Religious language

• - Is the language univocal?
• - Is the language equivocal?

brings God down to human level

Can never know what a word means when applied to God

1920-30s. Built on Hume and Locke who thought religion and ethics should be avoided- the existence of God is a meaningless issue as it cannot be discussed in a meaningful way.

A statement is only meaninggul if verified by an actual experience or is a tautology.

Logical statement that is true by definition.

• Too rigid; suggests we cannot make statements about history as we did not make observations.
• Scientific laws become meaningless; we cannot verify gravity is constant everywhere.

• A.J.Ayer.
• We do not have to directly prove something by observation for it to be verified- we just need to suggest how it could be verified. For example, suggesting how to verify 'there are mountains on the far side of the moon.'
• We can make statements about the past and people's emotions

• Hick: religious statements are not meaningless- we can verify whether God exists after death via eschatological verification.
• Some philosophers argue some religous statements are verifiable. e.g. accounts of the life of Jesus

• Uses John Wisdom's parable of the gardener.
• Karl Poppers: A theory is only an established theory in science when it can be falsified
• Anthony Flew applied this to religious language- language cannot be falsified and so it is meaningless and not a genuine statement. Believers shift the goalposts so claims become 'watered down' and 'die a death of a thousand qualifications'
• Flew doesn't state religious language is meaningless- others believe it proves this point.

• R.M.Hare stated that Flew doesn't understand religious belief. e.g the man who thought professors were trying to kill him. This 'blik' was neither verifiable or falsifiable. Just like religious ideas.
• Basil Mitchell- believers know the problem of faith- have some grounding in reason.
• Hick- eschatological verification and religious beliefs can only be verified in principle if true but never falsified if false.

• Statements about God cannot be accurate as He is ineffable- negative statements can be made. Language applied to God is equivocal.
• Came from followers of Plato:
• Plotinus; describing the Form of the Good as separate and unknowable
• Pseudo-Dionysius; God is beyond assertion. Postitive statements give an anthropomorphic idea of God
• Moses Maimonides; making positive statements is improper and disrespectful

• Prevents anthropomorphic statements from being made
• More respectful
• Supports the idea of God as ineffable

• Limited understanding of God
• Not a true reflection of how believers speak about God

Describing something unfamiliar to us by making a comparison with something we already know.

• Language cannot be used literally to talk about God. Two different ways of analogy:
• analogy of attribution: qualities we apply to each other are a reflection of the qualities of God e.g. Brian Davies and the baker and the bread. Aquinas and the bull with urine.
• Analogy of proportion: Meaning of words changes in proportion to the nature of the being that is being described. John Hick uses's Hugel's example of 'faithfulness'- dogs and God.

• We have some understanding of God
• Duns Scotus argues its too vague and that we cannot understand God.
• Assumes similarity between God and humans- God is different?

Paul Tillich: religious statements are symbolic but also cognitive. We can learn about God but our words are not literal.

Tillich is too vague- Randall argues language is symbolic but non cognitive; symbols function like art

Stories that convey values and beliefs of communities that tell them

We should demythologise the New Testament to arrive at the essential message

The interpretations of myths are not straight forward and are extrememly subjective.

• 'Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.'- interpreted by the logical positivists that religous language is meaningless
• Saw his role as to let the fly out of the bottle: the fly being the philosphers stuck trying to understand religious language.
• Saw words as tools and language as a game- different places have different rules.

• D.Z.Phillips said it prevents any criticism of philosophy of religion
• Also, that some problems exist because the language is taken literally.