The analogy of proportion occurs when a word is used to refer to a quality that a thing possesses in proportion to the kind of reality it possesses, e.g. a dog is loyal in the way in which dogs are loyal, and humans are loyal in proportion to the loyalty of being human. Similarly, one can understand God as all-powerful as we have the human idea of power. God is proportionally more powerful than humans, so we cannot completely understand the idea of God’s omnipotence we can have an insight into God’s power because of our human experience of power.
In the 20th century Ian Ramsey developed the theory of analogy. Ramsey refers to ‘models’ and ‘qualifiers’. A model is an analogy to help express something about God. For example, if we speak of ‘God is good’, the model of the word is ‘good’. There is a human understanding of ‘good’, when applied to God it’s a model for understanding God’s goodness. Ramsey states that if we are to understand God’s goodness then we need to adapt the model, qualify it, so that we realise that it’s not literally what God is like. To the statement ‘God is good’ we need to add the qualifier that God is ‘infinitely good’. It gives greater depth into the thinking of God’s goodness until eventually there is better insight into God’s goodness.
Paul Tillich was a theologian who believed that it is possible to speak meaningfully about religious language and came up with the theory that religious language, because it is symbolic in nature, has a profound effect upon humans.
Tillich starts by making a distinction between signs and symbols. He said that signs do not participate in what they symbolise. Meaning that without knowing what the, for example the ‘30’ road sign meant, then it would make no sense. All these signs do is point to a statement e.g. ‘you can now travel at the national speed limit’, they have no other effect.
Symbols are powerful and they actually take part in the power and meaning of what they are symbolising. The cross is the symbol for Christianity. Not only is it a marker for that religion, but it also makes a powerful statement. It reminds Christians of the sacrifice they believe Jesus made for them on the cross, it reminds them also of their beliefs about God and his plan for the salvation of human beings. So in this way, a symbol communicates much more deeply and powerfully. Tillich believed that religious language operates as a symbol and therefore it must be meaningful.
Tillich maintained that religious language is a symbolic way of pointing towards the ultimate reality, the vision of God which he called ‘Being-Itself’. ‘Being-Itself’ is that upon which everything depends for its being and Tillich believed that we came to knowledge of this through symbols direct us to it.
During the 20th Century an issue that dominated most discussion about philosophy of religion centred on the meaningfulness of religious language. The problem with the communication of the ideas about God, faith, belief and practice, is that behind the words are concepts. Individuals have different understandings of the concepts and this may result in differing interpretations and meaning. There are some philosophers that argue that religious language is used in different ways that language is used in everyday life. It could show a person’s commitment to a particular faith tradition, or it could make a claim on behalf of that tradition.
There are some philosophers who assert that religious language is cognitive and therefore something about God may be known. The problem with this is that religious statements are not about objective facts that can be proved true or false. If we are unable to validate religious statements based on objective facts that are open to cognition then religious language is considered to be meaningless.
There is also the problem of how one can describe God when nothing is known about God. For example, is it right to refer to a supreme being using human terminology like ‘He’ and ‘Him’ or referring to what God ’said’. It has been said that the use of language in this way anthropomorphises or objectifies God. Using words in this way appears to somewhat limit God’s power e.g. in the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo’s depiction of God.
The logical positivists developed from the work of philosophers known as the Vienna Circle. The group didn’t seek to understand how we gain knowledge about the external world but how we use language as means of conveying that knowledge. The main principle of logical positivism was that only those propositions which can be verified empirically have any meaning. Logical positivists only accepted two forms of verifiable language; analytical propositions ( a priori), knowledge is gained through logical reasoning. These definitions are true by definition, e.g. ‘all bachelors are unmarried’. We know this to be true because bachelor means that a man is unmarried. It would be contradictive to deny an analytical truth, to refer to a man as a ‘married bachelor’. And then synthetic propositions (a posterior), knowledge could be proved true or false (verified) by some form of sense experience, for example, ‘James is a bachelor’, this could be verified by finding out whether or not James is male and single.
The theory developed by the logical positivists is known as the verification principle. It states that we know the meaning of a statement if we know the conditions under which the statement is either true or false. If it isn’t possible to know how to prove the statement true or false using either knowledge gained through logical reasoning or empirical evidence, then the logical positivists would regard it as being meaningless. Logical positivists accepted statements as meaningful if they knew the conditions under which the statement could be proved true or false, not just statements that could be proved true, e.g. the statement ‘the moon is made of green cheese’ is obviously false, it would be meaningful to the logical positivists as it is known how to prove the statement false, that is by actually going to the moon and taking samples of the rock.
Logical positivists argued that it was pointless to talk about God as such propositions couldn’t be verified using senses or a scientific experiment. It wasn’t possible to know the conditions under which such propositions could be proved true or false and therefore the talk of such things must be meaningless. Logical positivists regarded religious language as meaningless because it is used to consider things beyond human experience and this leads to problems in understanding the meaning of assertions being made, the problems arise because of four reasons: any discussion that relates to God and belief can’t be based on common ground, religious language isn’t univocal and therefore the meaning may be unclear, religious language is equivocal language because it is talking about the realm of infinite existence, the result is different interpretations and understandings of the words used.
A J Ayer was a logical positivist, he believed that empirical methods have to be used to assess whether a proposition is in principle verifiable, and meaningful. It’s the steps taken to verify a proposition which makes it meaningful. A proposition being made needs to be analysed to find out what is meaningful and what isn’t, for example, a physicist might make a proposition about the universe that at some point, at future date may be challenged or proved to be untrue. Ayer would consider such propositions meaningful because the physicist bases his finding on experiments. A scientific theory might not be verifiable ’in practice’, but because scientists know how to verify a theory, it’s verifiable ’in principle’. Ayer decided that a proposition is meaningful if it’s known how to prove it true or false in either practice or principle, if it’s not known how it could be proved true or false, then that makes a proposition meaningless. So according to logical positivists, as religious propositions can’t be analysed using empirical methods, they are then meaningless.
The falsification principle is another response to the verification principle, it maintains a similar approach to it. Many philosophers regard the falsification principle as a more serious challenge to the meaningfulness of religious language, Anthony Flew developed the principle in the 1950s. Flew applied the falsification principle to religious language and he concluded that religious statements are meaningless. Flew argued that that this was because there is nothing which can count against religious statements. Religious statements can’t be proved true (verified) or false (falsify) because religious believers do not accept any evidence to count against their beliefs. For Flew, there is no difference between meaningless and non-falsifiability.
Flew argues that Christians hold their belief ‘God is good’, even when there is evidence offered against his goodness. Flew uses the example of a human father desperate to save his child dying of inoperable cancer: the ‘Heavenly Father’ appears indifferent to the child’s suffering. To account for God’s indifference the believer allows nothing to count against the idea that ‘God loves us as a father’.
In conclusion I would say that even though I am a Christian I would have to take the side of logical positivists because it’s true we cannot empirically prove anything regarding God because there are so many contradictions of for example when we say ‘God is good’, you have to question is he really and what evidence is there, because if he is a ‘father figure’ then why are so many people allowed to die so innocently to stop it, if he was good then he would have stopped it by now.
by
sianaiken (student)
