Religious Language

This article by Dr Guy Williams explains with great clarity the issues surrounding religious language. For further articles go to intranet.wellingtoncollege.org.uk

What is the Debate?

The basic question behind the religious language debate is ‘what can be said about God?’ The religious language debate is not concerned with whether or not God exists, or what God is like or why there is evil in the world. It is solely concerned with working out whether or not religious language means anything. On the one side of the debate, you have the centuries old tradition of religious believers who believe that you can speak and write about God, because God is a reality. On the other side, are the Logical Positivists and those that they influenced who claim that statements about God have no meaning because they don’t relate to anything that is real.

Religious Language is Meaningless

In the debate about religious language, it is important that broadly speaking, there are two types of language, cognitive and non-cognitive. Cognitive language conveys facts i.e. things that we can know or be cognisant of. Non-cognitive language, predictably, conveys information that is not factual; emotions, feelings and metaphysical claims.

‘The Lord is faithful in all his words,            Badgers have black and white fur.
and gracious in all his deeds.                     The skyscraper is falling down.
The Lord upholds all who are falling,
And raises up all who are bowed down.
The Lord is near to all who call upon him,    Megan is near.
To all who call upon him in truth
He fulfils the desire of all who fear him,
He also hears their cry and saves them.’                                                                                                

Above you have examples of two very different types of language. On the left hand side is an excerpt from the Psalms, which talks about God and what he is supposed to be like. On the right hand side are statements of fact about things in the world. These two types of language are important for understanding the problems raised by the religious language debate.

We need to begin by looking at exactly what cannot be said about God according to some philosophers.

The Logical Positivists

The Logical Positivists were a group of philosophers who were primarily concerned with the truth contained in statements we can make, or in other words, with what can be logically posited, or stated. The group began in Vienna, Austria in the 1920s and gathered around a philosopher called Moritz Schlick. The group was heavily influenced by a philosopher called Ludwig Wittgenstein and in turn, the group influenced many philosophers of religion. Those influenced by the Logical Postivists that you need to be aware of are A J Ayer and the Verificationists and Antony Flew and the Falsificationists.

Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Tractatus

‘Whereof we do not know, thereof we cannot speak.’

One of the greatest influences upon the Logical Positivism was Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein asserted that the only language with meaning was the language of science, language that referred to empirical reality, language that mirrored the world as sensed. As you will see, with the posthumous publication of Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein changed his views slightly.

A J Ayer and Verification

If we verify a statement, we check its truth against a body of evidence or facts. For example, if we claim that Roger killed Bill, we must verify or check that statement against forensic evidence (a bloodied knife) or witness accounts. It is from this idea that we get the ‘verification principle’:

‘A statement which cannot be conclusively verified cannot be verified at all. It is simply devoid of any meaning.’ AJ Ayer

What does this mean? The verification principle demands that for a statement to have meaning, we must be able
to check its claims against things that exist. For example, if we say ‘it’s raining outside’ it’s easy to check or verify the claims of this statement by stepping outside and holding our hand out to check for rain. A statement like ‘there is life after death’ is less easy to verify.

The verificationists held that there were two types of statement that are meaningful:

1. Analytic propositions: these are statements that contain all the information within the statement that we need to verify it e.g. ‘red is a colour’ or ‘2+2=4.’
   
2. Synthetic propositions: these are statements that can be confirmed through the use of the senses (i.e. by recourse to empirical data) e.g. ‘it’s raining outside’ or ‘that bridge has collapsed.’

As a result of this, verificationists hold that non cognitive, metaphysical statements (i.e. statements about things beyond reality such as God, heaven, angels) are completely meaningless (as are meaningless staements like ‘square circles are green’), as we have no way of verifying whether or not these statements are meaningful. As A J Ayer puts it:

‘The term ‘god’ is a metaphysical term. And if ‘god’ is a metaphysical term, then it cannot even be probable that God exists. For to say that ‘God exists’ is to make a metaphysical utterance which cannot be either true or false. And by the same criterion, no sentence which purports to describe the nature of a transcendant god can possess any literal significance.’ AJ Ayer

Ayer does not just deny God’s existence, he denies the possibility of God’s existence altogether on the grounds that there is no way of empirically verifying his existence. Needless to say, Ayer would disagree with all of the traditional arguments for the existence of God, as none of them conclusively and empirically prove the existence of God.

There are two forms of the verification principle: strong and weak, which are as follows:

• Strong: this is the form mentioned above: that an assertion only has meaning if it can be verified according to empirical information. Anything else is meaningless.
  
• Weak: this form of the principle came to prominence later. It states that for an assertion to be true, one simply has to state what kind of evidence would verify its contents. This form was developed to allow historical facts to have meaning. For example, we know that Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, but we cannot see it happening and therefore verify it. The weak principle therefore simply requires that we state what kind of evidence would be enough to make a statement meaningful (e.g. eye-witness accounts of the residents of Krakow as the tanks rolled in).

For a critical analysis of Ayer, see Hamilton pages 217-219. There are four main arguments. Ayer eventually conceded that the verification principle could not work.  Stewart Sutherland (1992: 78) put forward a powerful argument that Ayer’s theory reduces language to Orwell’s Newspeak (see 1984 explained in Extract: Orwell’s Newspeak.)

Antony Flew and Falsification

Antony Flew produced a theory in the same vein as verification. Although it is subtly different, his falsification theory can be said to complement verification and if you like, produce the other side of the argument.

Flew argues that when we say something is the case (e.g. badgers are black and white), not only are we stating that badgers are black and white, but we are also denying the opposite i.e. badgers are not not black and white. Flew believed that when you assert something, you are also asserting (whether you like it or not) that there are facts/evidence that may count against your assertion, therefore, there has to be some sense experience that would count against your claim; i.e. ‘I have seen a badger that is only black.’ As Flew puts it:

‘If there is nothing which a putative assertion denies then there is nothing which it asserts either.’ Anthony Flew

Brian Davies puts it like this in the context of God-talk:

‘Religious believers make claims. They say for instance, that there is a God who loves human beings. But apparently they are unwilling to allow anything to count against these claims. The claims seem unfalsifiable. Are they then, genuine claims? Flew does not dogmatically declare that they cannot be, but he evidently has his doubts. ‘Sophisticated religious people’, he says, ‘tend to refuse to allow, not merely that anything actually does occur, but that anything conceivably could occur, which would count against their theological assertions and explanations’.’ Brian Davies

What Flew is protesting about, is a tendency he observed amongst religious believers to shift the goalposts of statements about God. For example, one might start by saying ‘God loves all humans’. If one were to witness a child dying of inoperable cancer of the throat, one would be right to use that as evidence to falsify the claim that God loves humans. Religious believers, Flew observed, would then retort ‘…but God loves humans in an inscrutable way, a different way to the way we love.’ For Flew, this second statement has no meaning, because it doesn’t allow for anything to falsify it. The famous example used to illustrate this point, is that of John Wisdom’s gardener.  The parable of the gardener is reproduced and discussed in Extract 1.

Some Responses to Verification and Falsification

R M Hare and ‘bliks’.

Obviously, if we take verification and falsification to their logical conclusion, we find ourselves precluded from saying almost anything about metaphysical matters and indeed God at all.

The philosopher RM Hare came up with a response to falsification, called the theory of ‘bliks’. As did many other philosophers, Hare used a parable to illustrate his point.

‘A certain lunatic is convinced that all dons want to murder him. His friends introduce him to all the mildest and most respectable dons that they can find, and after each of them has retired, they say, “You see, he doesn’t really want to murder you; he spoke to you in a most cordial manner; surely you are convinced now?” But the lunatic replies “Yes, but that was only his diabolical cunning; he’s really plotting against me the whole time, like the rest of them; I know it I tell you.” However many kindly dons are produced, the reaction is the same.’ RM Hare

Thus a ‘blik’ is a particular view about the world that may not be based upon reason or fact and that cannot be verified or falsified; it just is and we don’t need to explain why we hold our ‘blik’. Hare talked about trusting in the metal of a car; this ‘blik’ about the car meant that we would quite happily drive or be driven in a car, because we have the ‘blik’ that the metal is strong and that it is safe to drive at high speed in the car. Hare said that people either have the right or sane ‘blik’ or the wrong or insane ‘blik’; the lunatic above has the wrong ‘blik’ about dons, whereas his friends have the right ‘blik’.

Hare’s theory has been criticised, notably by John Hick who provides two objections. First of all, Hick argues that religious beliefs or religious ‘bliks’ are based upon reason; people believe in God because they may have had a religious experience, or they feel the words of the Bible/Qur’an are true or a variety of other reasons. Secondly, he claims there is an inconsistency: Hare claims that there is a distinction between sane and insane bliks. However, he also claims that bliks are unverifiable and unfalsifiable. If we cannot either prove or disprove religious ‘bliks’, we cannot call them right or wrong, sane or insane either.

Basil Mitchell

Mitchell disagreed with the theory of ‘bliks’ and suggested another way, using another parable. Mitchell claimed that religious belief and therefore religious language was based upon fact, although they are not straightforwardly verifiable or falsifiable. He used the idea of a resistance fighter to make his point (hence the picture of Guevara and Castro).

A member of the resistance movement is met one day by a man claiming to be the leader of the resistance movement. The fighter is suitably impressed and pledges his loyalty to the stranger. As time goes on, the fighter sees the ‘leader’ helping out the resistance, but at other times he is apparently helping out the enemy. The fighter nevertheless carries on in his belief that the stranger is in fact the leader of the resistance movement.

Mitchell’s parable is different to Hare’s, as Hare’s lunatic a) has no reason for mistrusting dons and b) will allow nothing to count against his belief. Mitchell’s fighter however, is willing to admit that things count against his belief in the leader (a symbol of God) and b) grounds his belief in reason and fact: he trusts this man who claims to be leader and has examples of him fighting for the resistance.

Mitchell’s point is that religious belief is based upon facts, but that belief cannot be verified/falsified in the simplistic way demanded by the logical positivists. Of course, the stranger in the story will be able to reveal his true allegiance after the war and explain his mysterious behaviour, in the same way that all the peculiar and problematic parts of religious belief will be revealed at the end of time according to traditional religious belief.

This is similar to John Hick’s theory of Eschatological Verification. This states that at the end of time (eschaton, hence eschatological) all the parts of religious belief that require faith will be made clear by God: just because they cannot be verified now, they will be verified in the future. Hick is, in a way, using the weak verification principle in reverse.  Hick’s parable of the Celestial City illustrates Hick’s point that verification will occur after death, and is reproduced in Extract 4.

Analogy: Speaking Meaningfully about God and Religion

There are a number of philosophers and theologians who claim that it is possible to speak meaningfully about God. We’ll start with St Thomas Aquinas and his theory of analogy.

The theory of analogy

An analogy is an attempt to explain the meaning of something which is difficult to understand in the light of a comparison with something else which is within our frame of reference. One of the most famous theological analogies is Paley’s analogy of the watch, where he tries to explain the role of God as creator. We have no direct experience of God as a creator, but Paley claimed it is analogical to a watchmaker who designs an intricate timepiece for a purpose.

The most famous early proponent of speaking about God in analogical terms, was St Thomas Aquinas (1225-74).
It is important to note before we look at his theory, that Aquinas’ theories start from confirmed religious belief and work backwards from that in justifying it. Most of you will be starting from the opposite point; unconfirmed attitudes and look to test whether or not religious theories are sufficient proof. Aquinas was a religious man who believed in God. He assumed both that God existed and that God had created the universe: remember, there was no Big Bang theory or evolution to test the claims made by Genesis. Aquinas believed that religious belief was reasonable to hold, i.e. that one can use reason to assert God’s existence.

Aquinas rejected univocal and equivocal language when talking about God. These are defined as follows:

Univocal language: This is where words are used to mean the same things in all the situations where they are used e.g. black board, black hat, black car. In each case, the word black is being used to refer to the colour black.
Equivocal language: This is where words are used to mean different things in different contexts e.g. ‘gay’ can be taken to mean ‘jolly’, ‘homosexual’ or more recently ‘rubbish’. Problematically, once a word is used to mean a different thing, it is robbed of its original meaning because of the new application.

What do these two terms have to do with religious language or God-talk? Religious language often attempts to describe the attributes or qualities of God. This is difficult as God is generally not something we have direct experience of, whereas most of the things language refers to are things that we can experience e.g. love, rabbits, hair, walking. Thus when we say ‘God is good’ we need to know how we are using the word ‘good’ in that sentence. If we are speaking univocally, we are claiming that God is good in the same way humans are. Aquinas rejected this as he believed God to be perfect. Because of this, imperfect humans cannot be good in the same way that God is. Alternatively, if we are speaking equivocally, we mean that God is good in a totally different way to humans. Aquinas rejected this too. He argued that if we speak equivocally about God, we cannot profess to know anything about him as we are saying that the language we use to describe humans or the experienced world around us, does not apply to God.

Aquinas believed that there was a ‘middle way’, a way of talking meaningfully about God. This middle way, was analogy. Aquinas described three types of analogy: analogy of attribution, analogy of proper proportion and analogy of improper proportion.

The Analogy of Attribution

The created world is good, so
God is good, but perfectly so.

The goodness of God’s creation
is an analogy of God’s goodness.

God’s qualities such as goodness
and love come first.

So goodness and love are qualities attributed to them because God created them.

Aquinas believed it was possible to work out the nature of God by examining his creation. Aquinas took it for granted that the world was created by God and for him, the link between creator and created order was clear.

In the analogy of attribution, Aquinas takes as his starting points the idea that God is the source of all things in the universe and that God is universally perfect. He then goes on to argue that all beings in the universe in some way imitate God according to their mode of existence:

‘Thus, therefore, God is called wise not only insofar as He produces wisdom, but also because, insofar as we are wise, we imitate to some extent the power by which He makes us wise. On the other hand, God is not called a stone, even though He has made stones, because in the name stone there is understood a determinate mode of being according to which a stone is distinguished from God. But the stone imitates God as its cause in being and goodness.’ Thomas Aquinas

Aquinas uses the example of a bull to illustrate this point. It is possible to determine the health of an animal by examining its urine. Aquinas said that if a bull’s urine is healthy, then we can determine that the bull will be healthy. Obviously however, the health of the bull is more completely and perfectly within the bull itself and is only reflected in the urine produced by the bull. In the same way God is the source of qualities in the universe and God possesses these qualities first and most perfectly. This sets up an order of reference, meaning that these qualities apply to God first and foremost, then to other things secondarily and analogically. Because we are created in the image of God, it is possible to say that we have these attributes (wisdom, goodness etc) analogically: these qualities are attributed to us analogically, whilst God has them perfectly.