Religious responses to the verification principle have been largely unsuccessful Essay

apparitional solutions to the verification principle shake up been generally unsuccessful. Evaluate this claim. (20 marks)The Verification Principle claims that it is nonsense(prenominal) to talk almost divinity fudge and ethics etc, as these spatenot be verified employ empirical evidence or scientific experiments. There bedevil however been umteen responses to this conjecture, for ideal the falsification principle. This is a supposition developed by Anthony Flew who severalizes that for a program line to have meaning it must be able to be proven false. So that not religious meaning. This surmisal is sympathetic to the verification principle merely retributory to prove something wrong instead, however its a stronger telephone line, as it does not go beyond our understanding of god and religion.In response to the falsification principle, R.M H be criticised it with his guess of the blik, which is an individuals take in personalised opinion and meaningful stat ements. He says that you fuelnot circumvent the blik because it holds meaning to the individual. Christians pass on rally in their minds that God is good this is their own intellection so we cannot prove their blik wrong. However, Flew replies to this criticism pr all overb that this is not relevant and cannot be employ to religious lyric as it has not happened in current life, just in some one(a)s mind. some other response to the verification principle is the Via Negativa this is a theory that suggests that to fully understand what God is we imply to say what he isnt. In addition, Moses Maimonides tell that positive statement such(prenominal) as God is powerful abundant to convey a rock, limits God because we are comparing Him to a human and take for granted we know what He can do. This is a cogent argument because we cannot understand flop a God we have never seen before, we can only imagine our own personal God and when we die we will then be enlightened with the r eal God, if there is one at all.However, St doubting Thomas Aquinas rejected the Via Negativa as he believed that there are positive things to say or so God. He argued that the only we focussing we can legitimately speak about God is employ analogy. This involves making a comparison between two things, one is familiar and helps us understand some other thing and both have alike meanings. He gave examples such as, the analogy of ratio and attribution. However some philosophers criticised this, such as Richard Swinburne who suggested that sometimes words could be apply univocally about god. However if you say God is good, this could mean the same way mankind are good. Therefore Aquinas is using the word good univocally Aquinas theory of analogy is a strong argument as it doesnt limit God or use ambiguous language.Another response to this that involves the meaning of religious language is symbol. There are many symbols that have meaning to religious tribe and non -religious peo ple. For example the star of St David for Jews and symbols such as the archetypal aid cross which obviously does have a meaning. However, some symbols change over time for example, the Hindu symbol of intermission was adapted by Adolf Hitler to produce the infamous Swastika that reminds people of sadness and death. So it raises the question whether symbols are reliable or not to show meaning.To conclude, I think there are a few reasonable responses to the verification principle such as the falsification principle, as this does not limit God to our understanding but we can still talk about Him. Also the doctrine of analogy is a strong theory as we can compare one thing to another(prenominal) thing we are familiar with without aright describing the unfamiliar thing and this makes it easier for us to understand. However, symbols can often be misinterpreted and lead to confusion, as they dont say enough about God and religion for people to fully understand.