Religious language

Religious language comes in three forms

• Mathematical - when a mistake is made it must be the fault of man-made error
• Synthetic - contingently true or false, based on a posteriori experience. Can be verified or falsified by emperical evidence and testing. These staements are meaningful as at some point they can be emperically tested even if that is not now e.g. aliens may exist.
• Analytic - true by definition. 'All unmarried men are bachelors'. They are a priori and contain their own verification.
• Religious language is difficult because how can we speak of a transcendent God outside human experience? 
• Non-cognitive language deals with statements that are not to be taken literally such as symbol or analogy. It has a deeper meaning and suggest there is no objective universal truth.
• Cognitive language is factual and taken literally. It can be proved or disproved. For believers they contain meaning such as 'God exists' but Flew calls this wishful thinking etc. 

• Wittgenstein seeing-as picture theory. Something is meanigful if it can be defined or pictured in the real world
• Language game theory understanding language depends on its relative context. You need to be part of the language game to understand it. For example, saying one thing in a sporting context may mean something completely different to a poet. You can only understand its meaning once it has been explained to you by someone who understands it. Therefore religious language is meaningful when it is understodd in its own context. For example, when a Christian speaks of a lamb it may mean something different to a theist, with conotations such as lamb of God, sacrifice in Egypt etc. 
• The Language game is non-cognitive and statements aren't supposed to be universally true or false, only so in their own game.
• For religion, in this way God exists as part of the believers community - it is a truth to them. If a believer talks of a soul and a scientists attempts to physically find it they have made a blunder as they are not part of the same game
• Evaluation: it highlights the non-cognitive nature of religious language and shows how it can have meaning. It distinguishes it from other types of language and shows how truth is relative. On the other hand AYER would suggest how it is not verifiable and so can ahve no meaning. It alienates those outside the game and the rules cannot be changed

• Mitchell - parable of the partisan and the stranger. Religion is about the personal relationship between God and the believer. For a scientists a thoery can be challenged by one piece of contardictary evidence and thye will immediately drop it but this is not true of the believer. Religion is based on faith and not evidence. It is a non-propositional faith, rooted in relationship rather than fact. He outlines three ways in which a bleiever may react to challenging evidence: hypothesis discarded if experience tells against (coherence theory), significant articles of faith are not easily given up.
• Hare - blik theory. When believers use religious language they use it in a unique way. The religious use religious language to express concepts important to them. They make a significant difference to a persons life and this difference can be emperically observed. In his parable of the lunatic, Hare speaks of the parable of the lunatic - a man with an unfalsifibale belief that his proffesors all want to kill him, and no matter how much contradictaryevidence is put in front of him he stills believes it. It is that man's unfalsifiable blik