Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
principles.
The problem with religious language is one of meaning. If we
are to believe in God, we can only do this if we can use
language to talk about it in a meaningful way. If talk of God is
nonsense, then surely the idea of God is nonsense.
One way of establishing whether or not a statement is
meaningful was proposed by A J Ayer, with the verification
principle. His view evolved from logical positivism of the Vienna
Circle, in the 1920s. Logical Positivists believed that if a
statement cannot be confirmed by observation, then it was
meaningless. Ayer thought that they had uncovered a major
problem with language, and so developed the verification
principle in his book Language, truth and logic.
Logical positivists argued that the only way to test a
statements meaningfulness is if it is true analytically, or
synthetically. Analytically true statements are true by definition,
and thought alone. For example, A bachelor is an unmarried
man. Synthetically true statements are verified through our
sense data, for example Dom is a bachelor. They concluded
that religious statements were meaningless, as they do not
satisfy the criteria.
Ayer developed this theory. He believed that empirical methods
have to be used to assess whether a proposition is verifiable,
and therefore meaningful. He decided that a proposition is
meaningful if it is known how to prove it true or false. If we
cannot know how to prove something true or false, then the
proposition is meaningless. Therefore, as religious propositions
cannot be analysed using empirical methods, they are
meaningless.
The falsification principle maintains a similar approach to
religious language as the verification principle. However, it is
regarded as a more serious challenge to the meaningfulness of
religious language. It originates from Karl Poppers philosophy