3.2 What is the purpose of religious language?

This lecture addresses the question ‘What is the purpose of religious language?’ A key
distinction drawn in this arena is between cognitivism and non-cognitivism. Cognitivists
believe that language is meaningful only if it has truth value, in other words if the statements
made are either true or false, e.g. ‘it is raining today’. It might be raining, but it might not be: it
is true or false. Non-cognitivists, on the other hand, argue that the language is also
meaningful when it simply expresses feelings or values, e.g. ‘the bleak rain-filled clouds sat
brooding over the rooftops’. If we think back to the two examples of religious language in the
last lecture, a cognitivist would feel that the second example provided meaningful content:
either God is slow to anger or he is not, whereas the first example doesn’t seem to have truth
value, since it’s so metaphorical. A non-cognitivist would allow that either example had
meaning.

Cognitivism was a view propounded by the Vienna Circle, a group of philosophers and
scientists who met regularly at the University of Vienna between 1924 and 1936. These
philosophers, known as logical positivists, put forward the so called ‘Verification Principle’.
Essentially the principle states that propositions can only be meaningful if they are verifiable
as either true or false. The logical positivists were empiricists, meaning they believed
knowledge could only be derived through sense experience. For this reason statements that
were meaningful in their eyes could only be ones that made empirical claims. God’s existence
is an empirical claim, yet it is often said that it would be impossible to verify his existence or
his essence, for this reason logical positivists are likely to rule many debates in the
Philosophy of Religion meaningless.

One of the most famous logical positivists was A. J. Ayer. He asserted that statements were
either analytic - true by definition, such as ‘a circle is round’ - or ‘synthetic’, that is making a
factual claim that could be verified by the senses. His position was that claims about God fit
neither category and so religious language is meaningless. This is not to say that he denied
the existence of God, simply that he thought meaningful discussion about his existence was
not possible.

An objection that was made to Ayer was that many historical claims or scientific theories can’t
be empirically verified either. We can make claims about what happened in the past but we
can’t go back and use our senses to see if it was true. Similarly, science often advances
through discussion of the as yet unknown and by theorising about things which cannot be
verified by the senses, such as string theory. Ayer therefore developed his weak verification
principle, this principle is a softened version which simply requires that statements can in
principle at least if not in practice be verified by the senses.

Over to you. Are you persuaded by Ayer. Must we insist claims are verifiable in order for them
to be meaningful? Do you see the existence of God as verifiable or non-verifiable, and how
does this effect the meaningfulness of such discussions?

John Hick offered a robust defence to Ayer’s weak verification principle by putting forward his
own ‘eschatological’ verification principle. Eschatology is the study of the end of history, or the
final destination of humanity. Essentially Hick is saying ‘it will all come out in the wash’. He
asks us to imagine two travellers on the road to a celestial city. The road, naturally, stands for
life, and the celestial city represents the afterlife. If we die and discover there is an afterlife
then we will know that the religious discussions we had while we were alive were meaningful
and perhaps true. Of course there’s a chance that when we die there is no afterlife so we
discover nothing at all, but regardless of this, Hick’s scenario meets the test of supplying a
situation in which we would be able to verify religious claims as true or false. Thus religious
claims would count as meaningful according to Ayer’s weak verification principle.

Flew, however, thought religious claims should meet a higher standard then theoretical
verification. A key principle of modern science is the principle of falsification, put forward by
Karl Popper. Essentially scientists create theories that fit the known facts and then seek out
information that will contradict, or falsify, their theories. Anthony Flew argued the same should
be the case with religious claims. In the scenario that Hick puts forward verification is allowed
for if there is an afterlife so it can be discovered religious beliefs were true. However, in the
case were there is no afterlife there cannot be falsification, since we would be dead and
unable to pass any comment at all. Thus whilst Hick meets Ayer’s test he does not meet
Flew’s and as a cognitivist, Flew argued that if claims about God were not able to be falsified
then they were essentially meaningless. However, it is not clear that we necessarily need to
apply this scientific standard to religious claims, something R.M. Hare points out as well, as
we will see later in the section.