Today:

1. Today: “God Talk”: • History • Verificationism (Ayer) • Problems with Verificationism (Swinburne) • Flew: Death by a Thousand Qualifications • The Gardener Example • Qualification • “God Talk”

2. Verificationism Verificationism is a theory about meaning. It holds that: A sentence is meaningful provided there is a method for verifying it. It follows from this that: If a there is no method for verifying a sentence, then that sentence is meaningless.

3. “God Talk” Ayer thinks that there are no methods for verifying claims about God: • God by definition is supernatural—beyond the empirical world. His existence cannot be verified in the way that an apple, chair, or person can be verified. If he’s right then: • “God exists” is meaningless. But so is: • “God does not exist”

4. “God Talk” • So according to Ayer it is unreasonable to believe that God exists. • But the unreasonability of the theist's belief rests wholly in the meaninglessness of the theistic proposition.  • He's not pointing out the poverty of evidence for theism or an atheistic argument like the problem of evil.

5. Verificationism Verificationism is a theory about meaning. It holds that: A sentence is meaningful provided there is a method for verifying it. It follows from this that: If a there is no method for verifying a sentence, then that sentence is meaningless.

6. Problems with Verificationism • Swinburne objects to Ayer’s verificationism. • He raises a number of objections, but his basic point is that: If verificationism is true, then too many statements turn out to be meaningless. • If Swinburne is right, then verificationism has to be rejected, defeating Ayer's argument to the conclusion that God talk is meaningless.

7. Flew • Even if we reject the verificationist attack on God talk, we still might be skeptical about “God Talk”. (This is the territory explored by Flew.) • Flew's attack on God-talk doesn't rest on a generic theory of meaning like verificationism. • He does not insist that claims like "God exists" are (initially at least) meaningless.  • But Flew thinks the theists’ claims are in danger of being stripped of meaning by a process of qualification.

8. Qualification Flew gives the gardener example to illustrate what he means by “qualification”. At the end of the qualification process Flew asks: “What remains of the original assertion that a Gardener exists?  Just how does an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?”

9. Qualification • In Flew's view, to qualify a claim is to amend it in such a way as to render it compatible with something which apparently showed the claim to be false.  • Qualification is dangerous. If taken too far, nothing remains that could show the claim to be false.  • And according to Flew, if there is nothing that could show the claim to be false, then nothing is said.

10. “God Talk” • Flew thinks that theistic propositions are in special danger of dying by qualification. • He specifically considers the way in which "God cares for us" gets robbed of meaning when the theist qualifies it to deal with apparent counterexamples (i.e. the Problem of Evil).  • On Flew’s view, there's nothing left at the end to the claim that “God loves us” because nothing has been allowed to show that the claim is false.