levo

Religious Language

Verification, Falsification and Language Games

  • 4 things to know
  • Component 1

Overview

Recall questions on cognitive and non-cognitive language, the verification principle, Flew's falsification challenge, Hick's Celestial City, Hare's bliks and the paranoid student, and Wittgenstein's language games.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started
Key term

What is cognitive religious language?

Key term

According to Flew, why does religious language fail the falsification test?

Key term

Outline Hare's parable of the paranoid student.

Process

Contrast non-cognitive language with the verification and falsification principles.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What is cognitive religious language?

    Model answer

    Religious language that makes factual claims about reality that can be assessed as true or false.

  2. 2

    How does non-cognitive religious language differ from cognitive religious language?

    Model answer

    Non-cognitive religious language expresses attitudes, emotions, or commitments rather than making truth claims about objective reality.

  3. 3

    State the verification principle.

    Model answer

    A statement is only meaningful if it can be verified empirically or is true by definition (analytic).

  4. 4

    How does the verification principle challenge the meaningfulness of religious language?

    Model answer

    It claims that statements about God cannot be empirically verified and are therefore meaningless.

  5. 5

    What is Flew's falsification principle?

    Model answer

    A statement is only meaningful if there is something that could count against it or prove it false.

  6. 6

    According to Flew, why does religious language fail the falsification test?

    Model answer

    Religious believers qualify their claims so much that nothing could ever count against them, making religious statements meaningless.

Other ways to work this

The same content, four other ways.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.

1Closed book
2Open book
3Closed book

The 3-step method, run for you

Answer cold, learn it, then prove it stuck. Levo tracks the jump between your first attempt and your last.

Arguments for the Existence of God
Evil and Suffering
Religious Language
Self and Life After Death

Cram a whole paper in one sitting

Sort every topic into what you know and what you do not, then drill only the weak ones.

1 2:8-15.
TimothyCorinthiansPeter

Blank Blitz makes facts automatic

Rapid timed gap-fills on the terms and numbers you need to recall without thinking.

AExclusivism holds salvation is available only to Christians.
BInclusivism holds salvation is available through Christ to non-Christians.
CPluralism holds salvation is available through multiple religious paths.

Build It gets the exam shape right

Assemble a full-mark answer from its marking points, in the order an examiner wants them.

Olam Ha-Ba means the world to come.
TrueFalse

Test It catches misconceptions

Spot the fault in a statement. The traps are the mistakes students actually make.

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Brain Breaks between sessions

Short focus games to reset attention, so the next set lands better than the last.

Every question in Religious Language, on a schedule.

Attempt a question from memory, write the correct version, then attempt it again. Levo records the jump between your first attempt and your last, and brings each question back on the day you are due to forget it.

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