Religious Language

The problem of religious language is one of the central debates in the philosophy of religion. When believers say "God is good" or "God loves us," what do these statements mean? God is, by definition, transcendent — beyond human experience and comprehension. How can human language, developed to describe finite, physical realities, meaningfully describe an infinite, non-physical God? This lesson examines the major philosophical positions on religious language, from the radical scepticism of logical positivism to the constructive proposals of analogy, symbol, and language games.

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The Verification Principle

Logical Positivism and the Vienna Circle

The Vienna Circle, a group of philosophers and scientists active in the 1920s and 1930s (including Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap, and Friedrich Waismann), developed logical positivism — the view that the only meaningful statements are those that are either analytically true (true by definition, such as "all bachelors are unmarried") or empirically verifiable (capable of being tested by sense experience).

A.J. Ayer's Application

A.J. Ayer (1910–1989) brought logical positivism to the English-speaking world in Language, Truth and Logic (1936). Ayer distinguished between two types of meaningful statement: