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This classic essay was published by Antony Flew. It is a collaboration between Flew and two other philosophers: R.M. Hare and Basil Mitchell (although Mitchell's contribution is a separate text in this anthology). In this particular article, Flew and Hare offer different views of what (if anything) religious language means. Taken together, these essays are known as the "Symposium" (a Greek word for a dinner party philosophers used to attend) or sometimes the "Falsification Symposium", since Flew's ideas about falsification define the debate.
The essays were originally published in a magazine called University in 1950 - and are sometimes called 'the University debates' - but the version in the Anthology is from a 1971 book that reprinted them together. This extract can be divided into two sections: |
A famous criticism of this sort came from A.J. Ayer in the 1930s and was called the Verification Principle. Ayer argued that language was either synthetic (giving us information about the world) or analytic (exploring the meanings of words themselves). Synthetic language can be verified by empirical evidence. But religious language cannot be verified by evidence, because it is talking about a non-physical being from beyond the world of the five senses.
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A statement which cannot be conclusively verified... is simply devoid of meaning - Ludwig Wittgenstein
Think about the Loch Ness Monster. There's currently no strong evidence that it exists (except a few grainy photos). But there COULD be evidence. Someone could see the Monster tomorrow and film it on their mobile phone - not a dodgy black-and-white image but a crystal clear video recording. This is why "There is a monster in Loch Ness" is a verifiable proposition: it COULD be proved with empirical evidence.
But "There is an all-powerful God" isn't the same sort of proposition. You couldn't film God or find his footprints in the mud. There NEVER COULD BE any physical evidence for God. And this, says A.J. Ayer, is the problem with religious language. |
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You might think you can verify the Battle of Hastings by looking at old tapestries or bits of weapons found in the beach at Hastings, but these only verify that a tapestry was created or weapons were dropped. The battle itself cannot be verified because no one is left alive who saw it. Quantum physics is about sub-atomic phenomena too small to be observed at all.
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In order to say something which may possibly be true, we must say something which may possibly be false - John Hick
Think about Nessie again. "There is a monster in Loch Ness" is a falsifiable proposition. You could drain all the water out of Loch Ness and search through the mud and slime at the bottom and if you don't find any monster than the proposition has been disproved! It doesn't matter that we're never actually going to do this (there's more water in Loch Ness than all the other lakes in England and Wales put together!) - the point is that you can imagine how Nessie COULD be disproved.
God, on the other hand, seems to be unfalsifiable. Religious believers don't let anything count against God's existence. Prayers go unanswered, evil people win and good people suffer, prophecies fail to come to pass, miracles get disproved - but believers keep on believing. According to Antony Flew, this is what makes religious propositions meaningless: they're never allowed to be wrong! |