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Discuss the View that Religious Language has nothing to do with Empirical Facts.
People study religious language because the verbal communication cannot be justified because there is no evidence that goes beyond it. ... ”
Ludwig Wittgenstein was linked with Logical positivists as he initially agreed with them; his early belief was that the language of religion was seen as meaningless, unable to express anything about reality. Yet he later changed his opinion: he came to realise that the Logical Positivists’ view on language was too limiting. He began to consider the way that language is defined by the functions it performs whist recognising the problems that religious language faced in terms of meaningfulness. Rather than asking questions about the meaningfulness of language, he looked at the way that language is used and at the functions of language. Wittgenstein proposed the concept of language games: different uses of language have different rules- learning to use the language is similar to learning the rules to a different “game.” However, there is common ground between different games take for instance religion and football as a non-believer may be able to understand some or most of the rules as every form of language is a self-contained “game” with its own rules, customs and uses. Therefore, to assess the meaning of language, you must look at the activity that it refers to. Wittgenstein did not say that language was factually true, only that it had a meaning for those who used it. His edition was that language could not be confined to mirroring the world. Language is a “tool” used for different purposes. ... The Logical Positivists reject religious language because there is no way of verifying it. ... ” He is making the point that as we do know how to verify propositions such as “God exists”, religious statements do have meaning which brings us on to the falsification principle. ... Antony Flew applied the Falsification Principle to religious language; he argued that religious people tend to refuse the possibility that their statements can be falsified, they will not allow any evidence to count against their beliefs and so for this reason, Flew argued that religious language is meaningless.
Approximate Word count = 1775
Approximate Pages = 7.1
(250 words per page double spaced)
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