
chapter five.
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4.5. Some Christian thinkers believe that the most important feature of Christianity is
the quality of life, the inner experience, the personal attitudes which the Christian
adopts. They are therefore not unhappy in discarding language about supernatural
subjects and concentrating on the experiences of religion which seem more
important to them. A number of such theologians have proposed to ‘translate’
talk about supernatural subjects into talk about human (Christian) attitudes. So,
for example: ‘some experiences called meeting God will probably be experiences
of meeting a person who loves you.’ God created the world’ is really saying:
‘Everything which we call material can be used in such a way that it contributes to
the well-being of men.’ Others suggest that to believe that God created the world
is to express your own personal sense of dependence upon God. It means that
you acknowledge him as your creator, not that you hold any particular view about
the origin of our material universe.
4.6. Here are one or two other examples of interpreting Christian doctrines as if they
describe Christian experiences and nothing but experiences.
‘The resurrection is a way of affirming the forgiving purpose of God’ (R. G.
Smith, Secular Christianity, Collins 1966, p. 13), that is, it is the belief that new
invigorating life comes to us when by faith we accept that God in Christ truly
loves us. It is not a belief about something which happened to Jesus’ body.
‘... to say that God is personal is to say ... that in personal relationships we touch
the final meaning of existence as nowhere else’ (J. A. T. Robinson, Honest to
God, SCM Press 1963, p. 49). So to talk of God is really to talk of human beings
in a very serious frame of mind.
4.7. Another group of Christians see the mainspring of their faith not in the attitudes
and experiences of the religious life, but inethics. For them, a Christian is a person
who has decided to live a good life - not indeed any sort of good life, a goodness
of which is illustrated in the New Testament and particularly in the life of Jesus.
The various doctrines of Christianity are then really ways of expressing in vivid
and often metaphorical terms this basic commitment to a good way of life. So, for
example, when a Christian declares that ‘God is love’ he is announcing his
intention to live a loving life - the sort of loving life which Jesus lived (e.g.
Braithwaite - see ‘For further reading’ on page 49 of this booklet). He puts his
assertion in terms of ‘God’ and so on because this kind of symbol, hallowed by use
in devotion and sacred literature, is likely to inspire him most really to do what he
says he is going to do, namely, live a life of love. But if he thought about it he
would realise that he is not really talking about a supreme being ‘beyond space and
time’ - he cannot be, for these expressions are contradictory and therefore
meaningless.
4.8. In the last six or seven years a small group of theologians have appeared in
America who describe themselves as Christian Atheists and take as their slogan
‘God is Dead’. Some of them, e.g. Paul van Buren, have come to this position as
a result of the criticisms of religious language which we have been considering,
and others for a variety of other reasons. But they all share a conviction that
Christianity must concern itself exclusively with the present world and abandon all
attempts to speak of transcendent, supernatural, or other - worldly objects.
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Summing up
Some Christian welcome the criticisms of the linguistic philosophers and regard their
writings not only as a valuable aid to clear thinking and as a way of helping Christians
to see what they should be really concerned about, but also as being correct in
dismissing any possible meaning in the claim that God exists.
Discuss
1. ‘We shall summarise our interpretation of the language of the Easter event. Jesus of
Nazareth was a free man in his own life, who attracted followers and created
enemies according to the dynamics of personality and in a manner comparable to the
effect of other liberated persons in history upon people about them. He died as a
result of the threat that such a free man poses for insecure and bound men. His
disciples were left no less insecure and frightened. Two days later, Peter, and the
other disciples, had an experience of which Jesus was the sense-content. They
experienced a discernment situation in which Jesus, the free man whom world, were
seen in a new way. From that moment, the disciples began to possess something of
the freedom of Jesus. His freedom began to be “contagious”. Foe the disciples
therefore, the story of Jesus could not be told simply as the story of a free man who
had died. Because of the new way in which the disciples saw him and because of
what had happened to them, the story had to include the event of Easter. In telling
the story of Jesus of Nazareth, therefore, they told it as the story which they
proclaimed as the Gospel for all men.’ (Paul van Buren, The Secular Meaning of
the Gospel, SCM Press 1963, p. 134.)
Do you think this is a satisfactory description of the Christian statement ‘He rose
from the dead’?
2. Is it true that living a good life is the true purpose and inner meaning of the
Christian religion? If so, why does the Apostles’ Creed say nothing about this side
of the Christian life?
3. If it were possible to have religious experiences - e.g. through drugs - without the
intellectual embarrassment of being committed to beliefs in supernatural realities,
would anything be lost in the process?
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NOTES ON THE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Chapter 4
1. The resurrection is here regarded as a projection into the literal world of bodies,
graves, locked doors and meals, of what was originally a spiritual experience, a new
way of looking at Jesus. The story of the empty tomb is thus seen as a sort of
parable of Jesus' freedom, just as the Ascension is now regarded by many not as a
literal event but as a symbol of Christ's lordship over heaven and earth. In deciding
if this is 'satisfactory' we need to ask 'satisfactory to whom and to what? Is it
satisfactory to the New Testament evidence? Note that the early church, as
witnessed to in the Acts and Epistles, did not make the empty tomb story explicit
and this may indicate that their original experience of resurrection was a spiritual
experience and not an objective discovery of certain facts, e.g. that the body was
missing.
2. Consider this in the light of the saying 'Religion is grace; ethics is gratitude.' The
ethical part of the Christian life cannot stand alone but is a response to the truths
stated in the creed. Note that the creed refers to 'the forgiveness of sins' so
indicating the attitude of gracious acceptance by God of the one who in faith enters
into the relationship of which the creed is the symbol.
3. Yes, a lot would be lost. The experience of the one who is under the influence of
drugs does not correspond to the reality around him. He feels exhilaration or sees
visions but his reactions are not prompted by the reality facing him. The Christian
believes that his experience is reflective of reality outside himself. He believes that
the truth about life has found him, and that he is not stewing in his own spiritual
juice. So, for example, the Christian not only feels loving, but believes that love
corresponds to the real truth about life itself He can go on having faith in love even
when he does not feel loving. See paragraph 5.1 for notes on this.
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5
1
CRITICISMS OF THE VERIFICATION PRINCIPLE
5.1. Many Christians are dissatisfied with the replies to the challenge of the
philosophers of language* given so far. They point out that if this sort of reply is
all that can be made, then really Christians must stop talking of religion as truth.
Christians may speak of religious experiences and religious attitudes, but if they
admit that their claims do not refer to any reality beyond themselves, there can be
no question of an objective religious truth. Many Christians maintain hat
statements such as ‘God created the world’ and ‘Jesus Christ is Lord of all’ are
in some sense stating facts. Unusual facts no doubt, but there is some element of
fact in them. The factual aspect does not exhaust the meaning of these beliefs no doubt we are to believe in them, to worship and pray by means of them, and
to live a good life appropriate to them, but all these other aspects depend upon
some element of fact, or objective truth, described by the actual statements.
5.2. Attention has also been given by philosophers themselves to certain weaknesses
in the principle of verification.
The main criticisms are as follows:
First criticism: How can we tell if the principle of verification is itself
meaningful? You will remember that the famous principle states that the meaning
of any statement is determined by the methods by which it could be verified.
Now we must ask whether this statement itself will fit into any of the classes of
meaningful, i.e verifiable, statements. Is it analytic or is it synthetic? If it is
analytic, then it is merely a definition of terms, e.g. that meaning equals method
of verification. It would not tell us anything about actual sentences, for, you
recall, analytic propositions define words and do not impart actual information
about states of affairs. There would, therefore, seem to be no particular words.
The linguistic philosopher may reply that the verification principle is just a handy
and convenient rule of thumb for the use of language. And the religious believer
may quite logically reply that it is not handy and convenient to him and he will
not use it but will adopt some other definition of meaning!
5.3. One the other hand, the principle of verification may be synthetic. In this case, it
would be an observation drawn from sense experience, and we would have to
ask what kind of sense experience we would use to verify it. But here we notice
that the verification principle rests upon a logical distinction, a distinction
between analytical and synthetic statements. This is a logical observation about
the nature of things, not a generalisation drawn from examining a lot of different
actual sentences. Because it is a logical distinction, no sense experience could
possibly upset it (see paragraph 1.6). You could not ‘come upon’ a sentence
which to everyone’s amazement did not fit into either category and which made
philosophers create a third category into which the new discovery could be
fitted! No, nothing like this is possible. Logical distinctions are not established
* In paragraph 4.2 this philosophical school was described as ‘logical positivist’. They are also
known as ‘linguistic philosophers’ or ‘philosophers of language’ since they are dealing with the use of
words. See paragraph 5.10.
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by sense experience and cannot be overthrown by sense experience. If the
principle of verification is synthetic it must on its own terms be a bit of nonsense,
since it is impossible to verify it by reference to experience.
5.4. Second criticism: The school of philosophers which has made most use of the
principle of verification has been in the great tradition of English empirical
philosophy, a tradition which includes such famous names as Locke, Berkeley
and Hume. This tradition of philosophy believes that all true knowledge comes
to us through our physical senses. The empirical background of modern
linguistic philosophy may be seen in the insistence that synthetic statements
should be verified by reference to sense experience.
5.5. From this it follows that one way of attacking the linguistic philosophers is to
question their theory about how we obtain knowledge and to ask whether in fact
it is true that all our knowledge comes to us through the senses.
5.6. (i) The law of contradiction, i.e. the belief that it is absurd to contradict oneself.
Where do we get this basic conviction from? What makes us feel that it is
absurd to contradict ourselves? Although our experiences of being found to look
stupid when we do contradict ourselves no doubt impress the truth deeply on us,
‘the validation of it does not depend directly on experience. But this principle is
basic to all our thinking, and there seems thus to be something non-empirical at
the centre of all thought and experience'’(Lewis, p. 132).
5.7. (ii) Truths of mathematics. Although it is often said that these are mere
definitions and do not therefore give us any new knowledge about anything, H.
D. Lewis suggests that this is true only of the elementary forms of maths. ‘We
know what 245 and 367 mean without having any notion what they will yield
when multiplied. That would take time to discover, any the solutions to some
problems require exceptional gift and in some cases genius. Surly we learn
something new in the process (ibid., p. 133).
5.8. (iii) Value judgement in morals and art. Many thinkers, of course, regard ethical
judgements as derived from our experience, the pressures of society and so on.
Others regard them as merely expressing emotional attitudes of approval or
disapproval. But there remain important ethical judgements (e.g. that it is wrong
to cause pain and right to promote happiness) are insights which come to us from
a source other than our own sense experience. The same is said to be true of
theories of beauty.
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5.9. All these points are hotly debated. But it is worth mentioning them if only to
point out that the empirical philosophers have not got the thing sewn up
completely. There are important areas of human experience within which there is
at least room for manoeuvre on the part of the religious believer. If he can show
that some knowledge is not derived from the senses he can go on to claim that
his knowledge of God is, in a similar way, not from the senses.
5.10. Third criticism: The philosophical school we are considering is not only rooted
in empiricism (see paragraph 5.4). Its other source of inspiration is the study of
language. This is why these thinkers are often called ‘linguistic philosophers’.
Just as a moment ago we questioned whether their attitude to human knowledge
and experience was sound, we may also ask whether their treatment of language
is sound. Here are some examples of ways in which their view of the role of
language may be criticised.
5.11. (i) These philosophers believe that language has only two functions - language
either aids clarity of expression and thought by defining words (analytic
propositions), or it informs us of new facts about the world (synthetic
propositions). It is because language can be used only in these two ways that all
meaningful propositions are reduced to the types which were outlined in chapter
3 (3.1-3.5).
5.12. But it may be claimed that this is a serious over simplification of how in fact we
do use language. We do indeed say things such as ‘Tom is tall’ (synthetic) and
‘People of six feet or more are tall’ (analytic). But don’t we also say things like
‘Is he tall!’ Suppose I said ‘Tome is leaving the room.’ That would be a
meaningful statement because it could be verified empirically, e.g. by sticking a
length of cotton over the doorway and seeing if it were broken after Tom had
seemed to pass through and so on. But suppose I said, “Tom! Leave the room
immediately!’ How could that sentence be verified? After all, nothing might
happen and Tom might refuse to move. Does that mean the command is without
meaning? Surely not. Let us take another example. Sometimes language does
not so much impart information as actually do something in its own right.
Examples are ‘Arise, Sir Francis’ and ‘I name this ship Venus’. Here language is
actually doing something, but it would seem difficult to show how one would
prove or disprove by appeal to the senses that it is really doing anything when the
words are spoken.
5.13. These uses of language may be termed the imperative use, the interrogatory use,
the performatory use and so on. They are all perfectly normal and in the
ordinary commonsense understanding of the expression, meaningful. Yet none
of them will easily respond to the demand for verification. This suggests that
there may be something wrong with the principle itself as a test of meaning.
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5.14. (ii) Another example of the rigid attitude of the older type of linguistic
philosophy may be seen in its attitude to paradox. When describing a woman
with a Mona Lisa type of beauty, I might at first say, ‘well, she’s beautiful, and
yet again she’s not beautiful.’ In strict logical terms this sentence contains a flat
contradition and must therefore be meaningless. But we would all understand
that such a sentence was seeking to draw attention to an enigmatic quality of the
lady’s expression. Such a sentence is saying that the word ‘beautiful’ is not quite
sharply defined enough to convey this elusive quality and the paradoxical way of
putting it is an invitation to sharpen up the adjectives, or to suggest others of
greater precision. So we see that paradox can be a way of pointing to a deeper
insight. Paradox can also be a way of trying to hide the fact that one is talking
nonsense. The point is that the principles of the logical positivists did not seem
to have any resource by which the legitimate and the illegitimate uses of paradox
could be distinguished.
Summing up
The ideas of the logical positivists, expressed particularly in the demand that
statements should submit to verification by sense experience, may be challenged in
several ways.
1. The principle of verification itself is not free from logical oddity.
2. There may be other ways of knowing apart from the senses.
3. Language itself is more varied and subtle than the verification principle admits.
Discuss
1. ‘When we run over our libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we
make? If we take in our hand any volume, of divinity or school metaphysics, for
instance; let us ask - does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or
number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact
and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but
sophistry and illusion.’
David Hume
2. Do you agree with Hume that this would be a good way to purge our libraries?
3. Does the study of pure maths create fresh knowledge? Or does it only lead to more
and more exact definitions?
(a) WAITER WANTED: EXPERIENCE NECESSARY BUT NOT ESSENTIAL.
Sign outside Chinese restaurant.
(b) ... whose service is perfect freedom.
Book of Common Prayer
Which of the paradoxes above are genuinely illuminating? How do you tell which is
in which class?
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NOTES ON THE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Chapter 5
1. Note that Hume's first class (abstract reasoning) is like the analytical class of
statements, and his second class (experimental reasoning) is like the class of
synthetic statements. What about novels? Under the heading of 'divinity' wouldn't
some books pass even Hume's test? Biblical commentaries and histories of the
church, for example? What about editions of stage plays? Or could we say that
these, like poetry, contain matters of psychological fact? In that case, surely text
books on psychology would express these facts rather better?
2. I must submit this one to those members of the discussion group who are
mathematicians!
3. The question is whether the sentences contain words which are really mutually
exclusive in their meaning or if the crucial words are only contrasted, or mutually
exclusive in only part of their meaning. So 'necessary' and 'not essential' are
mutually exclusive by definition. The Chinese manager did not know the meanings
of the English words. But the words 'service' and 'perfect freedom' are not
necessarily mutually exclusive. If, for example, freedom is the opportunity to be
truly yourself by being faithful to your highest ideals, it is possible that the service of
God could provide that opportunity.
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6
THE USES OF LANGUAGE
6.1
In the last section it was pointed out that the attitude of the older type of
linguistic philosophy towards language was rather narrow. It must not be
thought that the objections raised are merely an attempt by Christians to avoid
the force of the arguments of the linguistic philosophers, for in fact it is the
leaders of that philosophical school who, after further reflection on the nature of
language, have again led the way in pointing out many additional uses.
6.2
Here the philosopher Wittgenstein, who was himself one of the pioneers of
logical positivism, lists some of the uses to which language is put:
Giving orders and obeying them.
Describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurements.
Constructing an object from a description (a drawing).
Reporting an event.
Forming and testing a hypothesis.
Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams.
Making up a story and reading it.
Play-acting.
Singing catches.
Making a joke; telling it.
Solving a problem in practical arithmetic.
Translating from one language into another.
Asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying.
He goes on:
‘It is interesting to compare the multiplicity of kinds of word and sentence, with
what logicians have said about the structure of language’ (Philosophical
Investigations, Blackwell 1953, pp. 11e-12e).
6.3
It became clear that the strict division into only two types of statement and the
demand that to be meaningful a statement should submit to the demand for
empirical verification was a good deal more tidy than the actual structure and use
of language itself warranted. The earlier linguistic philosophers, although their
valuable work had, in its time, marked an important advance, now seem to have
been guilty of forcing language into their own preconceived notions of what it
should be like.
6.4
‘The image one gets of verification analysis is too much that of a sausage
grinder, receiving a great variety of a cuts of meat but turning out a neat row of
uniform wurst (Ferre, Language, Logic and God, Eyre and Spottiswoode 1962,
p. 55).
How then are we to tell when a sentence is meaningful? For the problems about
nonsense and meaning outlined in chapters 1 and 2 are still just as pressing. We
have seen enough to know that just as pressing. We have seen enough to know
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that just because a sentence cannot be subject to empirical testing, it does not
mean it is without any sense and meaning. As Professor Ferre puts it, ‘To say of
a given sentence that it can be verified is not t say anything about the
meaningfulness of the sentence, but to characterise it as being a sentence of a
particular type, namely, an empirical sentence’ (ibid., p. 63).
6.5
We must state a new principle of meaningfulness as follows: The meaning of
language is found in its use. This approach is often called functional analysis
because it seeks to discover meaning in the role or function of a sentence. How
does functional analysis because it seeks to discover the meaning of a sentence
by this method are as follows:
6.6
(I) Examination of the typical case. You must find an example of the word being
used in a normal everyday manner, and take its use there as a control for any odd
or unusual uses you may have come across. For example, the Zen riddle asks,
‘What becomes of my fist when I open my hand?’ To solve the puzzle of the
meaning of the question, let us take some typical cases of the use of the word
‘fist’; ‘He hammered on the table with his fist’; ‘He shook his fist at me’. Now
you will quickly see that in all these cases, ‘fist’ refers to the hand being in a
particular position - the clenched position. You don’t hammer with the palm of
your hand - you slap! And you don’t threaten a man by holding up your hand
but by pretending to punch him, i.e. by clenching your fist. The expressions ‘fist’
and ‘open hand’ are therefore mutually exclusive like ‘straight’ and ‘curved’.
The answer to the riddle is simply that when one position takes over, the first
naturally and by necessity, ceases. The key to the word (describing word
(describing the position or shape) not a straightforward noun.
6.7
(ii) The use of a significant comparison. If the meaning of a statements is
unclear, we may ask ourselves in what other words could the same thing have
been said, or by what other means could the same effect have been achieved. If
when travelling in Israel, I observe that people say ‘Shalom’ to one another, the
meaning of this word will become clear to me when I notice that shaking hands
seems to be a parallel or even substitutionary activity. ‘Shalom’ will be a
greeting symbol, like shaking hands. This will be a significant (illuminating)
comparison between two similar symbols - a word and a deed.
6.8
(iii) The one who uses the language must be allowed to explain its use. This
does not mean that an individual can make up his own use for a word. That is
clearly impossible, since words are socially agreed conventions of
communication. No one person can therefore actually change the meaning of a
word just by whim, although words may be enriched by personal action, as when
we say ‘I never knew the meaning of courage until I saw him in action!’
6.9
All language is social. But society is complex and contains many sub-societies.
These may have their own sub-language, and sociologists may and do write
special works on the language of the San Francisco beatniks, or the London
Chinese restaurant proprietors. These groups may use expressions which would
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be literally meaningless to the outsider, and nonsensical when analysed by the
strict and old-fashioned rules of language. What, for example, would we make
of the language of tennis, where the score of a player rises from thirty to forty
although he only wins one point! This seems mathematically improbable. Do all
the points in tennis have the same value? The first is called 'fifteen', the second
'thirty' and the last of the numerical series 'forty'. From this, one could deduce
that the first winning action was worth more (15) than the third (only ten). In
actual fact the reverse is the case, since the player who gets to 'forty' first has a
more critical advantage and one could therefore claim that his latest point was
worth more to him, not less! The language of tennis is a private language, agreed
amongst the players. It is not without meaning, but the meaning can only be
discovered by asking the players what they are trying to convey.
6.10 The language of religion is the language of a sub- culture. There is a group of
people who speak like this. They have their traditions, their rituals, their
literature. It is within the circle of the group, and not in abstract theory, that we
must conclude our search for the meaning of the word 'God'.
Summing up
The more recent work of linguistic philosophy stresses the variety of language and this
leads to new ways of discovering the meaning of language. If the meaning is to be
found in the actual use of the language, we must discover what the people who speak
the sentences themselves understand by them.
Discuss
1. Sometimes students of physics find themselves wondering if anything is really solid.
For, they ponder, even things we usually think are solid are in fact whirling masses
of electrons. Can this confusion be removed by applying the methods of functional
analysis – i.e. can you look for a typical case of the word 'solid' and so on?
2. In 1.5 we looked at the example from Lewis Carroll about the King and Nobody.
How would you clarify this problem for the King?
3. Can you think of examples taken from the various disciplines which members of
your discussion group study (geography, music etc.) of use of language which
might strike the outsider as being odd or misleading? How would you explain the
correct use of these expressions to such an interested but ignorant observer?
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NOTES ON THE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Chapter 6
1. Typical cases of the word 'solid' might be 'I was back on solid earth again'. 'I struck
him a solid blow to the body.' 'The Australian eleven have now built up a pretty
solid score.' 'You can trust him – he's as solid as a rock.' In these cases we see that
the word 'solid' is used when one wants to express that aspect of matter which
resists penetration by the human body. or which meets the human body with firm
resistance. From this comes the metaphorical use, when 'solid' means reliable,
trustworthy, that which will support and maintain. There are other ways of
regarding matter. One can look upon it not as something resisting the body, but as
that which is composed of electric particles and so on. The word 'solid' will not
apply to matter when it is thought of in this way. But is it solid? For it is obvious
that there are substances which resist the pressure of the human body and things
which do this are really solid – that is what the word 'solid' means – just that.
2. Child's play at this stage. Read paragraph 1.5 again!
3. Note that good examples of this sort of language can often be found in current
fashions, e.g. the words associated with the flower power movement of 1967 and
with the student protest movements of 1968 – 'sit-in', 'rigid power structure', etc.
Many words. were used by drug takers, e.g. turn-on, drop-out, high. One needs to
distinguish between technical words which have no meaning outside their technical
use, and words which are in everyday use like 'high') but are given a special use by a
sub- group. The latter are the interesting ones.
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7
'GOD' AGAIN
7.1
If we want to find out what religious words mean, we must ask how religious
people use these words. It is clear that religious language is used by believers for
many different purposes. Think of a big evangelistic meeting, and everybody
singing 'Rock of ages, cleft for me'. Or think of the words 'Our Father, which art
in heaven, hallowed be thy name.' Think of the believer, who in a time of
difficulty repeats to himself the words of the Bible, 'The Lord is my Shepherd, I
shall not want.' And again, there is the theological lecturer in a university, who
says, 'Today we come to the doctrine of the work and person of Jesus Christ.'
Religious language is bewildering in the richness and variety of its use – for
worship and praise, for prayer and devotion, for study and systematization. The
following pointers to its use may be useful.
7.2
(a) If we want to get at the typical use of a religious expression, we must, in this
case of the Christian religion, look up the word in the Bible, the creeds and
confessions, and the way it is used in the worship of the church. All too often
sceptical critics take a word in a sense which does less than justice to its normal
religious use, and then proceed to criticize it. 'Sacrifice' is sometimes thought a
bloody, barbaric and brutal conception because this is what the word conjures up
in the mind of the normal educated person of today; but to find out what
Christians mean when they describe Christ's death as a sacrifice, one must study
not only the use of the expression in the New Testament, but also in the Hebrew
religion, where it has special overtones which are of great importance for the
correct understanding of the idea. We are all familiar with the sceptic who
objects to the word 'God' and whose argument reveals that his own idea of the
meaning of the word is by no means the same as that of Christians.
7.3
(b) It is also important to see that when religious people use certain phrases the
importance they attach to them is often not at the literal level. When for example
Christians speak of Christ's Ascension to heaven, they are not (or ought not to be
!) upset by the observation that since direction is relative the notion of 'ascending'
can have no absolute significance. The expression 'He ascended into heaven' is
not a special indication of the whereabouts of Christ, or of heaven. It is a way of
expressing the supreme place given to Christ in the life and devotion of the
church, and also of his right to a more universal acclaim in the world as a whole.
It is, in other words, a value-judgment about Christ. It can be seen then that the
Christians discussed in chapter 4 who claimed that religious statements were
expressive of religious feelings and attitudes were correct, although their view
does not exhaust the meaning of these religious expressions.
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7.4
The sceptic may, however, readily admit that religious language has the uses so
far mentioned, but he may argue that the language of religion is nevertheless
without any objective meaning. He may claim that words such as 'God' and 'The
Holy Spirit' do not refer to anything other than the emotions of believers. He
may say that we are still like the people who told one another the story of the
square circle, but although he may now feel rather more sympathy for the people
who talk like this and may be ready to con-cede that the symbol of the square
circle does fulfil some quite legitimate roles in religious life, he will think that it is
still a concept which simply cannot be imagined or conceived of by the mind and
is therefore void of genuine significance.
7.5
Now the person who believes in God will have to agree that the logic of the way
he uses the word 'God' is unusual. The word certainly does obey very odd rules.
In some ways it acts like somebody's name – like 'David'. For Christians, when
they pray, say, 'O God...'. But when you talk about 'knowing David' or 'meeting
David' you mean that you have done certain things – you have spoken to David,
been in the same room with him, shaken hands with him and so on. Christians do
speak of 'knowing God' but they do not refer to the same sort of things when
they are asked what they mean. They refer to an 'awareness of God's presence',
an 'inner certainty', a 'consciousness of being loved and forgiven'. In some ways,
meeting David is like meeting God, but in other ways it is not. So the word
'God' does not follow exactly the same rules as the word 'David'.
7.6
Again, in some ways the word 'God' acts like a generalization such as 'the
average man'. For Christians say that God, like the average man, is not to be
found in any particular place or at any special moment of time; he is, like the
average man, universal. The average man is abstract – God is as least not
concrete! On the other hand, the average man is only an abstraction; there is no
such being; but the Christian maintains that the word 'God' does correspond to
real being.
7.7
The word 'God' does indeed obey conflicting laws. It is not the only word in the
English language which has this characteristic. Consider the word 'point'.
According to the geometers, a point is 'somewhere' and yet, a palpable
contradiction, it has no actual size – it occupies no space. Here again, however,
there is a difference between 'point' and 'God'. For geometers agree that the
point does not exist; it is a convenient symbol for an abstraction. But Christians
maintain that God does exist.
7.8
Let us for a moment suppose that there is indeed a being corresponding to the
word 'God'. This would be a unique being, for God is held to be beyond space
and time, infinite in power and knowledge and love, experienced by men and
women yet not reducible to a human experience.
If there were such a being, he would be a very odd, a very mysterious and
strange being. And of course Christians claim just that – that God is fully
mysterious. But clearly, if he were to exist, and if we were to try to talk about
him, the effort of describing such a being would inevitably put the ordinary laws
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of language under great strain. For these rules of language have been evolved to
describe 'David' and 'the average man' and 'point'. We would expect a word
referring to a supreme being of this sort to obey unusual and even contradictory
rules.
7.9
So here we have rather a nice balance. The believer, impelled by certain
experiences he has had, feels he must speak of such a being and accepts the
strange word 'God' as a natural consequence. The sceptic, not having any
particular reason to speak of such a being, maintains that he can give no meaning
at all to such an odd word.
7.10 It is important to remember that the critic we are considering here is not saying
that he does not think there is enough evidence for the existence of God. He is
not asking for proof that there is a God. He is saying that he cannot give the
word 'God' any meaning; it seems to be such an odd, contradictory conception
that he finds himself incapable of imagining it at all. Can we find some ways then
of explaining to such a person what the word means? Is it possible to fix the
meaning of the word in some way so that at least it becomes possible to see that
the word describes something?
7.11 As human beings we have the experience of being partly 'in time' and partly 'not
in time'. For we speak of moments when 'time stood still' and we know that
people's consciousness of time can be artificially disturbed – by drugs, by longdistance air flights and so on. By imagination we can live in the past and in the
future. This is, as far as we know, a quality of human life alone; other animals do
not appear to share these experiences. In the same way. we are 'in space' and
yet 'not in space'. We say 'as swift as a thought' indicating our ability to
transcend the limits of distance in some sense. Many people speak of a soul, or a
mind, or some aspect of human personality not located in space, and (whether
this is the best description of personality or not) this also indicates some such
experience of being 'not in space'. Now it makes no difference to the argument if
these experiences are illusory. The point is that, having had them, it is possible
for us to imagine what a being might be like who possessed these qualities, or
had (or thought he had) these experiences much more radically than we do. We
could then even imagine, although it would begin to become just too mysterious
to have the idea very clearly, what a being would be like who transcended space
and time completely. This, however, is not an argument for the existence of
God. There may, of course, be no such being, but what the argument does show
is that the idea of such a being is at least possible, it has some meaning. It does
not matter if the idea is vague – Christians agree that their knowledge of God is
limited and, in many important respects, vague.
7.12 What about the other aspects of the idea of God? Is it possible to gain some
indications of what is meant by saying the idea includes notions such as 'infinite',
'omni- potent', 'necessary' and so on? Many people have a feeling of wonder
about the universe and they express this wonder by asking such questions as
'What's it all about?' or 'Where does it all lead to? ' or 'What lies behind it all?'
This feeling is that the world is somehow dependent, that it
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derives from some source other than itself. This again is not an argument for the
existence of God. The feeling we describe may be some kind of superstitious
hangover from the remote past. But the argument does show that if we can have
this feeling about the world, we can, by a further stretch of the imagination,
imagine a being, an entity, a world, which would not be dependent, but utterly
self-contained and independent. This would give us a 'fix' on the meaning of
'infinite God', for he is regarded as one who is not derived but exists in his own
right.
7.13 (d) One final use of religious language must be mentioned. Religious statements
are linked with one another so as to form systems. In the international religions
of today, Islam, Buddhism, Christianity etc.., these form an all-embracing
network of attitudes and beliefs. Sometimes these systems are called
'metaphysical' systems, because they assume the reality of a sphere other than the
material. This system as a whole provides a way of interpreting a11 the
experiences of life.
7.14 There is a sense in which such a religious system functions rather like a great
scientific hypothesis, in that many facets of experience and life are included and
brought together, but on the other hand, religious systems do not provide us with
literal descriptions of what reality is like – as if heaven really were 'up there'. A
system like this may not describe literal reality, but it may nevertheless
correspond to some experienced reality. For, after all, if (as Christians claim)
their view of things does in fact illuminate our experience of morals, our
experience of human relationships, even our sense experience, we would have to
ask why this should be so. Why should the Christian faith prove to be so truly
illuminating as an interpretation of life unless it does in fact correspond to some
reality about life? Members of other faiths would be right to ask themselves, and
us, the same question.
7.15 Like other systems, the Christian system can and must be assessed and judged.
The sceptical philosopher asks the Christian, as we have seen. what difference
there would have to be in the world for his view of things to be made false. The
answer could be that many things might count against the validity of the
Christian system. The evil and suffering in the world do count against it
strongly, although not decisively. If the model around which the whole system is
built, the life of Jesus Christ, were to be found intolerably unhistorical that would
make a difference. 'Intolerably' – for Christians vary about the degree of
historical reliability which can be tolerated within the Christian system. But all or
almost all agree that if, for example, it could be shown that Christ had never even
lived, that would count strongly against the Christian system. But all these
possibilities enhance the Christian claim to be saying something at least full of
meaning. Unlike the case of the elephant in paragraph 2.6, we can say what
would count against the Christian faith.
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7.16 (e) Finally, the Christian system can be compared with the systems of other
religions by asking the following questions:
(i) Which is the more consistent system? A system which contradicts itself will be
at a disadvantage. (ii) Which is the more coherent system. That is, in which
system are the various 'parts' most closely linked together? (iii) Which system is
most all-embracing? A system which illuminated all the experiences of life would
correspond to the full reality of life more perfectly than one which threw light
upon only some aspects of experience. It is not intended to suggest that
Christianity would always come off best in any such comparison. For example,
on point (i) Islam might be better than Christianity, since it has no Trinity. Point
(iii) also assumes a prior religious outlook, for what a Christian finds
'illuminating' may not be so illuminating to a Buddhist. What is illuminating
depends on your prior convictions. So perhaps these ways of comparison are
too vague. Perhaps your group will be able to suggest better ways of comparing
religions? (I am grateful to Professor Smart for these particular observations.)
The point of comparing Christianity with other religions is not, at this stage, to
establish whether or not one of them is the most convincing – that is a task for
another study. The point is simply that since Christianity can be intelligently
assessed and compared, it cannot therefore be entirely meaningless.
Summing up
Religious language has many uses and therefore many meanings. Although profoundly
mysterious, its basic ideas are not inexplicably contradictory, nor completely
unimaginable. As a system the Christian faith is capable of both logical and
experimental analysis and comparison with other faiths. Religious statements may
therefore fairly claim to be meaningful.
Discuss
1. Is it possible for all religions to be equally true?
2. Is it possible to believe things you don't understand? For it has been said that blind
belief is the same as blind unbelief.
3. What are the underlying motives for belief and unbelief? Why, for example, do
believers find it difficult to give up their faith in God even when they lose
arguments? Why do unbelievers refuse to have faith in God even when sometimes
they lose arguments?
4. What is meant by the mystery of God? Is it like the mystery of a detective novel or
of a crossword puzzle? Or is it like the mystery of light or of the origin of the sun?
Or is it like the mystery of love, the mystery of life itself. Does the word 'mystery'
mean different things in these different expressions?
*
**
!
means that the book is about the same standard of difficulty as these studies, or
at least not very much more difficult.
means it is a difficult book.
means it is a very difficult book.
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NOTES ON THE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Chapter 7
1. If by 'true' one means 'corresponding to actual objective fact' then the answer must
be no. If the statement 'There is only one God' does have meaning as a proposition,
then it must be possible to contradict it. The statement 'There are many gods' does
in fact contradict it. Both statements may be wrong. But both statements cannot be
correct. If, however, religious statements merely describe one's own feelings, then
they do not and cannot contradict each other. If I say I feel hot and you say you
feel cold we are not contradicting each other. If I say 'I think there is only one God'
and you say you think there are several gods, we are not contradicting each other.
We are simply comparing each other's mental states. This series of studies has tried
to show that religious statements are more than reports of feelings and may
correspond to objective truth. They at least claim to be true, and are entitled to be
at last investigated. Notice that when people say 'It may not be true for you but it's
true for. me', what they seem to mean is 'It may not be significant or important for
you but it is: for me.' If something is true, i.e. corresponds to the facts, it must be
true for everyone. A lot of confusion would be avoided if we reserved the word
'truth' for this objective sense, and used words like 'significant' or. 'important' to
describe our own psychological reactions.
2. You cannot give intelligent assent to something unless you have at least some
understanding of to what it is you are giving assent. You cannot really put your
trust in a person who is utterly unknown to you- such trust would not be intelligent
committal but irresponsible blindness. Blind belief and blind unbelief are similar in
that both are entered into without consideration of the factors involved. But the
fact that some understanding is required for intelligent faith does not mean that
complete understanding is necessary. Without some knowledge, faith would be
superstition. With full knowledge there would be no need for faith at all. Faith is
reason exploring, it is reason become courageous, it goes beyond the evidence but it
is not actually denied by the evidence.
3. It may be helpful to distinguish between causes and reasons. I may have a belief for
a variety of causes. I may have been crossed in love, or have an inferiority
complex, or I may have had too much to drink. All of these factors can be causes
of my having certain beliefs. The reasons for the truth or falsity of the belief are
quite different. America may be the greatest nation in the world for the following
reasons: it may be the richest and the most powerful militarily. I may believe this
because I am American and emotionally roused by the idea of America. Even if you
exposed the causes of my belief, the question of whether there were reasons for
believing it would still have to be faced. I may be a Christian (or an atheist) because
my parents were. The reasons for believing either Christianity or atheism to be true
would be unchanged in either case.
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4. Some kinds of mysteries may be unravelled. At the end of the detective story, there
is no mystery left. Other kinds of mystery actually become more mysterious the
more one goes into them. The mystery of why one's beloved loves one remains a
kind of delightful mystery even after years of loving. The mystery of God is surely
in the latter class. When God reveals himself, as Christianity and other faiths claim
he does, his mystery is not dispelled, but deepened.
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