Critically Assess The Claim That Relig
Critically assess the claim that religious language is meaningless (35 Marks)
Religious language has been argued about by many philosophers with regards to whether or not the ways in which we speak about religion are meaningful. This issue of religious language is concerned with the methods by which man talks about God in concern with theist or atheist ideologies. For some, religious language is meaningful and full of purpose while others see it to being pointless.
The first assertion of the meaningless of religious language is the school of philosophical thought known as Logical positivism. Friedrich Waismann who was a member of the Vienna Circle. Logical positivism he saw as the belief that “Anyone saying a sentence must know under what conditions he calls it true, and under what conditions he calls it false. If he is unable to state these conditions, he does not know what he has said. A statement which cannot be conclusively verified cannot be verified at all. It is simply devoid of any meaning.” In the early days of the Vienna Circle, a sentence was said to have empirical meaning if it was capable, at least in principle, of complete verification by observational evidence; i.e., if observational evidence could be described which, if actually obtained, could establish the truth of the sentence. Essentially, the verification principle asserts that a sentence has empirical meaning if it is possible to indicate a finite set of observations that if these, are true, then is necessarily true and thus meaningful. As stated, however, this condition is satisfied also if is an analytic sentence.
This view transcended into the philosophical issue of religious language
A.J. Ayer furthered this point of view within modern philosophical doctrine with a varied response to his ideas known as the postulation of a strong and weak verification principle. Ayer argues that for a statement to be meaningful it must be either a tautology (a priori) or verifiable in principle (a
Religious language has been argued about by many philosophers with regards to whether or not the ways in which we speak about religion are meaningful. This issue of religious language is concerned with the methods by which man talks about God in concern with theist or atheist ideologies. For some, religious language is meaningful and full of purpose while others see it to being pointless.
The first assertion of the meaningless of religious language is the school of philosophical thought known as Logical positivism. Friedrich Waismann who was a member of the Vienna Circle. Logical positivism he saw as the belief that “Anyone saying a sentence must know under what conditions he calls it true, and under what conditions he calls it false. If he is unable to state these conditions, he does not know what he has said. A statement which cannot be conclusively verified cannot be verified at all. It is simply devoid of any meaning.” In the early days of the Vienna Circle, a sentence was said to have empirical meaning if it was capable, at least in principle, of complete verification by observational evidence; i.e., if observational evidence could be described which, if actually obtained, could establish the truth of the sentence. Essentially, the verification principle asserts that a sentence has empirical meaning if it is possible to indicate a finite set of observations that if these, are true, then is necessarily true and thus meaningful. As stated, however, this condition is satisfied also if is an analytic sentence.
This view transcended into the philosophical issue of religious language
A.J. Ayer furthered this point of view within modern philosophical doctrine with a varied response to his ideas known as the postulation of a strong and weak verification principle. Ayer argues that for a statement to be meaningful it must be either a tautology (a priori) or verifiable in principle (a