Topics Religion

Question When I studied philosophy, all the professors I had held the same views about religion -- that "god-talk" was "cognitively meaningless." I recall reading philosophers like Flew, Smart, and Mackie on this. It was my understanding at the time (I attended NYU in the 1960s) that major academic philosophers in the U.S., the U.K., and the other English-speaking countries saw philosophy as logical (or linguistic) analysis and held these views as well. Have such philosophers come to see religion differently over the past forty years?

Accepted:
March 31, 2008

Comments

1. Once upon a time, I guess that quite a few philosophers thought that a one-shot bash with (something like) the verification principle was enough to dispose of various claims of religion. These days, few philosophers think there's such a quick route to declaring some area of discourse "cognitively meaningless".

2. My impression remains however that many philosophers do think that various kinds of religious claims haven't got a clear meaning at least if interpreted flat-footedly, as making metaphysical claims about the contents of the universe. Take the words of the catechism: "God is the Supreme Spirit, Who alone exists of Himself and is infinite in all perfections". What does that mean? The complaint is not the quick one that it is "unverifiable", but the more laborious-to-defend one that trying to work out some metaphysical content to e.g. "infinite in all perfections" leads to confusion and paradox. But there are certainly philosophers who think that a coherent metaphysical story can be told.

3. But it is also the case that many philosophers think that giving a flat-footedly literal interpretation to religious claims is crass and point-missing and religious discourse shouldn't be thought of as being in the business of "cognitive meaningfulness" (and failing or succeeding on this score is not what it is about). The bone-headed literalness of various fundamentalisms, some would say, is in part a philosophical mistake (as well as being historically unfounded, etc.).

At the time the questioner mentions, it wasn't just religious claims that philosophers declared "cognitively meaningless". Any metaphysical claim was supposed to suffer the same fate.

Well, part of what's changed is that that's changed. Metaphysics is now a flourishing, and for the most part respectable, branch of philosophy again. So while it may be hard to be sure quite what "God is the Supreme Spirit, Who alone exists of Himself and is infinite in all perfections" means, it's surely not much harder than to be sure what (-- insert quotation from contemporary metaphysician --) means. The idea that some things exist in and of themselves and that some things exist only in virtue of the existence of other things, in particular, is quite metaphysically respectable: For example, pretty much everyone would agree that a set exists only in virtue of the existence of its members.

Of course, it's one thing whether flat-footed interpretations of religious claims would render them meaningless. It's quite another whether the flat-footed interpretation is the correct one, in the case of any particular individual. Surely it's obvoius that some people really do believe (or think they believe) the propositions that are expressed by such claims, flat-footedly interpreted.