The falsifiability criterion and the cognitive status of religious belief

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Authors Gettman, Gary Lee, 1942-

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Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/317923 THE FALSIFIABTLITY CRITERION

AND

THE COGNITIVE STATWS OF RELIGIONS BELIEF

by

Gary Lo Gettmm

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the

DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements ■ ■ For the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTS In the Graduate College

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

19 6 6 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR

This thesis has been submitted in partial fulfill­ ment of requirements for an advanced degree at The Uni­ versity of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Libraryo

Brief quotations from this thesis are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknow­ ledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his judgment the proposed use of the material is in the inter­ ests of scholarship* In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author*

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APPROVAL BY THESIS DIRECTOR

This thesis has been approved on the date shown belows

ROBERT L* CALDWELL Date Associate Professor of Philosophy ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to express my gratitude to Pro­ fessor Robert Lo Caldwell who served as my advisor during the final stages of preparation* TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTIONo 0000=00000= THE HEAD-ON RESPONSE TO FLEWo = = =

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I0 Ho Crombie 000000000 THE SHIFTED-GROUND TECHNIQUEo = 0 » R o Ho Rai*@ 00000000000

Alasdair Haelntyreo 0=0000

HITCHELL°S REPLY TO HACINTYRE , = «

CONCLUSIONo 000000000000 REFERENCES 00000000000 = 0 ABSTBACT

The falsiflability criterion states that if any utterance is cognitive or factual, it must be capable of verification or falsificationo Religious beliefs accord­ ing to the sceptics, will allow nothing to falsify their claims § therefore they are non-eognitive0

Responses to the sceptic in recent analytical philo­ sophy have followed two approaches^ One accepts the falsi- flability criterion but denies the sceptic’s premise that religious beliefs are held unconditionally0 Facts do count against their being true5 therefore they are cognitive0 The other response agrees with the sceptic that religious beliefs are held unconditionally, thus failing the falsi- flability test, but denies that this is the only criterion for cognitive status=

I reject both responses0 The first only pays "lip- service" to the sceptic’s criterion and does not let facts count in the required sense0 The second fails because accepting the unconditionality of religious beliefs forces it to repeat the sceptic’s comclusiom0 Both responses, however, are rejected, not because they fail to meet the sceptic’s objections, but because they and the sceptic are

v unaware that the mistaken philosophical framework surround­ ing the falsiflability criterion prevents them from command­ ing a clear view of the use of the words 6,belief11 and M justification,,88 INTRODUCTION

Even though Logical Positivism as a philosophical movement may rightfully be said to be dead, its ghost still haunts traditional systematic theology0 With the advent of the recent analytical movement associated with the name of

Wittgenstein, the inadequacy of the positivist8 s wholesale rejection of religious beliefs as nonsense is now generally recognized| beyond this, however, there is little agreement as to what sense religious beliefs do haveo For some this has only led to a more sophisticated, but essentially neo- positivistic position, and for still others, this latter renewal of scepticism has sparked new efforts, in the spirit of linguistic analysis, to search for the cognitive meaning of religious beliefs on their own terms and in contexts where they are foundo Such efforts have led to a recent and lively discussion of this subject among Oxford and other British philosophers, and although their activities have not necessarily been antithetical to religious dis­ course, as were their positivist forebears, the question of the cognitive status of religious beliefs has not seemed readily soluble, for upon examining such beliefs in con­ texts where they are expressed, they discovered that it is

1 the eogmitive use in these contexts that made them appear so paradox!calo They also found that, unlike many philo­ sophical problems 9 such as the private language argument v other minds9 or the sense-datum theory8 which have their origin and expression only among academic circles9 their problem is a dilemma that is of urgent concern for both the lay thinker and the professionals that it is not only a problem for philosophers but also for those who “play,68 as it were 9 the religious “language-game»M

Historically9 the first significant work to appear in this tradition was John Wisdom's provocative essay entitled9 “Gods,“ published in 1944„ But by far the most controversial discussions which actually initiated today's analytical interest in religious beliefs and discourse, was the symposium, "Theology and Falsification," which appeared in New Essays in Philosophical Theology in 1955° This symposium consisted, among other things, of the now quite famous sceptical challenge presented by Antony Flew in which, using an adaptation of a parable originally con­ ceived by Wisdom, he revitalizes the positivist's position

Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clear­ ing in the jungle» In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds0 One explorer says, "Some gardener must tend this plot»” The other disagrees, "There is no gardener„" So they pitch their tents and set a watch» No gardener is ever seen* "But perhaps he is an invisible gardenero" So they set up a barbed-wire fenceo They electrify ito They patrol with bloodhoundso (For they 3

remember how Ho Go Wells°s The Invisible Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not be seeno) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intru­ der has received a shock= 1© movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber» The bloodhounds never give the cry. let still the Believer is not convinced» "But there is a gardener* invisible* intangible* insensible to electric shocks* a gar­ dener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gar­ dener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves»68 At last the Sceptic despairs, "But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imagin­ ary gardener or even from no gardener at all?"l What Flew is attempting to illustrate through the use of this analogy is that what begins as an existential assertion of a gardener is capable of being reduced inch by inch into a statement dealing with a completely different

subject than that conceived in the original assertion* What

to the Believer seems to be a vast cosmological assertion, ends up being destroyed step by step by a "death by a thous- 2 and qualifications *" As an example of this type of quali­ fication, some people say that Christ ascended into heaven, and surely many of them picture Jesus, flanked by patriarchs and surrounded by cherubim, rising up into the sky on a cloud * But when asked whether they really mean angels on

clouds defying the law of gravity, they perhaps begin to

hedge and offer other pictures which do not seem so

1* Antony Flew, "Theology and Falsification," New in Philosophical Theology, p* 960

2* Ibid*, p* 97< fantastic9 yet when pressed9 they als© refuse to take

literallyo If this were to continue long enough, most

likely they would reach the point where they "become so deceived by their religious imagery that in the end they are only left with empty concepts and nothing, logically or empirically, upon which they can take a rational stando

But there is another equally important, but logic­ ally opposite point to this whole analogy,, Besides the fact that the Believer’s idea of the gardener, when pressed

is shown to lack any cognitive content, one can also see that his belief in the gardener has become impervious to those facts in the garden which seem to count against his assertion. For if, indeed, his feeling towards the garden

includes the assertion that a gardener must tend it, then his statement must be logically equivalent to the denial of the negation of that statement, that is, that it is not the case that a gardener does not exist ( X exists s — -x exists). So anything that can be given as evidence to falsify the assertion and induce the Believer to withdraw

it, admitting he was mistaken, must be considered a part or whole of the meaning of the negation of the assertion.

To know the meaning of the statement, 18God is the father of all mankind,” it is also necessary to know the meaning

of its negation, that is, what state of affairs would have

to exist for us to know that God was not the father of all mankindo If one has mo idea what it would he like for God not to love us or not to exist* then he could continue to

"maintain** the assertion no matter what state of affairs occurredo But what then remains of the factual significance of such an assertion? The answer, Flew says, is that there is nones it is not an assertion*^ To conclude, Flew is attempting to refute the cog­ nitive status (the assertive capabilities) of religious utterances on this basisg No statement can be considered factual unless it is capable of being empirically tested, so that any notion of testing it is logically dependent upon our being able to picture (conceive) states of affairs, both where the statement could be judged false, as well as those where it could be judged true* This means that for any statement to have cognitive meaning, it must be inter­ preted so as to include these possibilities,. This was the dilemma of the Believer in the parable„ He had so general­ ized what it means to call something a gardener that his statement could be made compatible or consistent with any and all possible events that could take place„ If the theist will not allow anything or any event to count against his religious beliefs, if he will allow nothing to discredit them, then Flew appears quite victorious in saying that such

3° Ibid., p. 98. beliefs have no claim to the assertive power character­ istic of all cognitive statements<>

In order to have the proper sympathy for Flew°s objections 9 one should try to grasp the whole gamut of philosophical reflection upon religious beliefso This thesis is perhaps as old as the book of Jobs and much the same type of arguments prevail» Flew is not asking that one, as it were, "justify the ways of God to man"; rather he questions the meaning of what we say when we talk about the ways of God* His position, therefore, undercuts reli­ gious discourse at a much more fundamental point than athe­ ism or agnosticism ever dido In view of Flow's analysis, one could not even understand the Nietzschean cry that "God is dead,60 for if it were so, one would still be at a loss to know what had diode Bather, it is not God that the sceptic today claims is dead, but assertions about Godo

Flew allows no comfort to the agnostic either, for in spite of the fact that the latter may deny any present evidence to verify or falsify religious utterances, he still regards them as assertive and thus saying something about the world as a whole or even something beyond ito But this is what is rejected, for it is the entire "idea of the holy" and the theist's unwillingness to let anything count against it, that places it outside the realm of eognition0 Prima facie, of course, religious utterances like "Christ rose ©n the third. d.ayro do have charaeteristies and intentions associated with ordinary assertions in that they seem to point to states of affairs oeemrring in time (and we shall examine these oharaeter is tics when we come to C r o m M e 8s analysis), yet they refuse to hear the burdens of justi­ fication and the possibility of refutation0 How far can such free-wheeling language go? How much can it right­ fully claim to inform us about the facts of certain his­ torical events or of reality as a whole? If we have nothing to indicate how, for example, God’s existence is unlike that of a rooks’s, a gardener’s, or our own, why say that he exists at all? If such existence is inscrutable, how inscrutable can it get before it no longer matters what we say? In response to Flow’s challenge, various attempts have been made to show that his falsifiability criterion as a criticism of religious language performs an injustice to those contexts where such language has a prima facie cognitive use0 These replies to Flew (those which are found in the original symposium, as well as others which arise later) have for the most part developed into two basic types of responses, each reflecting essentially its own characteristic analysis of the function of religious languageo One type accepts Plow’s criterion for factu­ ally meaningful assertions and admits that on his own ground he is ^completely victorious," but it shifts grounds and attempts to save religion by showing that Flew has only pointed out one particular criterion for cognitive belief, but that religious beliefs have a cri­ terion all their own whereby they are judged cognitive*

The most important advocates of this type of response are S.* M* Hare and Alasdair MacIntyre* These men would in general hold that religious utterances are not factual assertions in Flew0s sense because they do fail the falsi- flability test, but that religion really need not worry about this* They go on to show in their analyses that this test only applies to one function of meaningful discourse and that the proper function of religious utterances is not to make empirically verifiable assertions but rather to do something quite different» What this difference is we will see later, but for now we can say that both Hare and Mac­ Intyre see the best solution to Flew6 s challenge in a care­ ful examination of how the religious language-game is actually played* The other form of reply to Flew attempts to meet him, so to speak, on his own grounds by showing that one of the functions of religious discourse is, indeed, to express factually verifiable propositions* Consequently, they do not try to avoid Flew but rather accept his cri­ terion as the proper method for justifying religious beliefs* Facts, they would say, do count for and against religious assertions9 and for this reason they are factu­ ally meaningfulo Among those who use this approach are lo Mo Cromhie and Basil Mitchell=

In the course of this paper I will critically examine these two types of responses to Flow's challenge "beginning with Mitchell's and Gromhie's head-on analyses followed "by the shifted-ground technique of Hare and

MacIntyreo Hare's, Grombie'Sg and Mitchell's (earlier) articles originally appeared with Flow's in "Theology and Falsifications," in lew Essays in Philosophical Theology0 and I have tried to strengthen Cromhie”s position by adding some arguments that he presents in "The Possibility of k Theological Statements0" MacIntyre's responseg though not specifically addressed to the symposium9 is the best elaboration of Hare's brief but puzzling position* Mitchell's reply to MacIntyre shows a distinct refinement from his earlier position, and I have tried to strengthen it with some remarks of Wisdom's in order to co-ordinate with and introduce my own concluding comments* My aim, first, is to show that those who reply to

Flew do not adequately answer his challenge at all* The head-on analysis, itself containing inconsistencies, only provides further examples of the prima facie religious

4* Basil Mitchell (ed*), Faith and Logie, 1957« 10 assertions which Flew on his own ground has quite clearly and ably rejected» The shifted-ground technique also falls because it actually does not shift grounds from the falsi-

fiability criterion, but because of certain assumptions it

makes about "belief" and "justification," it only repeats Flew's conclusiono Critical comments of these two responses which are made throughout the paper, however, are not intended to serve as a defense to Flew8s challenge, for my second aim is to show that this challenge, as those who respond to it fail to notice, is itself not a meaningful

challenge to religious beliefs» It rather contains, as I will attempt to illustrate, deep conceptual mistakes that

lie not only in Flew’s method of scepticism but infect

those who respond to him as well* TIE 1E4B-01 RESPONSE TO FLEW

Basil Mitehell

Mltehell is amomg those philosophers who accept Flew’s challenge head-on. "by granting that the falsifla­ bility criterion is a valid test for cognitive status» bmt he denies Flew*8 conclusion that religions utterances fail this test because they do not let facts count against their truthfulness. Religious utterances are relevant to perceptible events that count for or against their being true$ but unlike ordinary factual assertions they are never conclusively falsiftable0 A specific example in the case of Christian theology would be the problem of evil. The theist certainly recognizes that many things in our experience seem to refute the belief that God loves man­ kind » Pain and natural disasters testify to this, and they may and do count against such a belief. But if the theist holds to his faith in God9 he cannot let this evi­ dence count decisively against his belief,^ Mitchell9 I think; illustrates this notion of

”counting against611 very cleverly in his portrayal of the

1, Basil Mitchells "Theology and Falsifications66 New Essays, p, 103, 11 12 Resistance movement during World War 1 1= One day a par­ tisan member of this movement meets a “Stranger” along the streets of Paris who tells him that he is their leader but has been forced for obvious reasons to remain incog­ nito* even to the members of the Resistance» After their meeting the Stranger leaves9 never to come into con­ versation with the partisan or his colleagues again0 Yet many times he is seen9 some in which'he is sabotaging and hindering the enemy and others where he appears to be help­ ing theme Indeed9 he even wears their uniform and turns other members of the Resistance over to the Gestapo to be executedo Of course9 in the former cases the partisan is grateful9 and he tells his colleagues that the Stranger is on their side* And even though startled by occurrences such as the latter$ still he reassures his friends9 "The Stranger knows best g he only appears to be aiding the enemyo" But his colleagues are sceptical» They doubt the good intentions of the Stranger, and some even think that he is an SS officer in disguise,, Thus they challenge the partisan to explain to them just how far the Stranger could go with his inconsistent tactics before he would be willing to admit that the Stranger was actually a traitoro But the partisan will not put the Stranger to such a test, for he believes in the Stranger°s good intentions and therefore 13 will not allow anything to count decisively against his 2 faith in him. Mitchell states that when the Stranger8s ambiguous behavior conflicts with the partisan's faith in the

Stranger's good intentions, then there are two courses of action the partisan could takes (1) He could give up his belief in the Stranger, admitting that he was mistaken, or (2 ) he could maintain his belief but qualify it by saying that the Stranger has good reasons for his actions. The first alternative the partisan will not accept, but how long can he maintain the second without its becoming com­ pletely irrational? How long can he reasonably believe in the good intentions of the Stranger? Mitchell's answer is that one cannot say in advance, since much will depend on the nature of the Stranger's first impression upon the par­ tisan as well as how hard his colleagues press their doubts. Of course, the belief (like the belief in the gardener) would be irrational if the partisan dismissed all question­ able behavior as not counting against the Stranger's loyalty. But this he does not do. On the contrary, in his belief he is, experiencing the full force of this logical conflict which makes his faith in the Stranger reasonable.^

2. Ibid., pp. 103-104.

3. Ibid., pp. 104-105. 14 This Is wheres Mitchell claimsa his parable womld differ from that of Flew0ss for the partisan admits that many things do count against the assertion that the Stranger is on our side* whereas the Believer in the garden parable will let nothing whatsoever count against his belief in a gardener» The partisan further justifies his belief in the Stranger by his initial conversation with him and the impression that his character made upon the par­ tisan, Mitchellg therefore* agrees with Flew that religious utterances are intended as assertionsg but differs by saying that they are not bogus assertions. They rather serve quite adequately as factual explanations within the context in which they are used,^

Religious utterances such as MGod is the father of all mankind *" are assertions in much the same way as "The Stranger is on our side," That is* neither are conclusively falsifiable. Such statements* Mitchell points out* can be considered in three different waysg (1 ) as hypotheses that are to be discarded when experience warrants* (2 ) as sig­ nificant articles of faith* or (3 ) as emotive expressions to which contrary evidence does not nor cannot make a dif­ ference, Mitchell concludes that the committed religious person cannot consider the first alternative and still

4, Ibid,* p, 105° 15 remain religiously committed to his beliefso A religious belief is not a hypothesis waiting to be verifiedo He oouldg as Flew claims he does* slip to the third, but this would be a ‘"failure11 to his commitment as well as to the logic of his faitho^

But is this an adequate analysis? It looks as though the crucial point in Hitehell’s argument lies in his distinction between what it means to “count against” and to “count decisively against0“ If a question such as whether God loves mankind is to be considered an open ques­ tion, that is, one in which we are honestly searching for an answer, then the notion of “counting against” becomes, as Duff-Forbes says, a “verbal illusion,”^ and to say that the statement was an open question in the first place is really a sham0 In claiming that evidence counts against assertions like “God loves all mankind,“ but does not count decisively, Mitchell is really saying that per­ ceptible events such as natural evil only appear to count against the belief in God's love, but in fact, none ever do. Consequently, the partisan is actually no different from the Believer in the garden parable who in the end will

5= Ibid, 6 , D, R, luff-Forbes, “Theology and Falsification Again,” The Australasian Journal of Philosophy (August 1961), p, l49o 16 not let anything count against his belief that the gardener exists0

As Duff-Forbes puts its

If the religious man concedes that such-and-such a state of affairs counts against his claim that God loves men, but, because the statement "God loves men" is an article of faith, allows that it counts against only in the sense that it appears to count against (but really doesn't), and if the religious man further maintains that no conceivable state of affairs could count other than in the sense that it appears to count against (but really doesn't), isn't it perfectly obvious that states of affairs and observable situations are irrelevant, that they never do count in the required sense??

The ‘"lip-service" Mitchell pays to the falsifiability criterion certainly is not reflected in the way he character­ izes religious beliefSo He has in no way met Plow's chal­ lenge head-on, for he will not let falsifying evidence count in the "required senseo" He has not replied to Flew on his own grounds, but instead, as Blaekstone puts it, sidesteps Flew's challenge like a slippery halfback. "Unlike the sidestep of a halfback, however, Mitchell's sidestep takes 3 him completely off the playing field. At least, he is not O playing Flew's game."

?. Ibid., pp. 149-15©= 8 . William T. Blaekstone, The Problem of Religious Knowledge, p. 110. 17 lo Mo Groiabie

CromMe has written two important articles* one of which is the final segment of "Theology and Falsification," and the other, called "The Possibility of Theological

Statements," is in Faith and logico Essentially he takes the same defense against Flew0 s argument that Mitchell does, but he uses a three-pronged attack consisting of (1 ) the doctrine of analogy, (2 ) the experience of mystery, and (3 ) esehatologieal verification0 Crombie admits that religious language, when it comes la contact with ordinary forms of language, indeed, shows itself to be very paradoxical and anomalous= One major anomaly deals with the subjects to which religious utterances refero The subject "God," as an example, is so presented in the grammar of the sentence as to indicate a particular individual, yet when questioned, the theist will not admit that it refers to any individual having normal logical or physical characteristicso If I say that

Professor Katsky is a Communist, you could meaningfully ask me who he was, so that in answer to your question, I would, at least in principle, be able to point him out to youo But suppose that I say that the average Bolshevik is a Communisto Here I would not be able to indicate who this was by pointing, for it is a class and not an individual0

The anomalies of "God" are not solved, however, by referring 18 to it as a name for a elasss for it has a natural logieal form that gives one the tendency to want to point him outo But this cannot he done, even in principle, not because it

is really a name for a class, hut because it functions, Cromhie says, as an 60improper proper name088^

There is also a second anomaly in religious lang­ uage o This concerns not the subject but rather the con­ tent— that which is predicated of the subjeeto Most often these predicates consist of everyday words such as ^loves us" or "created," but when these words are predicated of religious subjects they do not carry their everyday meanings0 They have a logical incapacity to agree or disagree with any

factso For example, in Flew°s parable, when the Believer predicates that the gardener exists, the word "exists" does not function like the ordinary "existence" of real flesh and blood gardeners, for the Believer8s gardener is invisible, intangible, and impervious to electrical shock<>

The Believer will not delimit any range of facts or states of affairs (such as silent bloodhounds or undisturbed

fences) that ordinarily would give one reason to deny that there is a gardener,, Theological statements are in this

way paradoxical, for they do not specify states of affairs

9o lo Mo Crombie, "The Possibility of Theological Statements," Faith and Logic, p. W o that would falsify assertions like "God loves all mankind" or “God exists," and they even deny that any possible range of faots are incompatible with their predications.

How does Crombie answer these anomalies that the sceptic has so triumphantly pointed out? His argument is that these features of religious language do not in any way demonstrate the impossibility of religious statements having meaning, but rather it is these anomalous features them­ selves that help to fix the reference-range of these statements. That with which religious statements deal is a mystery, a mystery beyond the spatio-temporal world, and - any language used to express it is bound to be paradoxical.^^

But for Crombie to stop here would only be to achieve an argumentative stalemate between the theist and the sceptic? therefore he feels that he should go on and try to convince the sceptic of the cognitive nature of religious language = On the matter of the referent or the subject of religious discourse, the purpose of the divine concept is to fulfill a deficiency in our experience. One cause of this deficiency comes from our inability to accept our­ selves as simple spatio-temporal objects. Rather we feel that we are strangers that have been "thrown" into a world which we did not create. We cannot believe that the self

10. Ibid., p. 50. consists of nothing more than exposed behavior and brain wave patterns, le feel a sense of duality$ not as a "ghost in the machine" that is distinct from the body, but as a conscious experience that we are more than merely proto­ plasmic entities colliding with foreign molecules in a cosmos of zero value. How perhaps the sceptic would say that much of this is food for the Freudian analyst, but he is presupposing that the theist°s notion of a "spirit," in the sense described, is an illusion; but it isn't. It may be an illegitimate concept, Grombie concedes (as a category mistake), because it seems to make an object abstract; nevertheless, the experience itself is real and meaningful." To say that the word "God," meaning this mysterious pseudo-object, has a meaningful function as a subject in religious discourse, does not mean that it functions like "Professor Katsky," for while Grombie admits that there is a logical difference, he does not want to admit that it is any ordinary logical difference. The impossibility of going to heaven and pointing to God is not a technical impossibility such as our being unable to see the center of the earth, but neither does Grombie want to say that it is a logical impossibility, such as being unable to point to the average Bolshevik. "The difference," he concludes. ^between God and other subjeets is neither precisely a 12 logical, nor precisely a physical difference*" There is a sense, he states, where

* * * we can mean ineomceivables, and that is when we use a word to refer to the postulated, though unimaginable, absence of limitations or imperfec­ tions of which we are aware * * * * Such expres­ sions stand for the abstract conception of the possibility of the removal of certain intellect­ ual dissatisfactions which we may feel about the universe of common experience *1,3 Next, Crombie deals with the content of religious language* In respect to what Grombie has said, the sceptic may concede that "God" is a proper name; yet if it is a name that does not fall within a class-concept (because it

is inconceivable), how, asks the sceptic, is it possible

to say anything about the subject? Crombie realizes that our conception of God alone gives us no right to say that he exists, nor does it warrant any beliefswe may have

about him, for this would require that some state of

affairs, some positive sign, points to God somewhere in

our experience, but again, this cannot happen because God is like no other object in our experience* The theist, therefore, is forced to speak of God by way of analogies

or parables* In all eases, -this comparison is imperfect, yet the theist remains content, resting his belief on the

12* Ibid*, p* M-Zo

13* Ibid*, p* 6 6 * 22 image itself and his faith that it will not deceive him in its connection with the mystery,,1^ The theist accepts the parable because he believes that it gives him the best pic­ ture, and it is because his beliefs find their expression in the ordinary language of the parable that he can know what will constitute an objection to themo This is because the predicates of the parable contain both theological and ordinary meanings0 ‘“The point of a parable,es Grombie con­ cludes, is that you do not suppose that there is any literal resemblance between the truth which is expressed and the story which expresses it, but you do suppose that if you accept the story, mot as a true literal account, but as a faithful parable, you will not be misled as to the nature of the underlying reality015

It is for this reason, Grombie continues, that facts do count against religious assertions0 The theist cannot assert that God loves all mankind, and at the same time ignore man’s suffering» But because the theist has faith in his image of God’s love, because he believes his asser­ tion to be true, he cannot let the facts of human suffering count decisively0 Because the image of God’s love is of this divine nature, only suffering that was eternally and irredeemably pointless could count decisively= Getting into position to experience such suffering, for Grombie,

l4o Ibido, pp0 69-70 o

1 5 o Ibido, ppo 70-71o 16 o o o is called dying9 ; s© • that even themgli religious

assertions cannot be verified in this life9 they could be verified in the life to come o ^

A typical illustration of the position that an assertion can* in principle* be verifiable but not falsi- fiable is seen in the ease of “"Tfo011 Now so far in mathe­ matical research, the decimal values of if have not been worked out so as to reveal three successive sevens s but

the procedure for determining the values can go on indefi­ nitely, So some day it is possible that a triple-seven

sequence will occur. The proposition* therefore, that the decimal values of if contains three successive sevens may

one day be verified* if it is true. However* if it is

false* it can never be falsified, Crombie concludes* then* that the fact that M, , , these parables deepen our under­ standing of the world is one of the grounds for affirming them;■[but] it is by no means the whole content of that affirmation, Crombie cautions us again not to think of a parable

as a device for expressing something that one already under stands, The theist believes in the image* not because it

16, Crombie * "Theology and Falsification," New * p, 126,

I?, Ibid,, p, 129,

18, Crombie* Faith and Logic, p, 79o •. . .2.^ represents something he can see, hut because it gives him a grasp (revelation) of that which ,is f,outside!*his, 19 view, Crombie therefore demands that it be both ways, first, because the parable is essential to the communica­ tion of the religious experience, and secondly, because the image gives the theist light in which to understand his world better= It is that the parable so functions that constitutes grounds for his using it the way he does. Some formidable objections to Crombie”s position have been brought up by Blaokstone and Duff-Forbes» Because it is the most vulnerable, I would like to con­ sider first Crombie’s argument in regard to eschatological verification^

Such verification is based upon the idea that there exists an after-life whereby one would be able to see the entire human situation and thus obtain the necessary data in order to verify or falsify religious assertions= But the notion of there being an after-life is itself a reli­ gious belief in need of justification, and so it suffers the same paradoxical features that Crombie took pains to note in his analysis. In his argument, you will recall,

Crombie states that because the assertion 16God loves man­ kind69 is true, then nothing of course can decisively count

19= Ibid, against it. On the other hand and in principle9 situations such as "suffering that was eternally and irredeemably pointless" could count decisively if we were in the proper position (which is not possible in this life) to gather such evidence9 if it were availableo But if getting into this position "is called dying9" how would it be possible, after we had passed through the gates of immortality and made our observations9 to report back our findings and settle the question once and for all? 0r9 even if we could satisfy the question to our own minds after we had died, what right has Crombie to claim that the assertion that God loves us is true9 for we can assume that he has not come back from the deado Since we do not see all the picture, according to Crombie, the best status religious assertions could have, until we (and Crombie) do die, would be that of open hypo­ theses » I doubt, though, whether Crombie would want to place assertions like "God loves mankind" on such a con­ ditional basis in order to maintain his thesis that reli­ gious assertions, on Flew0s grounds, are falsiftable,, Crombie is begging the entire question of the factual status of religious assertions by his presupposi­ tion that the existence of an after-life is now a facto It is not now factual because it has never been verified in this lifeo If Crombie would agree to place its existence on a hypothetical basis, still to claim that it serves as 26 the test whereby all religious assertions can be verified (or falsified) is circular9 because speaking of the exist­ ence of a life after death is itself a member of that class of religious assertions in need of justification0 oeHeneesw Buff-Forbes says*

in order to establish whether or not claims about life after death are factual9 true-or-false state­ ments (because religious utterances)9 we must estab­ lish that they are true statements= But this supposes that they are factual statementso20

Finally* on this point* Crombie not only argues in a circle* but also the very notion of speaking of an after­ life as something beyond this world is as much an empty and inconceivable concept as that of “Qod«“ If the concept of an after-life were conceivable in the sense of being veri­ fiable * then it would have to be an experience of this world and not of the world to come* In the case of'TT * certainly some day someone might advance the calculus of digits so as to reveal three successive sevens * and until this is accomplished* the assertion that there is such a sequence will remain unfalsifiable (assuming of course that the series is infinite)„ But unlike assertions such as "God loves mankind*11 or "There is a life after death*" we do know in this life what it would be like for such a numerical sequence to appear9 even though we could never

20o Buff-Forbes* pp. 152-153° • . . " . . 2? - be certain that it would 0 So assuming that we could falsify in the.next life (whatever that may mean) that God loves mankind with our experiencing a suffering that was eternally and irredeemably pointlesss how could we know that what we experienced was that kind of suffering, let alone that it was pointless? The other-worldliness of Crombie0 s concept of an after-life like other religious beliefs only serves to support Flew’s conclusion that justification here makes no sense»

Let us turn now to criticism of Crombie°s notions of mystery and analogy as he presents them in his fore­ going analysiso Blackstone points out that it is usually characteristic of an analogy to take something that is familiar in our experience and postulate it to a higher degree than it is shown to have in our experience» But the religious analogy, as Crombie uses it, deals with etsome­ thing111 that is, both in fact and in principle, altogether outside our experience, so that the comparison is not simply one as to degree, but also of kind, that is, a kind of which no one could possibly ever have a conception, 21 namely, the mystery of God8s infinite love^ But how is it possible for that which cannot even in principle be understood to have a meaning? Crombie specified the

21o Blackstone, p0 121» - 28 experience of such concepts as one of deficiency in ©nr

teeing, but what is a deficiency other than simply the absence of some thing? The sceptic does not want to deny the possibility of having such am 16experience” as the cheese not teeing in the ice box* What he does deny is

Oromtele*s right to speak of this deficiency as though it were an experience of a real "something” in the world0 To

cloud reality in mystery because we have not the power to grasp its meaning is not to say anything about reality, but only about our inability to understand it* Grombie states that "we postulate the analogy 22 because we believe the image to be a faithful image" and

that parables can be useful in explicating the meaning or content of religious assertions only when one accepts this imageo But how would it be possible to accept the image unless we were in the faith to begin with? If, on the other hand, we were within the faith, then there would be no point, according to Grombie, in our questioning the validity of what it says. But this is only saying that religious beliefs are meaningful to those to whom they are meaningful. This sounds much the same as claiming, "Well, certainly the witch doctor can use his assertions about the world8s being flat as a useful (meaningful) explanation of his experience.

Therefore, he is, right in asserting what he does!!?" In one

respect Grombie is building a straw man, for the sceptic is

22. Grombie, Faith and Logic, p. 72. not'denying that religious utterances cannot have a use and a meaning to someone, and so he would not condemn the witch doctor for being ignorant. Rather the sceptic is saying that the witch doctor is wrong (factually), and perhaps even unreasonable in his refusal to let the facts of a wider experience count against his assertions. His assertions have no right to function as factual truth claims.without shouldering the responsibility of being subject to falsi­ fication.

To say as Crombie does that parables must be main­ tained because only they can express what needs to be expressed, seems to be faulty in two respeetss (1) Cer­ tainly am analogy that uses the flatness of the world, a virgin birth, or that compares human love to a love that is inconceivable may have a capacity for pointing out features of human experience which no other language could, but when the analogy, which itself can only give a distorted picture of this divine reality, is used to grasp an "ungraspable* concept, then obviously it will be the analogy alone that carries any communicable (but factually mistaken) meaning, and not that which it is trying to (but cannot) explicate,

(2) Although the language used by the witch doctor may be meaningful to him, in his. context, certainly this does not warrant his right to be the sole arbiter on the actual shape of our planet. Because a particular way of speaking may have a use somewhere dees not mean that it must have, a use in all cases where it.seems to apply,To say that.reli­ gious language is meaningful to whom it is meaningful is, as

Blaekstone notes, a far sight, from.explicating the cognitive meaning of religious assertions as fixing in some factual way their own reference-range. If the cognitive status of the parable cannot be taken literally, as Crombie cautions us, then what purpose can it serve in clarifying that for which it. was employed? No matter what the purpose of a parable, it must always have reference to finite qualities, and an such, it could never bridge the gap towards expli- 1 23 eating infinite qualities, J

If an utterance is meaningful, then that is grounds for someone°s using it, but such grounds cannot guarantee its truth-value, for the nature of reality is not itself grounded in the simple fact that propositions are meaning­ ful, People can be wrong, and often are, when they attempt to make assertions about reality. But how is it possible to be wrong about mystery? There is nothing one could be wrong about, and if one cannot be wrong, he cannot be right either. The point is that these concepts can have no application here because there can be no distinction between them, What is to guarantee the theist against the

23, Blaekstone, p, 122, possibility that his experience of a "spirit* or of a mystery is not an illusion, for he has nothing beyond the experience itself capable of distinguishing between illusion and reality? What this means is that the only way the the- 1st is able to justify his experience is to have it. But now what happens to the meaning of "religious assertions" and "justification?" Where is the element of public cogency? It appears that Grombie cannot at the same time have his cake and eat ito If there is to be an unbridge­ able gap between our experience and religious mystery* then any analogy as an explicating account is destined to be void of content and useless» If*on the other hand* the analogy does attempt to bridge the gap by giving us a factual account of this "reality*" than as an inadequate account* it must face the rigors of falsificationo

In concluding this section* I would like to say that Grombie* like Mitchell, in trying to meet Flew head-on* only provides Flaw's analysis with further examples of the gap that exists between religious belief and justification* By accepting Flaw's criterion in the first place* they forced themselves in the end either to accept his conclusions or else to admit that they were not actually meeting him on his own ground, thereby forfeiting the criterion they ini­

tially set out to prove could give religious beliefs factual status* As a result* Flaw's challenge so far remains triumphant* THE SHIFTEB-GROUITO TECHNIQUE

So.Mo Hare

•Hare, as we pointed out In the Introduction, accepts

Flew’s falsiflability criterion, but does not agree that it in any way affects the use of religious language» The pur­ pose of religious-language is not to make empirically veri­ fiable assertions but rather to do something quite differento

To illustrate this difference9 Hare relates a parable about a "certain lunatic" who is convinced that all Oxford dons are plotting his murdero The lunatic is in fact so con­ vinced of this plot that no matter what evidence his friends put before him (such as introducing him to all the kind and cordial dons), he will not budge from his conviction. "low we say," Hare explains,

that such a person is deluded. But what is he deluded about? About the truth or falsity of an assertion? Let us apply Flew6s test to him, There is no behaviour of dons that can be enacted which he [the lunatic] will accept as counting against his theory; and therefore his theory, on this test, asserts nothing. But it does not follow that there is no difference between what he thinks about dons and what most of us think about them-^otherwise we should not call him a lunatic and ourselves sane, and dons would have no reason to feel uneasy about his presence in Oxford. Let us call that in which we differ from this lunatic, our respective bilks. He has an insane

32 blik abomt dons? we have a sane one = It is import­ ant to realize that we have a sane one, not no blik at all 5 for there mmst be two sides to any argument = i f he has a wrong blik, then those who are right about dons mmst have a right one. Flew has shown that a blik does not consist in an assertion or a system of them? but nevertheless it is very import­ ant to have the right bliko1

The behavior of the lunaties Hare would say, cer­ tainly reflects his beliefs8 for he proceeds to move about

Oxford in a very paranoiac and clandestine manner in order to avoid dons9 and most likely9 if he had any wits about him9 he would go to the police and try to convince them of his predicamento So, unlike the two explorers who discuss

the garden perhaps with great interest but do not seem to be concerned about it, the lunatic is indeed very concerned 2 about dons. This very important point brought out by

Hare9 s analogy and not by Flew0 s shows that the lunatic°s metaphysical belief (his blik) which affects his whole life is a world view that determines what is and what is not a valid explanation of the behavior of dons. But the sane blik of his friends also determines, but in a different manner, what they take to be a factual explanation in this

ease. In comparison with Flew's analogy, Hare is not say­

ing that the religious theist is the only person who has

1, R, M, Hare, “Theology and Falsification,“ New Essays, p, 100, 2, Ibid,, p, 103, 34 "bilks about the worldo All men have bilks0 and Hare's

parable is not intended t® liken the lunatic to the Believer in the garden,but rather to point out that all

bliks (whether it be the Sceptic0Sg the Believer's, the lunatic's, or the lunatic's friends') have a logical immu­ nity to the falsiflability criterion.

This concept of a blik is, to say the least, quite puzzling, but perhaps we can better understand it in light

of Blaokstone”s comments on Hume, A blik to Hume would be a sort of an ultimate attitude or philosophy of the world which all men have and use as a criterion for understanding

their experience of everything that is in the world. Thus

it would serve as a basis for all scientific and epistemo-

logical investigations, including the assertions that we make as a result of them. But the blik itself cannot be among these assertions, for as Flew”s test shows, it can have no empirical means whereby one could determine its

truth or falsity. Rather it goes to set what is true and .

what is false. This simply means that if we did have some means of testing or verifying our bliks, they, would not be bliks, Blaokstone further explains that Hume in his sec­

tion of the Treatise on necessary connection, states that ' the ideas concerning religious beliefs are similar to our

ideas regarding the behavioral laws of matter. We have

direct experience of constant conjunction between physical 35 objectsg M t for the in&metive purposes of predicting the future* we are unable to reason beyond this experience0 Yet this does not mean that we can never be certain of the

existence of physical objects or the necessary connection

they have to one another as matters of fact* both now and

in the future» A blik must operate under these same con­

ditions* for they* like:our most general empirical assump­ tions* are not deduced beliefs but are instead natural beliefs for which nothing more is required to give a foun- dation0 Evidence or facts* therefore* can have no logi­ cal effect upon these metaphysical beliefs* for they are

the means through which we judge what is and what is not

factualo Bilks.are not grounded upon reasoned arguments because they are not and cannot be grounded upon anything; they are the final* the ultimate grounds upon which all reasoned argument is based; consequently* they will by

definition remain irrelevant to any argumentation for or

against themo Hare is offering the theist a way to escape Flew8s

sceptical argument by employing the concept of the blik which takes religious beliefs out of the realm where evi­

dence and justification (that is* reason) have any appli­ cation and shifts them to an ultimate logical groundo This

3 ° Blackstone* The Problem of Religious Knowledge* PPo ? 8 - 7 9 o 36 way religions beliefs avoid the requirements of the falsi- flability criterion-, mot by making them irrational (falsi­ fied) but by making them non-rational (i0e09 non-falsifiable)0

In other words, one’s religious beliefs as a whole. Hare would say, are grounded in an ultimate logical prin­ ciple (a bilk) that transcends that which is normally thought of as facto Pacts, again, can neither verify or falsify religious utterances that are the expression of bliks, for what we regard as fact is dependent on our respective blikSo Facts cam only disprove empirical assertions about other facts and not religious statements k that deal with all facts0 In light of this. Hare concludes in his article on “Faith and Morals68 that o o o it would appear that until we have accepted rules for discriminating between facts and illu­ sions, we cannot talk of facts at all, or for that matter of objects or entities in the sense of 88things really existingo68 Now Christians believe that God created the world put of chaos, or out of nothing, in the sense of no thing« What I am now going to say I say very tentatively« Is it pos­ sible that this is our way of expressing the truth that without belief in a divine order— a belief expressed in other terms by means of worshipping assent to principles for discriminating between fact and illusion— there could be no belief in matters of fact or in real objects? Certainly it is salutary to recognize that even our beliefs in so-called hard facts rests in the end on a faith, a commitment, which is not in or to facts, but in that without which there would not be any facts<,5

Frederick Ferre, ,e and God, p. 131<

5o Hare, “Religion and Morals,“ Faith and Po 192. 37 Flew0 s mis take 9 aeeor&iiag te Hareg was to think that religious utterancesg "because they cannot satisfy the criterion for factual explanations9 have no use in our

account of reality. In the garden, you will recall, the

two explorers had reached the stage in their investigation

where the question of the gardener’s existence ceased to be hypothetical (a matter of the facts), and so what they said to this point and beyond it about the garden was actually reflective of the bliks that both the Sceptic and the Believer had had all along. Further debate now over the facts of the garden would, for Hare, be pointless, for

the problem is really not one of what the facts are, but of what facts are facts in light of each explorer’s bliks and again, as Hare comments, it makes a great difference which blik one has.

Anyone who is not acquainted with Hare’s philosophy will probably find his arguments here somewhat baffling,

but I suspect that much of this puzzlement is due to the

fact that his analogy of the lunatic neither answers Flew

nor shows by the concept of the blik how the theist can avoid him. It is the fault of the analogy that has misled

Hare in his distinction between sane and insane bliks, and

the importance of having the right one (or the sane one).

If he accepts the conclusion of Flew’s criterion, as he

admittedly does, how is it possible to make this 38 Srnth-value^ dlstiaetion, while at the same time defimimg "bilks as beyond justification? The distinction can only be made by forfeiting the immunity of bilks to the falsi- flability test*

All of us would admit that the lunatic's obsession about dons is an illmsiomo That is why he is a lunatico

He has misjudged the facts and continues to do so in spite of anything that may prove the contrary. But his friends do let evidence effect what they say about dons, and even if it were contrary to their original beliefs (if dons expressed definite signs of hatred and were seen stalking about at night with gums and knives)9 then these beliefs would, certainly be other than what they are. This9 how­ ever 9 is why they are sane; they do allow evidence to count for and against the belief that dons are plotters. In light of Flew's criterion* therefore* the same friends* unlike the lunatic* actually do not have bilks about dons* but are instead making straightforward factual assertions. The same friends” "'bilks68 are right because they are not bilks at all, but, of course * this is mot what Hare wants to say.

If the lunatic”s friends truly have bliks (as Hare wants to say)* that is, if their belief in the amiability of dons is compatible with any and all states of affairs, then we should say that they are 68stupidly-trusting68 or "simple- minded" or something of the sort, but not that they are righto Hare has forced himself iato the dilemma of either depriving himself ©f the ability to make the sane-insane (right-wrong) distinction beeamse states of affairs9 by his definition, are irrelevant to the truth-value of bilks, or, if he concedes that they are relevant in order to make this distinction, then he is left with only one bilk, the z: lunatic9So If both the lunatic and his friends have bilks, why should it make a difference which blik one accepted? If Hare means what he says in his so-called shifted-ground approach, there is no rational basis for accepting one blik over another.

By fault of the analogy, therefore, Hare never actually shows the theist a way of avoiding Flew9s cri­ terion. lather in emphasizing the logical immunity of religious beliefs (bliks), he merely reiterates Flew°s initial conclusion that such beliefs (as the expression of groundless bliks) are non-rational and therefore can claim no assertive rights. Hare betrays the theist (and himself) by means of the terminology of his parable,, into thinking that it does make a difference which blik one holds, but underneath the faulty logic of his parable, he only leaves the religious believer in the position where he is unable,

"6 . Buff-Forbes, ‘"Theology and Falsification Again, pp. 145-146. 40 again in terms of Flew6s test, to discriminate between right and wrong bliks, let alone defend his own,^

Alasdair MacIntyre

MacIntyre like Hare accepts in large part Flew's criterion for determining factual assertions, but he also attempts to 96 save6' religion by a shifted-ground technique = Religious language according to MacIntyre cannot have the empirical characteristics attributed to factual assertions, but it can retain some of the logical features of asser­ tions in general, without falling into that large positi- vistic basket labeled "nonsense«M The two major under­ takings in the course of his analysis will be, first, to show "o o o to what kind of belief the taking up of a reli­ gious attitude seems to commit one,"® and secondly, to indicate in light of this commitment, what kind of justi­ fication such beliefs have 6

Religious commitment according to MacIntyre involves basically two elements: (.1 ) that of following in a rather mechanistic way a prescribed system of verbal (and non-verbal) worship, and (2) that of believing that God in some fashion plays an active role in the course of natural

7o Blackstone, p 0 81o 8 0 Alasdair MacIntyre, "The Logical Status of Religious Belief," Metaphysical Beliefs, p 0 186, events0 Such is characteristic "both of primitive religions and the more refined dogmas of today, but both elements, as Crombie’s anomalies pointed out, are at odds with one anothero The theist admits rather adamantly that nothing can adequately be said about God, yet he says a great deals that God is this and not that, or has acted in the universe in this way and not that way. But when we speak of God by means of worship, most often it is the case that we do not talk about God but to him* The verbal expression of reli­ gious experience, thus, does not simply become the explica­ tion of dogma nor the participation in theological apologetics;^ nor is this even a necessary prerequisite, for the theist is the master of a technique0 He is quite able to perform with great skill prescribed rituals without being able to give a logical or a theological account of what they mean* He is much like a backwoods farmer who can with a great deal of skill grow a bumper crop of corn, yet he cannot, even in the most vague way, give an account of this in laws of hybrid genetics or by processes of botani­ cal germination and photosynthesis» Therefore, M 0 = o the theistic criteria in formulating belief,” explains Mac­

Intyre, "is conformity with the practices and expressions 42 of what are judged to he adequate forms of worship*"1®

This, however, leaves the fundamental Issue unraised, for

when philosophers attempt to discover what forms of wor­

ship are adequate by examining their use in contexts where they are so judged, they also find, by means of their uncommitted investigation, other contexts where the same

forms of worship are not judged adequate5 in fact, they may be found totally inadequate and hereticalo

But, it is against these latter contexts that the taking up of a religious belief is often committed, and it is. characteristic of such commitmmt, MacIntyre would say,

that it does not allow any circumstances to count as a 11 misuse of its verbal express!on* Thus, in spite of any­ thing else which may be included within the expression of adequate forms of worship, if its goal is also to serve as

a cognitive source for factual knowledge of things and

events, then it is this use that stands in need of justi-

fieatlomo The justification we seek, however, cannot be an ordinary justification, for again the theist, as Plow's

and Hare's analogies pointed out, is committed uncondition­

ally to his beliefs0 He does not say, 11 „ 0 » 0 God, if

10o Ibid., p. 188.

11. Ibid., p. 189o IP there is a God9 save my soul $ If I have pae<," MacIntyre, therefore9 rejects attempts to characterize religious beliefs as hypotheses explaining why there is a universe or why it is as it is, because if such beliefs were hypothetical, they would be susceptible to falsification,which is contrary both to the kind of belief that they are and the manner in which they are characteristically heldo^ This does not prove that they cannot be hypotheses, but « <= if they are they Ik are very bad ones*ei

We have already seen it argued that where a genuine hypothesis is proposed, there must be some fairly determine ate method of establishing its truth or falsity„ In science this can be done by experiencing and observing the facts, but the garden parable illustrated that in the ease of reli­ gious affirmations, all the facts are in (nothing counts), thus making the gardener0s existence unhyp©thetical (thus undiscoverable)o To regard religious beliefs, therefore, as explanatory hypotheses is to misjudge their function. If religious beliefs could be “proved” beyond all doubt to be true, their function would be destroyed just as much as if they were falsified. The whole point again is that

12. Ibid.. p. 194.

13« Ibid., p. 196.

14. Ibid.0 p. 195° •verification and falsification have no place here0 If, for

example, a very leading and respectable archaeologist were to prove beyond all doubt that the Resurrection did not occur, even to the point where he had discovered the body of Jesus, how could this be viewed by the Christian world except as a cheap forgery and anti-Christian propaganda?

Religious belief does not require proof but faith« ..Reli­ gious beliefs always occur, MacIntyre reminds us, in that particular narrative which is reflective of the cultural history of any given people; so to identify oneself with any particular religious narrative is to be identified with a certain way of life that embodies dogmas and beliefs that serve as a directive for one's behavior and expression.

Religious beliefs, consequently, are judged to be adequate

forms of worship within each particular faith by that authority or criterion of orthodoxy that determines which . utterances, symbols, actions, and so forth, are to be

regarded as authentic and valid expressions by those within the religion,^ Of course it is possible to give grounds for particular beliefs, and grounds for those grounds, but

eventually all grounds must take a committed stand on that which they hold to be the ultimate authority, whether it be

the Bible, the Pope, the Vedas, the Koran, or what have you.

15o Ibid,, p, 197- kS "Here I stands" confessed Luther, "I can do no other"; and because his standard was ultimate, it. would.make no sense in his case to ask for a further justification0 This would he like asking whether the International Pound Weight really weighed a poundo Here one would not know what to say, for appealing to this standard is to make the last move in the game of justification. No more can he said, that is, if you wish to continue talking about pound weights. To accept or reject an authority is to accept or reject a religion. To justify religious beliefs by reference to authority, MacIntyre warns, is not to describe the most important feature of religion. In other words, to define a particular religious authority is not necessarily to describe the content of what such authority may lay down, and this along with the authority is what serves to set religions apart. If the sceptic seeks a justification beyond this distinction, then he is looking for something outside a religious context, where the question of further justification is pointless. If he wishes to speak from outside, then any further justification cannot be reli­ gious. I suspect this is what Hare was driving at with his concept of a blik. Saying that there cannot be a justification precludes going beyond it."*"^ It is at this

16. Ibid., p. 202. point that justification ends and belief beginso If the sceptic persists in asking how he is to accept such author

ity, such ultimate justification, the only "apologia* for

the theist M0 0 o is to describe its content in details and then either a man will find himself brought to say 8My Lord and my God” or he will noto18^^

1?0 Ibid., p. 205o J!ITCHELL9S REPLY TO MACINTYRE

Mitehellg who seemed to have made a poor showing earlier9 has in his later article, "The Justification of Religious Belief9 61 attacked MacIntyre0s position quite stronglyo More specifically he is objecting to the view that there can he no logical transition which will take one from unbelief to belief= MacIntyre arrives at this con- elusion, Mitchell believes, by the false alternative that utterances are either hypothetical or non-hypothetioal, and then argues that because the essential nature of reli­ gious beliefs shows them to be of the latter, they are therefore non-rational= They are unhypothetical because they are held unconditionally^ they do not let evidence count against their being true, "The gladness of Easter morning,M MacIntyre asserts, "is never a conditional joy*"^

If the event were an explanatory hypothesis it would no longer be religious, “This argument,“ Mitchell explains,

is, in purpose, a dilemma. If religious belief is to be in any sense rational, then either the reasons offered are less than conclusive, in which case belief is tentative and provisional; or they are conclusive, in which ease there is no room for deci­ sion, Since it is of the essence of faith that it

1, MacIntyre, Metaphysical Beliefs, p, 207, .48 should be freely chosen, and also that It should be fully committed, religious belief cannot in any sense be rational= It follows that it is "logically inappropriate" to give reasons for a religious belief=2

But for Mitchell this, dilemma is false because both horns are not necessarily descriptive of actual circum­

stances = Many times one is able to reject a conclusion for which evidence appears overwhelming, and many criminal lawyers have accepted eases in the face of these odds*

People can and should commit themselves to causes for which the evidence is not conclusive. Not only is it the

jury6s right, but it is its duty to acquit a defendant if in their minds they can exercise a reasonable doubt as to his guilt. If one hopes to live out the practical implica­ tions of reflective thinking, then a time must come when

inquiry ends, doubts become beliefs, and open questions are closed. This is not to say that doubts will not or should not creep in from time to time or even that one should not

in due time reject his former beliefs, "... but so long as he is trying to live by them he does not, and cannot,

treat them as hypotheses.So to live by our beliefs,

perhaps, is to make them in some sense ultimate by

2. Basil Mitchell, "The Justification of Religious Belief," The Philosophical Quarterly (July 1961), pp. 217- 218 . “ “ ' ™ 3= Ibid., p. 218. 4-9 allowing them to determine our fundamental attitudes through which we judge what is real and important9 and as

closed concepts9 most likely they will shape what sort of person we eventually will be* But if this is the use to which they are put, no amount of logic on MacIntyre’s part could say.that one day the question will not reopen and that the need for further justification will not arise0 Because logic can provide no rules to determine when or how this will happen, then in this sense it can be a real dilemma of the human situation* But it will serve as a dilemma only for those who reflect upon established authority and opinion and are critical of their own former beliefs* The anxiety this can create no doubt will reach a climax in judging those beliefs to which one has been

committed unconditionally* Because of the oddity of beliefs of this caliber, it is vital to focus our attention on the actual difficulty* Basically, it is a choice between

two loyaltiess either of holding to one’s beliefs uncondi-

tionally, or of having respect for the critical faculties of one’s intelligence, and each is incompatible with the

other* If one is to remain loyal to critical intelligence, then he must deny in advance that he will make his beliefs

logically immune to all or any falsifying evidence if and when it turns up* But religious beliefs as unconditional do just that* Reconciliation, according to MacIntyre, comes when one realizes that this logical immunity is essential to the function of religious "beliefs. If critical intelligence demands that we must refuse in advance to believe anything unconditionally:, and religioud belief refuses in advance to let anything count against it then it is not difficult to see how MacIntyre arrives at his conclusion.

But Mitchell rejects this analysis of religious beliefs for if it fi0 , = makes some sense of 0unconditional h, it does so at the cost of making nonsense of 0beliefv 0 M

To say that one “acceptsM one way of believing over and against another means that it is also logically possible to “refuse** it. If acceptance or refusal9 therefore, is to be over and against anything, it must be possible to give reasons that could justify a person0s doing so. If someone were unable to give reasons why he chose one authority rather than another (not that he had forgotten them or could not express them), but simply said, “There are none," we would not be able to understand him, or at least we would not be able to understand why he chose one authority rather than another = Our backwoods farmer prob­ ably cannot account for his corn crop in terms of hybrid genetics, but he cam give us some reasons why he grows

4, Ibid,, p, 219= corn rather than wheat9 or even, perhaps, why he grows any­ thing at alio

Is it necessary, then, that religious belief must fall either into the class of unconditional beliefs (as MacIntyre has characterized it), or else into the class of hypothetical beliefs governed by critical intelligence?

Flew, according to Mitchell, has given ms the necessary distinction to answer this question In his challenge Flew states,- "Just what would have to happen not merely

(morally and wrongly) to tempt ms but also (logically and rightly) to entitle us to say 6God does not love us” or even °God does not exist0?,e^ The distinction is one of resisting temptation to deny authority because the theist feels it would be morally wrong rather than to deny it because he feels that logically it is mistakeno As a prac­ tical or moral guide to living, religious beliefs could not serve an effective purpose if they must make exceptions for every ^doubtful68 circumstance that arose, but to allow no exceptions to count is to make nonsense out of belief= This distinction in principle should be clear enough to grasp, but in practice we find that there is no set point at which this distinction can be made. For the present one can only say to the sceptic that it does exist, and that it 52 ean only be.made when ome is faeed with real eireumstanees where he is Galled upem - to choose* If the sceptic wants a more conclusive answer$ we can only say that none is to be found*

Mitchell uses the excellent analogy of having faith in your wife®s fidelity* MacIntyre would most likely say that to argue her fidelity implies a lack of faith to begin with9 but this does not mean that it is something that cannot be argued* Certainly if a deep love relationship is to be achieved between husband and wife, he would not only deny her infidelity; he would reject the whole ques­ tion* Again, though, there can be a point where "faith 6 may turn to folly*" In a storm a navigator is useless if he changes course at every questionable and changing sign and discounts his initial readings* But he may be wrong, and perhaps he knows it* He may have misread his compass or sextant or plotted the wrong co-ordinates, but again there is a point where altering one's course is no longer simply temptation, but the right thing to do* If the sceptic is still looking for an all-inclusive answer to direct such judgment, his investigations will be in vain; of course there is no answer, for this kind of answer does not exist, but this does not mean that no "answer" can be

6* Mitchell, Philosophical Quarterly, p* 220* foundo As a praetieal matter, it cam only fee one of good judgment, and that means that it gets you where you are going, whether it fee on the high seas, in a marriage, doubting old opinions, or anything else you please=

As John Wisdom relates his version of the garden parables

The disputants speak as if they are concerned with a matter of scientific fact, or of trans-sensual, trans-scientifie and metaphysical fact, but still of fact and still a matter about which reasons for and against may fee offered, although no scientific reasons in the sense of field surveys for fossils or experiments on delinquents are to the point07 One must realize, of course, that any analogy used to clarify a problem as highly complex as this one cannot help but suffer from serious limitations* Mitchell is not asserting, without qualification, that religious beliefs are "hypotheses"; rather he is denying that any analysis, such as MacIntyre°s, that characterizes reli­ gious commitment as precluding justification properly accounts for the complexity of the situatiomo

The other major thesis of MacIntyre0s which

Mitchell attacks goes like thiss Every chain of reasons must have an ending* Reli­ gious beliefs can in no sense be translated into and cannot be derived from non-religious beliefs* To ask for a justification of a particular belief

7* John Wisdom, "Gods," Philosophy and Psycho- Analysis, p* 1560 can only fee t© ask that it fee placed in the total context of belief<, To ask for a justification of religious belief as a whole is not•to ask for a something more ultimate than a fundamental con­ viction, If religious belief was not fundamental9 it would not fee religion,8

In this passage MacIntyre makes three assumptions that,

Mitchell feels9 have misguided the whole discussion to this point fey misconstruing what a justification in prac­

tical situations would have to fee. These assumptions are

, (1) A justification starts from certain premisses and moves in a straight line, like a chain$ to an ending, (2) If a conclusion is to fee derived from certain premisses9 any concepts which appear in it must fee translatable in terms of concepts which occur in the premisses,

(3) Where a conclusion is justifiable in terms of certain premisses there must fee logical prin­ ciples or rules9 to which one can appeal,9

These assumptions are rejected fey Mitchell, Since numbers (2) and (3) will help to clarify number (1)9 let us examine them first, Mitchell shows that counter-examples can easily fee constructed for the second assumption.

Assertions that a man is in pain are not logically equiva­

lent to any given set of assertions about pain-feehavior, yet we do sometimes justify someone0s feeing in pain fey

pointing to his behavior. Descriptive statements of

8, MacIntyres p, 208,

9, Mitchell9 Philosophical Quarterly* p, 221, physical objects are made in reference to our sense impres­ sions although they are mot logically equivalent.to any given set of assertions about semse-datao The third assump­ tion is either trivial or falsec The type of reasoning used in the exercise of good judgment is mot necessarily based upon given axioms or accepted principles from which such judgments are derived. If it is so based, it serves in such a general way so as to make its presence trivial, or else to serve the purpose, as Mitchell suggests, of making the investigation look “logically respectable,“ Reasoning as it is used in the various areas in the humanities makes little use of formal deductions and inescapable inferences| nevertheless we do consider these areas of study rational disciplines,"1'0

Is the entire problem as MacIntyre has conceived it only a matter of accepting or rejecting in some ultimate and groundless fashion how we wish to look at our world or what we want to believe? If this is the case, it seems to be simply the application of a name whether you wish to call the world a “wilderness" or a “garden,68 and the natural question here is, "What’s in a name?" To this question Wisdom says, , , , we are inclined to answer both "Nothing" and "Very mucho88, , , It is possible to have before

10, Ibid,, p, 222, 56 one’s eyes all the items of a pattern and still to miss the pattern „ . , . The line between using a name because of how we feel and because of what we have noticed isn’t sharp<> WA difference as to the facts," “a discovery,” "a revelation,” these phrases cover many things0 Discoveries have been made not only by Christopher Columbus and Pasteur, but also by Tolstoy and Dostoievsky and Freud„ Things are revealed to us not only by the scientists with microscopes, but also by the poets, the prophets, and the painters« What is so isn’t merely a matter of "the factso” For sometimes when there is agree­ ment as to the facts there is still argument as to whether defendant did or did not “exercise reason­ able care,” was or was not ’’negligent<>“H

In light of this, perhaps now we can see what is wrong with the first assumption,, Scientific reasoning is easily fitted into the schema of basic general principles and particular observation statements which in turn draw particular conclusions based upon these principles= But the good judgment of a navigator, or the verdict of a jury cannot be easily moulded to fit this patterno It is the insatiable tendency of analysts since Plato to do this, and for this reason it has led them to the false alterna­ tive mentioned earlier, that reasoning that does not move in a straight chain-like fashim can only move in vicious .circleso This is the alternative that MacIntyre has left us with in regard to grounds for accepting.or rejecting religious authority: “Here the argument ends or becomes circular5 we either find an ultimate criterion of religious

11. Wisdom, pp. 152-15^o 57 authority, or we refer to the eoiateiat of what authority 12 says. ” And the only ’"’apologia4* is groundless acceptance of one or another form of circular reasoning. “But,**

Mitchell points out, "his preconceptions about the limits of reasoning inhibit him from recognizing that the process he describes has any logical bearing upon the final deci- 13 sion,44 v and thus MacIntyre falls victim to a circular argument of his own in assuming that the horns of the dilemma are true.

Wisdom makes a relevant point in this respect.when

he says that even though all the facts may be in, still this does not mean, as Hume (and Hare) supposed, that "the under-

standing has no further room to operate.68 This is not to say that it cannot be a matter of right or wrong as to

whether Mr. I did or did not "exercise reasonable care" or whether it makes any difference if we view the world as a "garden" and not a "wilderness." In a court of law all the

facts of a case can be clearly laid before the jury, yet

both counsels could base their arguments upon whether

action Z can be considered negligent, whether Mr. N is or

is not a medical authority, or if an automobile should be

considered a deadly weapon.

12. MacIntyre, p. 198.

13= Mitchell, Philosophical Quarterly, p. 223=

14. David Hume, quoted in Wisdom, p. 156. 58 In smeh eases we notice that the process of argument is not a chain of demonstrative reasoning0 It is a presenting and re-presenting of those features of the case which severally co-operate in favour of the con­ clusion, in favour of saying what the reasoner wishes said, in favour of calling the situation by the name which he wishes to call it<>15

This is not to say, as some may be quick to object, that the question actually is the accumulation of data from which conclusions are drawn (names applied) by means of inductive processes. After the presentation of the eases for both the prosecution and the defense, the judge often does state, ^Having weighed all the evidence, I come to the conclusion that , , but he does not pronounce his ver­ dict or sentence tentatively, as though it were a probable conclusion to an empirical investigation, , , , the solution of the question at issue is a decision, a ruling by the judge. But it is not an arbitrary decision though the rational con­ nections are neither quite like those in vertical deductions nor like those in inductions in which from many signs we guess at what is to come; and though the decision manifests itself in the appli­ cation of a name it is no more merely the applica­ tion of a name than is the pinning on of a medal merely the pinning on of a bit of metal , , , , Whether Mr, So-and-So of whose conduct we have so complete a record did or did not exercise reason­ able care is not merely a matter of the applica­ tion of a name or, if we choose to say it is, then we must remember that with this name a game is lost and won and a game with very heavy stakes. With the judges8 choice of a name for the facts goes an attitude, and the declaration, the ruling, is am exclamation evincing that attitude. But it is an exclamation which not only has a purpose but also has a logic,X5

15c Ibid,, p. 157c 16, Ibid,, p, 158, In spite of the fact that the sceptic may say the difference between a man's exercising reasonable care or doing otherwise is not a factual one, he must not fail to see that there are ways of settling these differences, and that this not only consists in reasoning but in redescrip­ tion, of looking at the facts again* You will recall in the garden parable wheres Our two gardeners [explorers] even when they had reached the stage when neither expected any experimental result which the other did not, might yet have continued the dispute, each pre­ senting and re-presenting the features of the garden favouring his hypothesis, that is, fit­ ting his model for describing the accepted fact; each emphasizing the pattern he wishes to empha­ size.1 ?

The argument continues then by getting your opponent into the proper position so as to be able to "see" a certain pattern by having him interpret the facts in this way and not that way. Perhaps your opponent claims that your interpretation is lacking because it ignores certain relevant facts or misunderstands them. But then you try 1 A to meet his objections. When a husband thinks of his wife's fidelity, perhaps you feel that on these matters it is useless to reason. Love is not bound by rules,and often the lover behaves like a madman; yet you draw his

1?. Ibid., p. 159o

18= Mitchell, Philosophical Quarterly, p. 223. 60 attention to certain patterns in his wife6s behavior. You trace for the husband a path connecting things she has done and compare this with her action at other times. Perhaps after awhileg the husband’s confidence will waver; he will become sceptical and even infuriated. Still he may have noticed all that we have brought against his wife’s fidelity; perhaps he even accepts it and does not pass it off. Perhaps this has altered his love and admiration for his wife, yet he still loves her, and now we feel that it is we who are blind and cannot see what he sees."^

Perhaps this is the dilemma of religious languages that it deals with a type of experience that does not func­ tion, when put into words, in the simple straightforward way empirical sentences do. But the most glaring mistake on the part of MacIntyre is that in showing up the logical miseonneetions of religious language, he has at the same time failed to reveal those connections which it does have. Of course erroneous connections will arise. The world is round and the sun does not revolve around it in spite of any ’’common-sense1’ observations the witch doctor may say proves the contrary. Certainly religious beliefs may be of this family, but so can the belief in the uni­ formity of nature and the laws of necessary connection.

19. Wisdom, p. 161. "This is importantg16 states Hitehellg

because where the comparison is not between diver­ gent interpretations of a limited range of facts, but between competing world-views, there is a sense in which each of the rivals claims to get every­ thing in; so that if judgment between them had to rely on further evidence, there would, ex hypothesis be none availableo To avoid the difficulties asso­ ciated with the notion of a complete description of the universe, the point can be put this way; each interpretation claims to accommodate whatever facts are presented to ito20

But this does not mean that the interpretation one finds himself accepting is purely an arbitrary or relative

. matters If the sceptic wants to deny that any ultimate

demonstration exists, then we have, Mitchell says, no quarrel with him, for we agree none is to be founds But this is not to say that reasons cannot be given for and

against our interpretations» For the act of conversion to take place, it is not necessary to place oneself “outside," as it were, in an intellectual vacuum, where we "choose61 what we are going to believe about reality like window

shoppers selecting merchandise in a stores Such a “choice"

is nonsensical for it never takes place; yet it is the type

of decision that MacIntyre would have us believe is the

basis for all religious beliefs0 And though we shall need to emphasize how much “There is a God" evinces an attitude to the fami­ liar we shall find in the end that it also

20= Mitchell, Philosophical Quarterly, pp, 223-22# evinees some recognition of patterns in time easily missed and that9 therefore9 difference as to there being any gods is in part a difference as to what is so and therefore as to the facts9 though not in the simple ways which first occurred to us021

21o Wisdom9 p0 CONCLUSION

Much of the confusion preventing any practical understanding of religious belief stems from certain mis­ guided assumptions and gross over-simplifications about the meanings of the terms “belief" and "justification" when they are analyzed from the philosophical level of the shifted- ground techniqueo The extreme theoretical nature of this technique seems to be the cause of much of the difficulty and if anything is clear from what it or the head-on approach has said to this point, it is that from their level of analysis, little can be made clear at all without greatly simplifying and distorting the logical complexities that are encompassed in what we call "religious belief=" We would do well, therefore, to recall Wittgenstein0s com­ ments about the word "game" and assume that "religious belief functions in much the same way„ The search for the character istie thread running through all that this phrase supposedly designates is downright futile, because what we are dealing with here is an unwieldy mass of overlapping and seemingly contradictory utterances that often speak of anything and everything in a grammar that, although quite natural and perhaps familiar, has little, if any, over all consistency when examined empirically* Referring to “religions beliefw in this respect as a class among other beliefs is only a nominal gesture, since whatever boundaries it may have are for philosophical purposes so vague and inclusive that classification would be an impossible task* (Some may object that I am making "religious belief" so broad, that is, synonomous with belief in general, that I am losing whatever distinctions it may have* I am not saying that it is impossible for certain purposes to make such dis­ tinctions? rather I am denying that it is possible from the level that both the head-on and shifted-ground approaches have been speaking, to discover any essential character­ istic that could serve as a criterion for calling any par­ ticular belief "religious*") But if we cannot hope to achieve any final philosophical analysis of religious belief as we find it, we may be able to achieve some clarity in regard to those philosophies of religion con­ tained herein that have tried to achieve such an analysis*

Hopefully by realizing the impractical method of these1 analyses we will be able to formulate a better method from which to understand the cognitive capabilities of such beliefs* In ordinary language we frequently find "religious belief" referring to a religion such as one might find in any comprehensive text on the history of religions* Among those religions contained therein, we undoubtedly would

find Homan Catholicism, Hinduism, and perhaps the Bahai movement = The dogmas and doctrines past and present incor­ porated under these titles is usually what one imagines as being professed in Sunday Masses, by the Hiver Ganges, or in the privacy of one's prayers, and considered as a con­ glomerate, they consist of a vast hodge-podge of religious languages.and behaviors with all their related symbols and objects of worshipo They would include such things as pray­ ing, singing hymns, kneeling, baptizing, writing sermons, delivering them, listening to sermons, lying on spiked beds, feeling reverent towards certain objects, pronouncing ana­ themas, blessing, being converted, and all the countless intricate techniques and modes of behavior that one nor­ mally thinks of as religious0 The shifted-ground technique has made use of this familiar function of "religious belief" but in the course of its analyses, it has also developed a second use which seems to have no particular reference to any of the above- mentioned behaviorso This use has come about by virtue of . the desire to find a characteristic thread existing in this hodge-podge, and for the purposes to which Hare and Mac­ Intyre have put it, it seems to designate an ultimate meta­ physical belief, the Weltanschauung, however confused and vague, that each of the above examples, and others, try in one form or another to make explicit« Hare, it will be recalled, called it a "bilk," MacIntyre "nnconditional belief"; we could call it a world-view or the core philo­ sophy that lies at the heart of any given religious belief, or any belief that is held religiously= The essential thread they say (in agreement with Flew) that is found in religious beliefs is that they do not let anything count against their being true.

"■Justification" like "religious belief" can also be shown to have a wide variety of uses, but the shifted-ground technique, because of its presuppositions about the nature of religious belief, has also developed a specialized use for "justification,," Ordinarily, it refers to that point where the act of justifying, that is the offering of grounds for believing what one believes in actual circum­ stances, is sufficient for the purpose of allowing a man to perform the religious way of behaving that initially was in need of justifieation0 I hope to make this clear later, but for now we could say that a justification used in this way "ends" when it answers the question, "What is a justification here for believing = o 0 etc0?"

But in philosophical uses such as we find in the shifted-ground technique, it is doubtful whether such a question can be answered at alio As employed by Hare and

MacIntyre, the end of justification is not defined in terms ©f practical circumstances; but rather seems to indicate; in some Platonic manner, the ultimate logical end of justification. The concept of unconditional com­ mitment developed by their technique fits very nicely with this concept of justification, for it is a commitment to am authority (blik) that could never be the logical conse­ quence of anything beyond itself. If, in other words $ such an authority could be deduced (which, as it is defined, it could not) from further premises, then it would no longer be ultimate, and the premises themselves would become the object of unconditional commitment. But MacIntyre, by justifying religious beliefs as cognitive on the basis of an arbitrarily maintained but groundless authority, actually denies the very thesis he sets out to support. As Mitchell had pointed out earlier, if there can be no means whereby a religious authority can be judged authoritative, other than saying that those who accept it believe that it is, them how is it possible to . provide any justification for the content of authority?

MacIntyre0s answer consisted in showing that the type of reasoning used in the justification of religious beliefs

7 was circular, so that the authority justifies its content which in turn affirms the validity of the authority, or simply, the authority justifies itself. But whether the

"end" of justification is to be seen as the end of a chain-like form of reasoning (such as Mitchell and Wisdom

quite adequately criticized) or consists only of a tautology the authority itself still remains groundless according to

MacIntyre9s analysis. If our concern here is to understand how religious beliefs can claim cognitive status, we will get nowhere by placing them under an authority that cannot justify the appeal that their authority be recognized. Would it make sense for the Pope to justify his authority on matters of faith and morals by sitting ex cathedra and so affirming? Flew would definitely deny it, for this is not to justify the authority, but simply to reaffirm that it is an authority. Why accept the authority of the Pope as authoritative would be Flew8s reply. All MacIntyre is doing (like Hare) is providing us with another interpretation of the very same thing that Flew9s challenge points out, namely that if the authority itself can have no rational grounds, then neither can the religious beliefs that it supposedly

justifies. From an arbitrary and groundless point of view, authority or bliks as the "end9* of justification merely reasserts the conclusion that Flew draws, that in the end

justification has no use here. If MacIntyre truly realizes

the relative status of all religious authorities, what sense does it make to speak of justification as ultimate?

How, indeed, can one speak of the justification of religious belief at all, if no possible reason could count for one’s adopting or not adopting a given religions authority? As Mitehell pointed out9 this may aeeount for why we believe

as we dos but it does not aeoount for (again in terms of Flew'’s challenge) why anyone else should adopt that authority or how anyone could sensibly spend time trying

to convert others to his way of believingo Granted$, so long as one is trying to live by his religious convictions he does not and cannot treat them as "hypotheses9M but if the acceptance or rejection of any particular dogmas through

conversion, is to be the cognitive process that it is, then neither can such beliefs be "unconditional" in the sense in which the shifted-ground technique tries to characterize

themo The concept of unconditionality makes nonsense of both "belief" and "justification0" But before attempting to develop this point further, let us review some of the misgivings that plagued the head-

on approach to Flew0s challenge0 This approach, we saw,

only compounded the apparent "victorious"claims of the

falsiflability criterion by supplying further examples of

the prima facie religious assertions that Flew rejects in the first placeo Mitchell, in his earlier article, only

superficially accepted the criterion because he would not let damaging evidence count against in the "required senseo" The partisan, therefore, was no different from the Believer in the garden when it came to the point of withdrawing or • • - • 70 falsifying-his assertions= Mitehell is correct in saying that religions utterances are "significant articles of

f a ithg" Mt his failure to distinguish adequately between

"counting for" and "counting against" made it impossible to explain why they were cognitively significant in Plew's terms o

Grombie°s three-pronged attack is also, on Flow's ground9 a three-pronged failures (1) Eschatologieal veri­ fications, we saw, suffers from the same paradoxical fea­ tures as do all religious beliefs when approached in the terms of the falsiflability criterion; so obviously it could not serve as a justification for this class of beliefs, since it is a member of that class (note that I am speaking of the class of beliefs in need of justification and not the class of religious beliefs)o But the important point here is that "eschatologieal verification" like "God" is also an empty concept which, like the Believer's concept of a gar­ dener, has no factual meaning that can distinguish it from an illusions (2 ) Grombie's notion of mystery also suffers from this "inconceivableness" which makes the divine mystery an unfathomable mystery, thus a non-cognitive mysteryo This forced Grombie to postulate mystery as a private experience, but this still left it bereaved of an outward criterion where the statements made about such a mystery could make sense, and (3 ) the use of analogies or parables was also 71 mnaMe to give this experiemee of divine mystery a public oogemoy, since Gromhie had denied "beforehand that the parable itself could carry any literal meaning. But the literal meaning of a parable is the only public meaning, so again Croabie is forced unwillingly to accept Flew’s gap between religious beliefs and their justification.

The shifted-ground technique, as we have said, also fails because as a reply to Flew, it simply implies the same conclusions that the falsiflability test draws but carries the conclusion ©me link further along the chain of ultimate justification. Whatever behavioristic reasons Flew may use to explain how one does come to adopt religious authorities or bliks, to state that such adoption is groundless only affirms that ultimately religious beliefs are mom-cognitive.

It would make no difference what authority one did come to adopt, since all, if MacIntyre and Hare are correct, claim to be the "ultimate" justification, thus actually pointing out that no criterion for their cognitive status exists.

Justifying religious beliefs by placing them under a factually immune and logically ultimate authority is not the practical-minded analysis we meed if we hope to achieve any understanding of how religious beliefs are justified and whether they do have the right to claim cognitive status. 72 We do seem onoe again to find Flew11 s arguments

triumphant," hut there is a way to avoid the ultimate scepticism and relativism to which it leads us. The way is found when we begin to understand the philosophical nature of his argument (as well as those who reply to him) and discover that the major cause of its apparent success actually consists in being "held captive" by the assumption about reasoning that Mitchell pointed out in the preceding section, that is, the "chain-like" form of reasoning and the peculiar meaning it gives to "justifiea- tion<>" Religious beliefs have not been provided with a philosophical rationale because Flew's preconception of what it would have to consist in prevents him from seeing that, as a language-game, a way of life, they need no philo­ sophy to give them this rationale„ Unfortunately the method of Flewes analysis will not allow this simple fact to be taken properly into account« He is not concerned with how religious beliefs are justified (how facts and reasons do count for or against them), but rather how he thinks they should be justified, and when they fail to conform to his philosophical standards for cognitive belief, the only possible conclusion he could have drawn was that such a justification here is irrelevant=

The failure on the part of those who reply to Flew is that they fail to take into account Flew0s failure, and instead they regard his falsifiaMlity criterion as a valid criterion for the cognitive status of religious "belief, either explicitly as in the ease of the head-on approach or implicitly as was the dilemma of the shifted- ground technique0 Both responses to Flew8s challenge make the same unwarranted presupposition about how reasons func­ tion in actual oases where religious beliefs are justified*

By being concerned with trying to fit religious beliefs to their prescribed analytic moulds, they completely over­ looked (or failed to rectify) the logical gap between their analyses and the practical function that a cognitive justi­ fication has in these eases* We need, as it were, to get off the slippery ice and get back to "rough ground *" Per­ haps what follows, as a response to Flew (and company), will seem to be an example of the sort of philosophy that

I am rejecting, since I do not (and cannot) go back to rough ground but only show how it is possible to get off the slippery ice* But perhaps that at least is getting somewhere * If anything is to be believable in any context, if it is to claim a cognitive status, it must be reasonable, and this means that it must have a public cogency as well as a practical application to life* Justification "ends" not when we for some sociological reason come to hold to a particular but groundless authority, but when as rational agents we choose one way of living over another "beearnse the grounds for so choosing are bettero Because we cannot often justify this choice by deductive argument or empirical investigation is not to say that we cannot choose for good reasons0 Again, the mistake here lies in the one-sided diet of thinking that justification can only operate in a rectilinear pattern and that because the dis- tinction between truth and error cannot be made in the black and white terms of formal logic, religious beliefs must be considered uneonditionalo This disjunct, as Mitchell9s criticism of MacIntyre pointed out, is not necessarily the case. Religious beliefs, like all beliefs, can and do make a distinction between truth and error, orthodoxy and heresy, for in themselves they are a part of a coherent system where making this distinction has a point» Specifically this point could cover innumerable things from teaching little children to say the Lord9s Prayer in a Sunday School class to lecturing students in a seminary course in hermeneutics, but generally it is the promotion of that religious way of life where the need for such distinctions arises and is fulfilledo Call the basis for this distinction an author­ ity or a blik if you wish, but remember that it serves as authoritative only because it shares a common cogency among a community of believers who see and understand the grounds for calling it such* The sceptic may object here that I am omly saying that human agreement decides what is orthodox and what is heresyo On the contrary, Mo » <> it is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they useo ‘That i?s not," Wittgenstein concludes, "agreement in opinions but in form of-life o**^ Such agreement is the sharing of standards which make rational agreement possible 2 not only in opinions but in .judgments» These standards, no matter how explicit or vague they may be in doctrine or dogma, consist primarily in a shared way of life where, as religious persons, we are able to understand one another not only by means of a common language, but also by common physical appearances, facial expressions, environment, and behavior in generalo There must be this underlying "agree­ ment" in the form of life, in behavior and language, before agreement or disagreement in opinions can make senseo The only religion anyone can "ultimately" be concerned with is the one that he, and the community of which he is a part, live by in their daily affairs* The only thing we, as philosophers of religion, can do is to accept these reli­ gions as "forms of life" by saying, "This language-game is played*”

1* .Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investiga­ tions, paragraph 2*4-1 * 2* Arthur Edward Murphy, The Theory of Practical Reason, p* 377° - ' ' ' _ ' „ ■ 76 People may (and often do)9 • however9 hold to their religious beliefs unconditionally, but that is because they blindly and irresponsibly follow the dictates of an unques­ tioned authorityo If they honestly believe what they pro­ fess 9 they cannot hold them in this manner and at the same time expect them to be reasonable or convincing to others, for being reasonable and convincing, is not to blindly fol­ low or to hold unconditionally to anything= I speak here not to the mystic or the "routine-bound disciple," for as A 0 Eo Murphy explains9 they simply do as they are tolds

There is no sense here in the idea of justificationo In what communicable terms could it be stated? But there is equally no sense in "responsibilityo” Such men do not decide anything on their own responsibility, or at all— they are simply pulled or pushed, and though the description gets overtones of edification when the pull is called an inspiration, or the push creative, no grounds are or can be given that would warrant such a de si gnat i one, 3

To ask whether our reasons for believing as we do, are good reasons, is, if you want a reasonable answer, to ask whether they come up to the standard for good reasons, but it makes no sense here to ask why that standard should be acceptedo

The standard itself is what it means to be reasonable, and asking for a "further" justification of the standard of reasonableness is presently beyond the powers of Reason to comprehendo Here our spade is turned for we have reached

3o Ibid., pp o #04-405 = 77 rock "bottom and we may say, "This is what I believe? this is what I dOo16 Our reasons "give out" and then we act without reasons; we do something without the need for fur­ ther justificationo "What people accept as a justification," says Wittgenstein, "is shewn by how they think and live0"^ Philosophers since the school at Athens have searched for the same kind of ultimate justification for religious beliefs as they have when attempting to unite sense-data with an object or trying to understand how the presuppositions of science can have any foundation*

Scepticism on such a level is meaningless, for the question it sets out to answer cannot, by the very nature of its logic, be answered, because the certainty it seeks (on an unconditional level) is nonsense also* For practical pur­ poses one cannot provide further reasons than Reason at the moment is capable of providing, and if the answers it does provide will never convince the sceptic, then Reason cannot resolve his doubts* This is not to say that further reasons in the future cannot be found * Although we cannot "invent" reasons in order to answer reasonable doubts, they can be

"discovered" by a complex learning technique where those concerned with this particular activity act as free rational agents bent on solving their religious problems * Inquiry

k0 Wittgenstein, paragraph 325° ends when the reasons discovered are sufficient to provide solutions to those problems, and that means that they enact, promote, or sustain a way of life, whether it be that of the Hindu, the Moslem, the Christian, or what have you, which is the outward manifestation of such a solution6

But again, this does not mean that inquiry ends unconditional1y with the solution to problems, for the language-game of doubt and certainty are one and the same, and they will continue to function interdependently so long as one remains reasonable in this manner« It is not when the meaning we do give to our religious experiences is made final or absolute that they can perform the purpose of being convincing and meaningful to others» The "good" of under­ standing comes only from a shared understanding, and it functions in a publicly convincing manner only when it is capable of being self-critical as well as self-corrective0 This does not necessarily imply that it will be convincing, but one can hardly expect it to be so unless it had these capabilitieso The only "final" measure of truth here comes in facing up to the practical consequences that our under­ standing has effected until a better understanding from those effects is shown to be needed»

If unconditional devotion is what Kierkegaard meant by the "leap" of faith, then in this case, it will be a leap into darkness,, But if darkness is to be the last analysis of religious belief , and “God$66 as Grombie claimed, can only denote an unfathomable and inexpressible mystery, then certainly we would do well to end this discourse here and now* Me mentioned earlier that religious belief is, for empirical purposes, an unanalyzable phenomenon and as philosophers we can only note “forms of life*" Granted, unconditionality and argumentative immunity are often the case when one is expressing his religious beliefs, but if we (and he) ever hope to see our way about in regard to their conjunctive claim to cognitive status, we must reject such unconditionality and immunity as a proper philo­ sophical analysiso But, again, why is it an improper analysis? Why is it irrational to hold any belief unconditionally? As scientifically oriented men, are there not some beliefs that must remain unquestionable, some bits of data, like

Descartes” oogito ergo sum, that are beyond all possible doubt? Take for example the story of Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana0 If I were at the wedding perhaps I would do well to examine those wine jugs very carefully to see how the wine might have been siphoned in, how it got there and so on. But if I am convinced that water cannot be changed spontaneously into wine, then this investigation would perhaps be superfluous= But how con­ vinced can one be? Is an Investigation ever superfluous? Does the scientist, though lie fails to realize it, actually hold to his beliefs about the laws of.natural phenomena in the same way that the theist may hold beliefs about miracles and supernatural phenomena? To use Flew5s words, what would have to happen to water and wine jugs to convince the scien­ tist that water could be spontaneously transformed into wine, not that it occurred by deceptive means or by sleight of hand, but that wine did actually come from these things? Well, if from all appearances this is what did happen, there would have to be a point at which we would reject the belief that it was a trick, but then again, how convinced can one be that it is not a trick? Are we prepared to say what spontaneous transformation or tricks in this case would have to consist in? Here, the conviction sought by the tone of this interrogation is not a practical conviction,.but one that seeks an incorrigible certainty in ultimately distinguish­ ing appearance from reality,, To see the nonsense of this we should look at circumstances where doubt and certainty make sense0 The small-town pastor never dreamed of doubt­ ing whether the Bible from which he preached every Sunday morning was really the true word of God, and none of the congregation who came to hear his sermons ever thought of questioning its orthodoxy either0 They simply continue to worship as they do every Sundayo But suppose that no 81 one is aware that actually their Bible (perhaps because of a misprint, perhaps not) contains no mention of Christ's resurrection from the tomb but only relates his wonderful humanistic teachings, how he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and hew, after his crucifixion, the Church rose up stronger than ever, as we find related in the Book of Acts*

Is there something amiss? Are these people only under the impression that they are good Christians performing a mean­ ingful language-game? Is the congregation unable to worship, to sing hymns, to express brotherly love, and to hope for the salvation of the world? Is the pastor unable to deliver his sermons or perform the sacraments? When does truth become heresy, in this ease, and when does it make sense to speak of a justification outside a way of life? "The balance on which impressions are weighed is not the impression of a balance,MV and the authority by which religious beliefs are judged orthodox or heretical is not the impression of an authority; it i£ the authority,, But the judgments which follow from an authority function in a rational way only if they do not consist in blindly following the authority. People can reasonably doubt the authority of the Bible, but this does not mean that it cannot serve as authoritative for others. Because

5= Ibid., paragraph 259= a sceptic will allow nothing to serve as grounds for believing in the Bible, does this mean that believing in the Bible does not make sense? Well, perhaps it doesn't- for the sceptic, and possibly it will eventually make no sense to the ^ small-town congregation., But then what will make sense? One cannot say, but if nothing will, then their initial scepticism has served no practical purpose which not only is to provide reasons for rejecting one authority, but also must provide grounds for accepting something else* The understanding that a religious (or a scientific) belief achieves when it is about its proper business of promoting a particular way of life, should not consist in. a final "getting hold" of reality that will be a lasting panacea to all forms of scepticism by giving us unconditional certainty that its particular way is the only way to truth or salvation® i Again, although it may be the ease that some reli­ gious beliefs are held unconditionally, there is nothing in the logic of unconditionality that can dictate that they must be so held* The unconditional believer, as well as the philosophical sceptic, must realize that there is no infallible way of "getting hold" of reality® One should worry less about trying to see it face to face and instead concentrate his efforts towards finding out whether his beliefs have any practical applications, and in this way 83 find out what9 if any9 insight these applications can give for improving them. This is the most anyone can expect, but it is the least anyone should do. It comes by accepting yourself as a part of reality's structural milieu wherein doubt and certainty can only meaningfully take place. One can no more believe unconditionally than he can live unconditionally because living is making one's beliefs practical, whereas uneonditionality creates an unbridgeable gap between belief and practice by rejecting the critical faculties and public rationale whereby anything in the end can be convincing and therefore believable. The uncon­ ditional certainty which the sceptic denies and the absolut­ ist affirms is not a certainty that can warrant belief. Justification is a fallible business, and the sooner the dogmatic theist recognizes this the better off he will be, but this recognition need not lead him to the opposite extreme of thinking that no religious belief can ever be justified. The practical function of justification in both cases is grossly misunderstood. Indeed, when living in our world there is much that one can doubt, but if it is to be a reasonable doubt, it can only proceed on the practical basis where there is also a good deal that is certain. To repeat, it is this odd philosophical use to which "belief," "doubt," and "justification" have been put that prevents analysts like Flew from granting cognitive status to religious beliefs. 84 The persuasive efficacy, therefore, of a religious belief camnot be isolated from its contextual justification, for it is this kind of justification where reasons are opera­ tive in the language-game where both scepticism and certainty make senseo What Flew fails to comprehend is that these reasons can and do provide a justification to quell reason­ able doubts, but the strange ultimacy of his scepticism pre­ vents him from seeing this* "It is only when we refuse,"

explains Murphy, "to understand a justification as a justi­ fication that we need a ’higher0 justification for ito"^ But unfortunately in Flow’s ease, "higher" takes on these

peculiar philosophical overtones,, Ho justification can reach so high as to be in this way an ultimate justifiea-

tion» As justification operates in the religious context where it is called upon, such scepticism and ultimacy would be self-defeating and pointless, for it would fail to allow a religious way of life to come about0

The worth of the religious language-game is found

in the community where the essential structure for its evaluation exists and where its use as an expression of a

common understanding (which includes its own re-evaluation)

is a going concern,, Unless religious beliefs were in their

own way justifiable, they could not adequately serve a

60 Murphy, p0 52o cognitive purpose» The plurality of contexts and authori­ ties that the initial stages of any honest scepticism takes into account can he a basis upon which self-criticism can begin, but if this criticism is to proceed in a meaningful fashion, it must, if it is also a practical endeavor, end in the affirmation of a more enlightened religious belief»

The unquenchable confusion lies in thinking that reasoning, as we have said, operates only in one way, and because no ultimate answer can be found at the end of its deductive

"chain," that therefore mo answer can existo Of course, on such a level no answer will exist, if it must provide an impenetrable defense against any future scepticism, but practical answers can be and are found because they in turn make reasonable scepticism possible0

In answer to Flew, then, we could say that the grounds for accepting the cognitive status of a religious belief are the grounds that those who have religious beliefs offer as a justification for such status0 What possible purpose could scepticism serve if it only ques­ tioned former beliefs without providing the grounds for believing something else. If we are able to believe cog­ nitively, as well as religiously, we must believe reason­ ably, and this means that where we (you and I) have grounds for what we believe, we call them grounds because for present purposes we (as part of a community) have no further grounds to doubt their cogeney0 If one wishes to speak of this as ‘‘ultimate justification, “ he must keep in mind that it is ultimate only because for the present situ­ ation nothing more is needed, not because an incorrigible finality has been achieved but because the grounds offered are sufficient for the particular needs of a religious com­ munity, which, among other things is to make a certain way of life possibleo What this way of life is to be, we as philosophers cannot say and have no business saying; we can only take note that if and when grounds fail to provide the theist the justification needed to believe in the resurrection of Christ, the authority of the Yedas, or the haw of Hoses, its failure can only be remedied when the search for further grounds brings about a better more enlightened way of llfe0 How do we know when our grounds are sufficient for this purpose? They are shown to be sufficient when they provide the kind of life where under­ standing occurso “How do we know that we are capable of reliable judgment in such matters? How do we know that we can speak the English language? By speaking and being understood. It is sometimes said that a practically justifying answer to the “why?“ of justification “begs the question," since all it offers is a justification.

7° Ibid., p. 4 1 9 o • 87 The eorreet regieal peimt here is rather that the question - ""begs ” the answer» for only this kind of answer, could he an answer to it, .and only a qmes- tioner concerned and competent to appraise and use the answer as a justification could significantly raise this question08

The search for a logically irrefutable justifica­ tion for the cognitive status of religious beliefs is non­ sense because it refuses to let practical reasons count as reasons without some “external61 supporto But in Flew6s cases, when discovering that no such support can be found$ it never occurs to him that it was his method of scepticism and not

the “essence86 of religious belief that led him to his con­

clusion,, The line between using a name because of what we experiences, what states of affairs we can “pictures,“ what we take to be the “facts9“ is by no means as sharp a dis­

tinction as the falsifiability criterion makes it out to be„ Can the theist say what would have to happen before he would be willing to deny the authority of the Bible 5 can Flew say what would count against his belief in the authority of the falsifiability criterion? “Counting againsts,” “falsifications, “ “invalids,66 are terms that desig­ nate a multitude of complex situations and circumstances, and what a person may wish to say is true or false, valid

or invalid, orthodox or heretical is not something that,

philosophically, can sensibly be legislated in advance

irrespective of these circumstances,, “What counts against

8 o Xbido, p o 380 .. . 88 the belief in the Besurrection?66 Who is asking whom this qmestion; in what context is it being asked5 what are the circumstances? Even if it were possible to lay out all the facts surrounding such a question asked in a particular con­ texts it would only be meaningful to those who in this con­ text were communicating with one another9 who understood the question* and where answering it made sense= Flew* however» never questions the practical effects of the falsiflability criterion or its ability universally to determine the cog­ nitive status of beliefs5 consequently9 his challenge is

"triumphant" only on the basis of this gross generaliza­ tion* My purpose here is not* as I have said9 to provide a last analysis of religious belief9 but instead to show the nonsense of analyses like Flew”s9 and to suppress this sort of philosophical orientation9 not only by showing that the question his challenge asks cannot be answered9 but more importantly9 that it was a mistake in the first place to ask it * There is much* indeed9 that the twentieth century theist will have to reckon with if he is to provide his beliefs with the appropriate attitudes that will allow him the right to claim their cognitive status * In this respect the theist may say what he chooses9 but only if it does not prevent him from seeing the facts* As Alice said while in the Looking-Glass* "There9s no use trying * * * one cannot believe impossible things9“ and "believing" a contradic­ tion, strictly speaking, is doing just that* A belief of this sort would fail to give sense to what it says. Reli­ gious paradoxes seem to hold a special status in this case, but whatever it may be, again they can only make the claim to cognitive status by expressing themselves in a language that has the self-critical and self-corrective attributes that can make them publicly cogent* It is much too easy when one finds himself in a contradiction to put on eccles­ iastical airs of profundity and pontificate, "It is a para­ dox* " But as Ferre reminds us, "One cannot lean on a para­ dox, f0r the only mystery that can lie in a paradox is the mystery that shows itself as a gap between a fallible under­ standing and reality* There is something mysterious about reality, but that is only because we know something about it, because it makes sense to say that we do, and because we hope that the understanding we do have will in the future give us a better life* Modern men are no less in need of mature religious orientation and expression than men have been at any time* But the day of blind trust in the words of the witch doctor seems happily dead or dying* Our new authorities are the priests of inquiry, and this is a significant step forward, since inquiry offers us the opportunity to exercise personal responsibility by testing and improving our beliefs*

9= Kent Bendall and Frederick Ferre, Exploring the Logic of Faith, p* 177° The religion of the future can, in logic, he at best no more than „ 0 0 Ma fallible faith,“ but vigorous ■ aQ<3- fulfilling faith is not incompatible with theo­ retical uncertainty <> 1^~”

One should not blame others or themselves for mis­ takes that, in their situation, they could hardly have avoided, but unless they are at some time recognized as mistakes when the potential for a better understanding has been achieved, the practical theory of reason here explained will make no more sense out of religious belief than the other theories herein considered0 For practical reason to demand its own critical examination is a logical “must** if it is to be reasonablec Indeed, the heart may have reasons that Reason knows not of, but if there is to be lasting value in what comes from the heart, one will never find it if it makes nonsense of Reason and Reason makes nonsense of ito.

The theory here formulated Mo o => is not," as Bendall points out, "reason’s last word to itself, but the word that abjures last words.Religious beliefs and the reasons that justify them cannot function, if they are to function cogently, as "last words.M Rather it is learning how to go on in the self-corrective manner that such beliefs are able to set for themselves that makes their value lasting. When these reasons, whatever they may be, no

10. Ibid., p. 218.

11. Ibid., p. 126. ;longer serve the purpose of providing a continual under­ standing, it will be for this purpose that better reasons

must and will be sought» How do we know these reasons are “good reasons?” Again, this is not a proper question if you are speaking as a philosopher of religion, but there are good reasons, and they will be found only when they

provide the kind of understanding where searching for them does not end in their discovery., Philosophy of religion is not a substitute for religion,but neither is religion

a substitute for critical intelligence0 BEFEREHCES

Beadall9 Kent and Ferre, Frederick,, Exploring the Logic of Fajthc lew Yorks Association Press, 1962T ~ Blackstone, William To The Problem of Religions Knowledge * Englewood Cliffs, Mo Jo s Prentice~Hall, InCo, 19^30 Buff-Forbes, Do R 0 “Theology and Falsification Again,“ The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Yolo 39, HOo 2, August 196I0

Ferre, Frederick= Language, Logic and God0 lew Yorks Harper and Row% 1951.

Flew, Antony and MacIntyre, Alasdair (Edsc)o Mew Essays in Philosophical Theology, Londons SCI Press, Ltd,, 1957o MacIntyre, Alasdair (Ed,), Metaphysical Beliefs, Londons SCM Press, Ltd,, 1957= Mitchell, Basil (Ed,), Faith and Logic, Londons George Allen and Unwin, Ltd,, 1957= o "The Justification of Religious Belief," The Philosophical Quarterly, Yol, 11, Mo, 44, July 1961,

Murphy, Arthur Edward, The Theory of Practical Reason, LaSalle, 111,8 Open Court, 1965= Wisdom, John, Philosophy and Psycho-Analysis, Oxfords Basil Blackwell, 1953= Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, Translated by G, E, M, Anscombe, Mew Yorks The Macmillan Co,, 1953=

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