1. A PRIVATE LANGUAGE?
Language is about communication and can only take place when two or more people use words and ideas they have in common.
We can understand God’s forgiveness because we know what forgiveness means between humans but can we understand the word God? Do we understand what other people mean when they use this word?

2. KNOWLEDGE & DESCRIPTION
Statements that are purely descriptive can be verified by checking the facts.
EG – the cat sat on the mat can be checked because we agree with the meaning of the words used.
But to say, I have just witnessed a miracle is not so easy because we have different ideas of what constitutes a miracle.

3. KNOWLEDGE & DESCRIPTION 2
What is the difference between saying “I believe in God” and “God exists”?
The first can be right and the second wrong or vice versa
Just because someone believes something does not make it true.
The first is a description of what someone believes and the 2nd is a claim to knowledge.

4. FAITH, REASON & BELIEFS
You can remember something without concepts but you cannot think about it.
When religion gets beyond personal religious experience, it encounters reason. The experience starts to be ‘schematised’ in terms of concepts, ideas and beliefs.
Reason looks at the logic of a statement.
Experience, expressed through language, leads to propositions which may be accepted as true.

5. WHAT IS RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE?
Language is used for particular purposes.
It describes religious experiences etc.
If the words did not have a non-religious meaning as well as a religious one, how could they communicate anything?
Definitions of religious words must be understood outside the religious context.

6. BELIEVING IN & BELIEVING THAT
If you believe IN something it implies commitment and trust.
Believing that something is true means that you think the statement is correct whether or not it is of any personal interest to you.
Compare “I believe in God” and “I believe that God exists”.

7. EXPERIENCE ‘AS’ Whatever we experience, we interpret.
We experience experiences as something.
The religious way of interpreting the world is one valid BLIK, alongside others.
Why does one person see a beautiful sunset as God saying goodnight and another person as just a sunset?
Believing implies commitment & trust.

8. Rational and Non-Rational
The Logical Positivists rationalised that only statements that could be proved or disproved empirically had any meaning.
To have any meaning, a religious experience must have some empirical basis
BUT a religious experience may transcend this empirical basis, but it nevertheless includes it.

9. Rational and Non-Rational 2
BUT for an experience to be religious, it cannot be confined to that empirical basis, for otherwise it would just be a scientific description of what is seen and heard, with nothing to make it ‘religious’ or to convey anything of its importance or power.
Therefore religion can never be fully explained in terms of what is rational.
There must be something to it more that eludes description. It must go beyond reason, not against
Religions tend to make a balance between the rational and the non-rational.

10. INTERPRETING LANGUAGE
Straightforward use of language is a means of literally PICTURING the world. EG The cat sat on the mat - We can verify this statement.
ANALYTIC statements simply explain the meaning of its own terms you don’t have to check any details – EG All spinsters are unmarried women.
SYNTHETIC statements refers to external evidence – back to that cat on the mat!!!

11. VERIFICATION &FALSIFICATION
The Logical Positivists stated that statements are meaningful if they can be proved, empirically, true or false. Anything else was meaningless.
So, God exists is a meaningless statement, alongside ‘I love you’. Only factual statements can be meaningful

12. AYER & WEAK VERIFICATION
Historical statements that can no longer be proved by empirical means - EG William the Conqueror always wore silk stockings and future statements that may be verified true or false at a later date - EG there are green men on Pluto, were accepted by Ayer as verifiable under the weak form of the Verification Principle.

13. CRITICISM OF THE VERIFICATION PRINCIPLE
“The meaning of a statement is its method of verification” cannot itself be verified!
It is not analytic, so cannot be shown to be true on logical grounds.
Nor is it synthetic because there is no empirical evidence that can count for or against the truth.

14. CRITICISM OF THE VERIFICATION PRINCIPLE 2
From the middle of the 20th century the Logical Positivists had been bypassed as it was realised that giving a literal representation of the world was a small part of the task of language.
Other functions: Commands, opinions, emotions, symbols, jokes etc required a very different approach.

15. CRITICISM OF THE VERIFICATION PRINCIPLE 3
John Hick argued that when we die the truth of God’s existence will be proved true or false (verified).
He calls this ‘eschatological verification’
So we know how to verify propositions such as ‘God exists’ so religious statements do have meaning.
The ‘weak’ verification would support some historical religious statements

16. THE FALSIFICATION PRINCIPLE 1
The Falsification Principle accepts that a statement is verifiable if it is known what empirical evidence could count against it, or prove it false (wrong).
In 1950s Anthony Flew applied the FP to Religious Language & concluded that religious statements are meaningless.
Because nothing can count against religious statements, they can neither be proved true or false (verified).

17. THE FALSIFICATION PRINCIPLE 2
The FP duffers from Logical Positivism:
1/ It depends on falsification rather than verification
2/ The challenge of falsification is based not on the language used but on the basic insight that to assert something is to deny something else.
Flew asks that our proof of God’s existence is based on what we are in a position to know, & not just to believe.

18. CRITICISM OF FALSIFICATION 1
COGNITIVE AND NON-COGNITIVE
Cognitive refers to propositions based on knowledge. Facts are known to be true or false through this knowledge.
Non-Cognitive refers to propositions that cannot be proved true or false through knowledge.
Non-Cognitive propositions include moral prescriptions / emotion expressions.

19. CRITICISM OF FALSIFICATION 2
Philosophers have argued that Religious statements are non-cognitive and it is wrong to treat them cognitively.
Richard Swinburne says there are some statements that cannot be falsified yet we still understand the meaning behind the statement
EG We cannot ever prove toys in a cupboard do not move around when we are not watching them (Toy Story) but we understand the idea of toys moving around.

20. CRITICISM OF FALSIFICATION 3
Basil Mitchell argued that Flew was wrong in supposing believers never allow anything to count against their beliefs.
He said Flew had missed the point that believers have a prior commitment to trust in God, based on faith, and for this reason do not allow evidence to undermine their faith.
Believers have to look for qualifications or justifications that can explain why there is, EG, suffering in the world (theodicies are the justification) & still accept a ‘God who loves us’

21. CRITICISM OF FALSIFICATION 4
R M Hare said that Religious Language in non-cognitive, not because it is imparting knowledge, but because it influences the way we look at the world.
EG the university student who was convinced the dons were plotting to kill him & would accept no evidence to the contrary. Even if untrue, his belief changed the way the student saw the university.
Hare called this way of looking at the world a BLIK. He said religious beliefs are ‘bliks’ because of the impact they have on our lives.

22. THE DEATH OF A 1000 QUALIFICATIONS
Anthony Flew presents John Wisdom’s parable of the Gardener to examine the limits to which one could go in qualifying a statement whilst still claiming that is was true
2 explorers come across a clearing in a jungle. One says a gardener must tend it and the other says no. After lengthy tests to find the invisible, intangible, silent gardener, both gardeners are still convinced of their original convictions.

23. PARABLE OF THE GARDENER KEY THEMES
Experience requires interpretation. Facts alone do not determine how something is interpreted.
One’s interpretation leads to commitment. One chooses to see the world in a particular way (BLIK). A matter of faith.
The story implies what is real is what can be described literally.

24. LANGUAGE CAN BE UNIVOCAL, EQUIVOCAL OR ANALOGICAL 1
UNIVOCAL or unequivocal: The word or phrase means exactly the same under different conditions
EG I wear white shoes and a white hat
The word white is used univocally – it has exactly the same meaning

25. LANGUAGE CAN BE UNIVOCAL, EQUIVOCAL OR ANALOGICAL 2
EQUIVOCAL: The word or phrase is ambiguous.
EG I may describe an apple tart that lacks sweetness as being “a little tart”, in quite another sense. Neither relates to my description of certain young ladies in short skirts.
The word tart is being used univocally with quite different meanings in these three cases.

26. LANGUAGE CAN BE UNIVOCAL, EQUIVOCAL OR ANALOGICAL 3
ANALOGICAL: Using the example of the tart – the one might be tasty and the other look tasty, which would be an analogical use of the word tasty unless you were being cannibalistically univocal.
The literal meaning of the word tasty when applied to the food is transposed to the young lady in an attempt at description.

27. ANALOGY IN REASON
You can say God is good univocally in the same way as you can say a person is good.
But if ‘good’ was being used equivocally about God it would convey no meaning.
Using ‘good’ analogically means there is a similarity to the goodness of men and God but man’s goodness is a pale reflection of God’s

28. ANALOGY IN RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Univocal language cannot do justice to the ‘otherness’ and inspirational nature of a religious experience.
But, people want to convey meaning of what they have experienced.
Otto’s experience of the numinous becomes ‘schematised’. Just as the experience goes beyond the circumstances in which it arose, so must the language to describe it go beyond the literal. Hence the need for analogy.
EG Imagine describing the vision at Lourdes!

29. MODELS & QUALIFIERS 1
Ian Ramsey uses these terms to explain the way in which religious language differs from literal, empirically based language.
The model is a form of analogy – an image that helps a person express an experience.
The qualifier extends the model.
EG God is an Eternal Father. Father is the model but Eternal as the qualifier totally transcends the human nature of fatherhood.

30. MODELS & QUALIFIERS 2 Without models, nothing would be communicated.
Without qualifiers, nothing would get beyond a literal description of what is seen; it would not be religious.

31. SIGNS & SYMBOLS A sign is something that points to something else
EG a road sign – you can change one sign for another as long as we all agree what it stands for.
A symbol is something that expresses the power of what it symbolises; it participates in it and makes it real, Symbols evoke the power of that which they symbolise.
EG A country’s national flag or emblem

32. METAPHOR & SYMBOL 1 We can understand God through these.
Tillich states that it is through symbols that Religious Language communicates Religious Experiences.
RL tries to interpret RE & it is therefore:
1/ Closer to poetry than prose
2/ Mythical, heroic & imaginable
3/ Evocative of the experience that it seeks to describe

33. METAPHOR & SYMBOL 2
Tillich believed RL is symbolic because it opens up new levels of reality.
He says symbols go beyond the external world to what he described as their ‘inner reality’.
Religious symbols open up levels of reality which otherwise were closed to us. EG – Kingdom of God – the symbol of Kingdom lets us get a glimpse of ultimate reality thats God.
The power of symbols changes because the impact & meaning of words change, and the symbol is no longer able to direct us towards ultimate reality.

34. METAPHOR & SYMBOL 3 OPPOSITION TO R L AS SYMBOLIC
Paul Edwards stated symbols were meaningless and conveyed no factual knowledge.
Tillich argued symbols could not be verified using empirical evidence.
It is not possible for religious symbols successfully to represent that which is beyond human experience.
There is no way of knowing if the symbols give wrong insights.
Tillich does not seem to apply symbols to the real world – to objective reality.

35. LANGUAGE GAMES 1 LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN (1889-1951)
He originally supported the Logical Positivists, but later rejected the Verification principle.
He said the meaning of words is in their use – the function they perform as agreed by a particular group or society

36. LANGUAGE GAMES 2 LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN 2
Each group or society has its own language, be it a nation or a small group of like minded individuals.
On a localised scale Wittgenstein likened it to a group of people playing games & each different game had a different set of rules.
Language games are played by people within all forms of human activity & life.
People not ‘in the game’ will not understand the language any more than someone listening to an unknown foreign language.

37. LANGUAGE GAMES 3 LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN 3
Religious belief has its own language which an ‘outsider’ may find meaningless because he is not in the ‘religious game’.
But it does not mean the language is meaningless just because some people don’t understand it.

38. LANGUAGE GAMES 4 LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN 4
Descartes proved to himself that he existed because he could think – ‘Cogito ergo sum’ but Wittgenstein argued that you could not create a private language – how would we know they were using the words correctly?
Language must be communication between at least two people!
Thoughts are in a socially agreed public language in the same way as speech is.
Wittgenstein denied Descartes’ 1st person approach to philosophy as meaningless.

39. LANGUAGE GAMES 5 ANALYSIS 1
But can we be sure that each player in a ‘game’ completely understands what another player is talking about.
On a simple scale, cricketers can all agree on the meaning of ‘Owsat’ as it is the cricketers that have defined the word, but with concepts, as in religion, are we sure that all believers believe the same thing when we talk about: Salvation, Forgiveness or even God herself?

40. LANGUAGE GAMES 6 ANALYSIS 2
How can different faith traditions discuss concepts if they each have different definitions? or, on an opposite tack, maybe people are talking about the same thing, but they cannot know it as they cannot express it to others.
Is the God of Islam and the Christian God the same?
Is the OT God the same as in the NT?

41. LANGUAGE GAMES 7 ANALYSIS 3
Players of different ‘games’ are not entirely isolated as there will be some crossover in games as in all aspects of life.
So Religious language is not completely isolated.
There is some common ground between religious language games & other language games.
This common ground gives non-believers a chance to understand at least some of the language and decide whether it has meaning.

42. LANGUAGE GAMES 8 ANALYSIS 4
Non- believers sometimes can get insights into the religious believers own language game more than the actual believer as the non-believer has a more objective view of religion and will not be swayed by unreasonable faith claims.
But can anyone who does not believe ever truly understand what a believer is trying to convey with his language game

43. LANGUAGE GAMES 9 CONCLUSION
Believers agree it is difficult to talk of God because God is ‘unreasonable’ – he is beyond human understanding.
Believers realise ANY discussion of God, amongst themselves or with non-believers, will be limited.
But they argue Religious language can have valid meaning and purpose.