Falsification, language games and religious meaning

Overview

Falsification Principle, flew's parable of the gardener and flew's charge against religious believers.

What you need to know

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Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What is the Falsification Principle?

   Model answer

   Antony Flew's claim that for an assertion to say anything it must rule something out, so its author must be able to state what would count against it.

2. 2

   What is Flew's parable of the gardener?

   Model answer

   Two explorers find a clearing; one insists an invisible, intangible, undetectable gardener tends it, and every test that fails is met with a qualification until the claim dies the death of a thousand qualifications.

3. 3

   What is Flew's charge against religious believers?

   Model answer

   Flew argued that believers let nothing count against their belief, so their assertions have been so qualified that they assert nothing at all.

4. 4

   How did R. M. Hare respond to Flew?

   Model answer

   Hare introduced the idea of a blik, an unfalsifiable but deeply held way of seeing the world which affects how a person lives, and argued religious belief is a blik rather than a factual claim.

5. 5

   What is Hare's example of a blik?

   Model answer

   A student is convinced all dons want to murder him and no evidence of their kindness will shift him; his belief is unfalsifiable but far from meaningless in its effects.

6. 6

   Give one criticism of Hare's bliks.

   Model answer

   If religious belief is a blik it makes no factual claim. That is not what believers think they are doing when they say God exists.

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