the nature of religious language

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zarathustra
Posts: 413
Joined: Wed Oct 05, 2005 11:56 pm
Location: Australia

the nature of religious language

Post by zarathustra »

note: please dear fellow geniuses, I'd appreciate it if you didn't use this particular forum for venting your spleen, making value judgements/sweeping statements (e.g.aquinas was a christian apologist) about the great philosophers/poets/artists of the past, or as a venue for discussing art history or your country's prospects of attaining the ashes (not joan of arc's ) but the cricket.

now, in relation to the topic of this forum, philosophically, I believe it is possible to expose the vaccuous nature of religious language, by examining what lies beneath it, or what it rests upon....if you have something constructive to contribute, pro or contra to my position - then whooppee! ok, here we go: in the twentieth century, philosophers of religion have been concerned to determine whether an adequate justification can be given which will demonstrate that religious language is meaningful. doubts that such language was meaningful had been raised by positivists using the principle of verification as their criterion for meaning. since religious language was neither tautological nor capable of simple empirical verification it was declared meaningless. although devoid of meaning religious utterances were thought to express the sentiments and emotional feelings of believers.even though men might agree upon their feelings and band together in groups, such feelings could never be construed as genuine knowledge, because sentiments lacked a cognative status. under the positivist interpretation, therefore, religious belief was based on non-cognative feelings, a nonrational, if not irrational, foundation......Discuss>>>>
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