Religious Language Verifiable and Falsifiable

Vienna Circle- 1924 to 1936 -Mortiz Schlick chariman 

Anything outside of basic logic and science is meaningless as it is unverifiable - tauntolgical statements (statements that are self explanatory) statements and statements that could be verified by observation

'The task of philosphy lies in the clarification - through the method of logical anaylsis'

'a statement has a meaning if and only if the fact that it is true makes a verifiable difference'

Logical positivists viewed scientific knowledge as the paragidm of knowledge

Tauntological statements, Mathematical statements, synthetic statements and anyaltic statements

Statements that lay ourside of logical reasoning and empirical evdiecne were meaningless

Verification principle

A J Ayer - 1936 - synthetic statement is meaningful if anf only if it has some relation to observation - attacked metaphysics regarding it meaningless 'devoted to the production of nonsense' - 'the setence expressing it may be emotionally signficant to him; but it is not literally significant' - principle of verification as being limited - historical statements would be meaningless - verifiability in practice and in principle - 'it is verifiable, in the weak sense, if it is possible for experience to render it probalbe' - observations do not have to actually be made - strong verification and weak verification - 1978 Ayer admitted that his earlier work was mostly false

Karl Popper - scientific theories inherently disprovable - you would know how to disprove it - theories are considered true until evidence shows them to be false - religious statements meaningless as you cannot disprove it

Anthony Flew - parable of the gardener (develop'ed from John Wisdom) - 'Eternally differ from an imaginary gardener or even form no gardner at all?' - Challenge God's existence - religious people don't allow evidence of suffering to count against the existence of god - ' died a death of a thousand qualifiaton' - too many qualifications to mean anything - 'what would have to occur or to have occured to constitute for you a disproof of the love, or of the existence of God'

Initial criteria for the verification principle did not take into account historical statements - Ayer

The meaning of a statement is its method of verification - is neither logically obvious nor it is supported by empirical evidence - the statement is not verifiable in itself - self defeating principle

John Hick - argued christian concept of god was verifiable in principle - Celestial City - 'gaurateed restrospectively by a future crux - can be proved that god does or doesn't exist when people do or do not go to the afterlife - eschatological verification

Richard Hare - proposed idea of 'bliks' - a way of looking at our lives and our experiences -a blik was meaningful even if it could not be falsified because it impacts out behaviour - parable of the paranoid student and the university professor - it is important to realise we have a sane one not no blik at all

Basil Mitchell - matter of faith as to how the individual dealt with challenges of god - nto true that evidence had no impact on the religious believer - Partisan and the stranger - 'the strangers' ambigious behaviour does count against what he believes about him. it is precisely this situation which consitutes the trial of faith' - religious langauge regarded as meaningful

Richard Swinburne - toys in the cupboard - human language was accepted as meaningful eithotu empirical evidence - have to be able to understand it - 'some people judge to be factual which are not apparently confirmable or fisconfirmable'