a serious and rational concern with religion will inevitably make us want to know whether the way the believer feels and acts is appropriate to the actual character of the universe, and whether the things he says as a believer are true.
R.B. Braithwaite pushed these kinds of thoughts clearly in the non-cognitivist direction. He argued that although religious statements are not cognitive assertions, they however can be non-cognitively meaningful because of their practical value. Braithwaite argued that religious claims are meaningful because a religious claim is primarily a moral claim expressing an attitude, and also it is different from a moral claim, as a religious one will refer to a story as well as an intention. In addition to this, he went on to say that it is not necessary for the religious person to believe in the truth of the story referred to in order to resolve to live a certain way of life.
I believe that it could be said the falsification principle offers no real challenge to religious beliefs because it cannot be applied to religious language, as religious language is non cognitive. Believers have faith and belief in their religious language and just because it cannot be verified or falsified does not mean it is meaningless. The whole point of belief and faith is to have faith and trust in god, and therefore believers do not allow evidence to undermine their faith. Someone who went along these lines was Basil Mitchell who argued that religious beliefs, which are cognitive assertions, are falsifiable in principle but not in practice. Believers are not, however, able to say precisely what would count as a falsification, which implies that in practice we may not be able to say with certainty whether such beliefs have been falsified.
Richard Swinburne went on to say that there are statements that cannot be falsified, and yet we understand the meaning behind the statement. He went on use the example of the toys in the toy cupboard, we might not be able to falsify whether or not the toys move, but we still understand the idea of toys moving. Even though I feel that this challenge is quite successful towards the falsification argument I also do believe that it contains some flaws. Going back to the example of the toys in the toy cupboard, if this was the case then people all around the world could believe in absolute absurdity. For example, people could make up gods and believe them, and they could easily say that for them there belief in many gods is meaningful because even though they cannot prove their gods exist they may understand the existence of the gods, therefore their belief is meaningful. I feel that at this point the falsification principle could come into action, as it could answer whether this belief in many ‘gods’ is meaningful or just meaningless.
Twenty years before the falsification principle was introduced, the verification principle was established. The verification principle was put forward by Ayer, who was a logical positivist. He believed that a statement is only meaningful if we know how it can be proved true or false, either because it is an analytical statement or through empirical methods.
For that reason, according to logical positivists because religious propositions cannot be analysed using empirical methods they are meaningless. Soon after, Ayer realised that we can accept some scientific and historical propositions. From this, he introduced the strong verification which occurs when there is no doubt that a statement is true or false, for example ‘John has two eyes,’ and the weak verification where a statement could be proved true or false by using observations that are relevant to providing a proposition true or false. The ‘weak’ form of the verification principle would support some religious statements, such as Muhammad is the prophet of Allah, also the proposition Allah created the world, this could be supported by evidence of possible design in the world.
The falsification principle differs from the verification principle in two significant ways. One is that the falsification principle depends on the falsification rather than the verification to decide if the statement is meaningful or not. The next differentiation is that the challenge of falsification is based not only on the language used but on what the believer is in position to know and not just to believe. However there is a similarity between the verification and the falsification principle and that is that both principles say that religious language is meaningless.
In conclusion the challenges put forward by Hare, Mitchell and Swimburne towards the falsification principle would suggest that the falsification principle does not really offer any real challenge to belief. Overall I feel that Hare was very right in saying the falsification principle could not be used on religious statements as they are non cognitive, and also that religious language cannot make factual claims but it still has meaning, because it influences the way in which people look at the world. Also following in this line was R.B Braithwaite. I feel that R.B Braithwaite put forward a very strong argument in that religious language cannot be verified; people might understand stories and understand the morals behind them. Take for example the parables told by Jesus, Flew would say that these parables are meaningless because they cannot be falsified and the verification principle would say that meaningless because they cannot be verified by empirical methods, however believers would find these parables meaningful because the understand the true meaning behind them, and understand the morals behind them. Thus, I feel that the falsification principle does not provide real challenge to religious beliefs, because not only are religious statements non cognitive, so the falsification principle does not apply, but also because different people can take religious beliefs different. To some people religious beliefs do not have to be falsified in order for them to be meaningful.
