HowTority.com

Falsification is the philosophical theory that asserts that if something cannot be proved wrong, then it is meaningless. This was suggested by Karl Popper who believed that the falsification principle would accept a statement as verifiable if it is known what empirical evidence one could use against it or to falsify it. However, this theory was applied to religious language in the 1950s by Antony Flew who was an atheist, therefore used this principle against religion and the concepts that it portrays. In this essay I will discuss whether the falsification principle is of any harm to religious language.

Firstly, if one is to apply the definition of falsification, it is quite clear that there is a conflict between this theory and religious language. Antony Flew applied the falsification principle to religious language, and concluded that religious statements are meaningless since there is nothing that can count against religious statements; they can’t be either proved true or false. Hence the reason why faith is called faith as opposed to certainty as there is no way of truly finding out the truth in everyday life. Furthermore, Flew argued that most religious people, of which he used Christians as an example, will not change their idea on the omnibenevolance, omnipotence and omniscience of God regardless of the arguments presented to them that may be used in order to persuade them to reconsider their ideas and beliefs. This lead Flew to argue that there will always be an excuse to any issues raised in order to persuade Christians from their belief that will give God a qualification. He stated that these constant qualifications render religious statements meaningless because they die the “death by a thousand qualifications”. In order to illustrate this point, Flew used John Wisdom’s “Parable of the Gardener” which has as its main point the concept that religious believers do not allow anybody to "falsify" their assertions; instead they simply change their beliefs to suit the questioner, hence conflicting with the definition of the Falsification Principle. Therefore, if one is to tackle the issue from this prospective, it is clear that the Falsification Principle proposes a clear confliction with religious language due to the fact that it is impossible to empirically prove or disprove the existence of God.

On the other hand, one could argue that the Falsification Principle does not adhere to religious language since it isn’t cognitive language but non-cognitive as suggested by R.M.Hare.  He argued that that the falsification principle could only be applied to cognitive statements in order to decide their meaningfulness, and considering that he believed religious statements to be non-cognitive, Hare concluded that religious language is incapable of producing factual statements but nevertheless, can still convey a great deal of meaning. He used the example of the University student who was sincerely convinced that the Dons where complotting his murder, and therefore making the student very paranoid and cautious of the Dons. Hare suggested the concept of bliks which are unverifiable and unfalsifiable interpretations of one’s experiences, such as the student’s paranoia which is a product of his interpretation of what is happening around him. However, Hare added to this idea the categorisation of bliks; there are sane bliks and insane ones as necessarily there are always two or more views to an argument where only one is the actually correct view making this the sane blik. If this is the case, it is clear that religious language, which is an interpretation of the world’s origins and views on the existence of God, does not apply to the concept of the Falsification Principle since there is no evidence that can disprove or demonstrate the falseness of this blik. This implies that if one is to agree with Hare’s view of religion as a blik, the Falsification Principle does not present any conflict or harm to the idea of religion. Furthermore, Hare argued that Antony Flew’s understanding of religious language was flawed as he viewed it to be the same as some sort of scientific explanation. This too, can be used to suggest that religious language and the Falsification Principle do not conflict in anyway, and that the points raised by Flew in order to show how religious language is meaningless, according to Falsificationism, are wrong.

However, even though Flew accepted Hare’s concept of bliks he added that Christianity did not categorise itself as a blik since, in his opinion, it makes claims about the universe which can be seen more as assertions as opposed to interpretations of one’s experiences. Flew suggested that statements such as “God created the universe” or “God created human beings differently to other animals” to be assertions as they truly believe that God did this which necessarily opens these views to the possibility of being either verified or falsified, which as Flew said before, Christians will always produce excuses for any criticism raised in relation to the existence of God. This point is also shared by Mitchell who introduces the parable of the stranger who helps the resistance fighters. In this story, he draws out the concept that even though the stranger’s behaviour is unexplainable and misguiding to believe differently to what he says this resembles greatly God’s apparent actions such evil, death and natural disasters which are points raised in the problem of evil. He concludes his argument by saying how the belief in God can be a “Significant article of faith” even though the same evidence can be used by others to reject their belief in God.

In conclusion, I believe that the principle of Falsification cannot be seen to be relevant to religious language as the language used in such statements is of a different nature than those supposed in the Falsification Principle. However, I can recognise how they can be seen by some to be viewed as relevant, thus confronting religious language with many strong challenges.