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Religious Assertions In The Light Of Contemporary Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

A. C. Ewing
A. C. Ewing
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Extract

Today the questions most commonly asked by philosophical critics of religion, at least in this country, relate not to the truth or falsity of religious assertions but to their meaning. To be fair to the philosophers, however, we must of course realize that very few, if any, of those who have denied “meaningfulness” to religious statements were using “meaning” in other than a technical sense. They did not mean that the sentence “God loves us” conveys nothing at all, that it is like “schwarzibarshinee.”

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 32 , Issue 122 , July 1957 , pp. 206 - 218
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1957

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References

1 The Ninth Arthur Stanley Eddington Memorial Lecture, Cambridge University Press, 1955.

page 209 note 1 op. cit., p. 34, Hare, Language of Morals, p. 69.

page 209 note 2 The term “stories” is preferred by Braithwaite as “neutral,” implying neither that the story is believed nor that it is disbelieved (p. 26).

page 210 note 1 Incidentally when Braithwaite (p. 27) cites the Pilgrim's Progress as an example of a work of fiction which has had a great religious influence, he seems to be forgetting that the work was admittedly intended as an allegory, i.e. it claims to be picturing by fictitious characters just what the author regards as objectively true, as with Christ's parables.

page 212 note 1 op. cit., p. 28.

page 214 note 1 p. 4 ff.

page 216 note 1 Braithwaite does not base his argument on this, but attacks on metaphysics have certainly been based on it.

page 217 note 1 A. Macintyre in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. Flew and Macintyre, p. 256.