Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T06:55:58.701Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Intelligibility of God-talk

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Kai Nielsen
Kai Nielsen
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy, New York University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

There are certain primary religious beliefs which are basic to a whole religious Weltanschauung, for they are the cornerstone of the whole edifice. If these beliefs are unintelligible, incoherent, irrational or false the whole way-of-life, centering around them, is ‘a house of cards’. Certain segments of it may still be seen to have a value when viewed from some other perspective, but if these primary religious belief are faulted, the religious Weltanschauung itself has been undermined. If it has been undermined and if people recognise that it has been undermined and still go around believing in it, accepting and acting in accordance with its tenents, they are then being very irrational. And while in humility we should recognise that we all suffer from propensities to irrationality and perhaps in some spheres of our life can't help being irrational, it is a propensity we should resist, for to be irrational is to do something we ought not to do.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , March 1970 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1970

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 1 note 1 This has been powerfully argued by Crombie, I. M. in his ‘The Possibility of Theological Statements’, Faith and Logic, Basil, Mitchell (ed.) (London: 1957), pp. 31–48.Google Scholar

page 1 note 2 Bultmam, Rudolf, ‘What Sense Is There to Speak of God?’, The Christian Scholar, vol. XLIII No. 3 (Fall, 1960), pp. 66–7.Google Scholar

page 2 note 1 Carnap, Rudolf, ‘The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language’, Logical Positivism, Ayer, A. J. (ed.) (Glencoe, Illinois: 1959), pp. 60–81.Google Scholar

page 2 note 2 Edwards, Paul, ‘Some Notes on Anthropomorphic Theology’, Religious Experience and Truth, Sidney, Hook (ed.) (New York: 1961), p. 242.Google Scholar

page 3 note 1 It could be argued that the making of such inferences from ‘God created the world’ establishes nothing about ‘God’, for we also can make inference from ‘Irglig created the world’ or ‘A Trig created the world’. The deductive relationships are determined, not by ‘God’ or ‘Irglig’ or ‘A Trig’, but by the meanings of the rest of the words in the sentence. On the contrary, it shows something about ‘God’ and ‘Irglig’, namely that they are words that could properly take that place in such a sentence, for ‘In created the world’ or ‘Yellow created the world’ or ‘Very created the world’ are not intelligible. We understand that ‘God’ is a certain word which has a proper place in certain sentences. That ‘X created the world’, as far as usage goes, takes some values rather than others shows that ‘created the world’ is in some sense an intelligible expression and that ‘God’ is one of the admissible values for the variable ‘X’.

page 4 note 1 Passmore, John, Philosophical Reasoning, (London: 1961), p. 83.Google Scholar

page 4 note 2 Ziff, Paul, ‘About “God”’, Religious Experience and Truth, Hook, Sidney (ed.) (New York: 1961), PP. 195–202.Google Scholar

page 5 note 1 The articles by Hick, , Clarke, , Schmidt, and Edwards, all occur in Relgious Experience and Truth, Hook, Sidney (ed.), (New York: 1961).Google Scholar The articles by Hoffman and Glickman appear in Sophia. Hoffman, Robert, ‘Professor Ziff's Resurrection of the Plain Man's Concept of God’, Sophia, vol. II No. 2 (July, 1963)Google Scholar and Glickman, Jack, ‘Hoffman on Ziff “About ‘God’l”’, Sophia, vol. IV No. 3 (October 1965).Google Scholar

page 5 note 2 I have in mind Hume's argument in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X Pts. I–II and Nowell-Smith, P. H., ‘Miracles’, New Essays in Philosophical Theology, Flew, A. and MacIntyre, A. (ed.) (London: 1955), pp. 243–253.Google Scholar But to see that things are not all that obviously settled here, see Broad, C. D., ‘Hume's Theory of the Credibility of Miracles’, in Alexander Sesonske and Noel Fleming, Human Understanding: Studies in the Philosophy of David Hume, (Belmont, California, 1965)Google Scholar and chapter two of Smart, Ninian, Philosophers and Religious Truth, (London, 1964).Google Scholar

page 5 note 3 It might be objected that the burden of proof should not be on Ziff to show that there are no miracles. The burden of proof is the other way. Among other things ‘miracle’ must be made understandable. What could it mean to say ‘the laws of physics were suspended’ or that ‘something occurred which was contrary to natural regularities’? These are indeed obscure notions, but it isn't plainly evident that the concept of a miracle is unintelligible and simply to assume that there can be no miracles is to ignore the obvious theological counter move that it is natural for a theologian to make when Ziff makes such a claim. It is this that keeps his argument here from being air tight. See here the references in footnote 9 to Broad and Smart and perhaps most important of all Holland, R. F. (‘The Miraculous’ in Religion and Understanding, Phillips, D. Z., ed. Oxford, 1967.)Google Scholar

page 6 note 1 Ziff, Paul, Semantical Analysis, (Ithaca, New York, 1960), p. 197Google Scholar

page 7 note 1 Clarke, W. Norris, ‘On Professors Ziff, Niebuhr and Tillich’, Religious Experience and Truth, (Hook, Sidney, ed.) (New York, 1961), p. 224.Google Scholar

page 8 note 1 Note that while the jargon is different we seem not to be so very far from Russell's theory of descriptions here.

page 8 note 2 Ziff, Paul, ‘About “God”’, Religious Experience and Truth, Hook, Sidney (ed.) (New York, 1961), p. 198.Google Scholar

page 9 note 1 Ziff, Paul, ‘About “God”’, Religious Experience and Truth, Hook, Sidney (ed.) (New York, 1961), p. 199.Google Scholar

page 9 note 2 ibid.

page 9 note 3 ibid.

page 9 note 4 ibid.

page 10 note 1 Ziff, Paul, ‘About “God”’, Religious Experience and Truth, Hook, Sidney (ed.) (New York, 1961), p. 200.Google Scholar

page 11 note 1 Here I shall not consider all of Hoffman's arguments for it seems to me that they have been dearly refuted by Glickman. See Hoffman, Robert, ‘Professor Ziff's Resurrection of the Plain Man's Conception of God’, Sophia, vol. II No. 2 (July 1963), pp. 1–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Glickman, Jack, ‘Hoffman on Ziff's “About God”’, Sophia, vol. IV, No. 3 (October, 1965), pp. 33–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 12 note 1 Ziff, Paul, ‘About “God”’, Religious Experience and Truth, Hook, Sidney (ed.) (New York, 1961), p. 201.Google Scholar

page 12 note 2 This, of course, does not mean that Hoffman is not making a correct claim about meaning. Later I shall argue that with suitable qualifications such a claim ought to be made. But without such an argument he has not refuted Ziff.

page 13 note 1 Glickman, Jack, op. cit., p. 39.Google Scholar

page 13 note 2 Someone might object that unless what is meant by ‘logically possible’ here can be specified independently of the notion of ‘in principle’, we do not have an adequate understanding of that claim. An analysis of ‘logically possible’ would indeed be very difficult but that is true for many other working terms, including ‘true’. But this, as we have learned from Moore, does not mean that we do not know the meaning of the term in question or that we cannot satisfactorily operate with it. We can translate into the concrete and in that way specify what we mean here. Consider the following sentences: (1) ‘A married man is a husband.’ (2) ‘Johnson eats faster than Fullbright.’ (3) ‘Johnson sleeps faster than Fullbright.’ and (4) ‘Johnson carried the statue of Liberty to Vietnam in the palm of his hand.’ Anyone who understands English knows no question of (I)'s confirmability or disconfirmability can arise. There is a conceptual ban on verifying (1). Thus it plainly is not even verifiable in principle. (2), by contrast plainly is, for we can describe its truth conditions; the same holds for such an absurdity as (4). Moreover (2) and (4) are such that there is plainly no conceptual ban on looking for evidence for their truth or falsity as there is in looking for evidence for the truth or falsity of (1). (3), by contrast, is not such that one plainly exhibits one's failure to understand English if one looks for evidence for its truth or falsity. It is correct to say we do not know what (if anything) would count for its truth or falsity and thus we do not know or have grounds for believing it is verifiable (testable). It is not even clear whether it has a use (except as a philosophical example) in the language and if it has no use, no intelligible question can possibly arise about verifying it, and thus it is not verifiable in principle for it makes no sense to try to verify it. But since it is not crystal clear that (3) has no use, we cannot be confident that there is a conceptual ban on looking for evidence for its truth or falsity. But such indeterminate cases, including more obvious ones like ‘He sees with his eyes’, do not mean that the distinction is unworkable or inadequate. It only means that sometimes we do not know how to apply it or even whether to apply it. For further argument in that area see my ‘God and Verification Again’, Canadian Journal of Theology, vol. XI, No. 2(1965).Google Scholar

page 14 note 1 Hick, John, ‘Meaning and Truth in Theology’, Religious Experience and Truth, Hook, Sidney (ed.) (New York, 1901), p. 203.Google Scholar

page 14 note 2 ibid., p. 204.

page 15 note 1 Hick, John, ‘Meaning and Truth in Theology’, Religious Experience and Truth, Hook, Sidney (ed.) (New York, 1961), p. 205.Google Scholar

page 16 note 1 Edwards, Paul, ‘Some Notes on Anthropomorphic Theology’, Religious Experience and Truth, Hook, Sidney (ed.), p. 242.Google Scholar

page 16 note 2 For a justification of that claim see Findlay, J. N., ‘Can God's Existence Be Disproved?’, New Essays in Philosophical Theology, Flew, A. and MacIntyre, A. (ed.) (New York, 1955), pp. 47–56.Google Scholar

page 16 note 3 Edwards, Paul, op. cit., p. 243.Google Scholar

page 17 note 1 The contention here is not that we typically apply ‘loving’ or ‘just’ only to embodied agents (assuming that is not a pleonasm). Rather the claim is that ‘being just’ or ‘being loving’ is something that someone does. It is applied to actions. The claim I am making is that ‘bodiless action’ is without factual intelligibility. There is nothing that counts for or against the truth of ‘There was bodiless action in Haiti’. It might be argued that God can act justly or lovingly without a body because he can act through (by means of) other persons with bodies, e.g. ‘Gustavus Adolphus’ justice shows God's handwork’. But this won't hap for we still do not understand ‘he can act’, i.e. ‘God acts though bodiless’ in the above sentence.

page 17 note 2 On reading this in an earlier draft, Hoffman wrote to me: ‘So the verifiability criterion of meaningfulness returns in formal dress. It couldn't get itself accepted to the philosophical banquet table when dressed as “confirmation or disconfirmation”, but in the more formal attire of “truth conditions” it's legitimate enough to get in the back way.’ But, in arguing, as I did and as Edwards did, from cases where it is plain—even without invoking the verifiability criterion—that the word strings in question (e.g. ‘bodiless action’) are meaningless, and then in showing that statements involving, directly or indirectly, a notion of bodiless action are meaningless because unverifiable, I provided indirect support (vindication) for such a criterion. I didn't simply assume it. Moreover, I asserted in the very next paragraph that what I said at that point was still ‘fundamentally question-begging’.

page 18 note 1 Ziff, Paul, ‘About “God”’, Religious Experience and Truth, Hook, Sidney (ed.) (New York, 1961), p. 197Google Scholar

page 18 note 2 Edwards, Paul, op. cit., p. 243.Google Scholar

page 19 note 1 Edwards, Paul, op. cit., pp. 244–5.Google Scholar

page 19 note 2 ibid.

page 19 note 3 ibid.