by Svetlana Elizabeth

Created on: March 24, 2007   Last Updated: May 08, 2007

In order to assess whether or not religious language is meaningful, it is vital to define what meaningful means, and how we can decide what is meaningful. Two main ideas have been put forward by philosophers as ways of doing this, the verification principle and the falsification principle.

The verification principle was invented by a group of 1920s philosophers, the Vienna circle, or logical positivists. They decided that a statement was only meaningful if it could be verified (proved right or wrong) in one of three ways. A statement that was analytical could by verified. These are statements that rely on definition and logic, such as "a square has four sides" and "all black dogs are black". It was decided these were meaningful, but also useless, as they did not tell us anything we did not already know.

The Vienna circle also approved of mathematical statements, such as "5-2=3" and synthetic statements. A synthetic statement is one that can be verified by sensual experience, such as "all pandas eat bamboo" and "Clare is the tallest person in the world". This is summed up to say, "only statements that are analytical or empirically viable are meaningful".

Therefore, according to the verification principle most people would believe religious language could not be meaningful. Religious language talks about things such as God, and we do not experience God with our senses. Even people who believe in miracles have only experienced God's actions, not God himself. Some philosophers, such as John Hick, have argued otherwise, saying that religious statements can be verified eschatologically (after death).

However, more philosophers have discounted the verification principle completely. The verification principle says that things such as historical or scientific statements which someone has not witnessed themselves are not meaningful, however we are sure of some historical statements, such as "the battle of hastings took place in 1066". Others have argued that the verification principle is useless, as the principle itself cannot be verified by the verification principle. A. J. Ayer, a philospher who worked on developing a version of the verification principle even discounted it later in life. Most people agree the verification principle is not a good way of deciding which language is meaningful and which is not.

Another idea was put forward by Anthony Flew. He stated "for an assertion to be meaningful the speaker must be able to state what would count, at least in principle,

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