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Referring to God

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

John J. Shepherd
John J. Shepherd
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Theology and Religion, Weymouth College of Education
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Extract

It is a current commonplace that if the concept of deity is incoherent then no significant truth-claim is made for a formula like ‘God exists’, for it is neither true nor false but meaningless. This is the problem of factual meaning on which such emphasis is laid by critics like A. Flew, R. W. Hepburn, C. B. Martin, K. Nielsen and P. Edwards. I wish here to counter their challenge.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , March 1974 , pp. 67 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

page 67 note 1 Nielsen, Kai, ‘The Intelligibility of God-Talk’, Religious Studies 6 (March 1970), p. 21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Cf. Nielsen, Kai, Contemporary Critiques of Religion (London, 1971), pp. 60, 42–4, 66, 119–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 68 note 1 See Flew, A., God and Philsophy (London, 1966), 2–14Google Scholar; Edwards, Paul, ‘Difficulties in the Idea of God’, in The Idea of God: Philosophical Perspectives (Springfield, III., 1968), eds. Madden, E. H., Handy, R. and Farber, M., p. 48Google Scholar, and ‘Some Notes on Anthropomorphic Theology’, in Religious Experience and Truth, ed. Hook, Sidney (New York, 1961)Google Scholar; Nielsen, K., ‘On Fixing the Reference Range of “God”’, Religious Studies 2 (October 1966): 22–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Daher, Adel, ‘God and Factual Necessity’, Religious Studies 6 (March 1970): 34–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 68 note 2 Penelhum, Terence, Survival and Disembodied Existence (London, 1970), pp. 61 ff.Google Scholar, and see pp. 55–6, 64–5, 86–7.

page 68 note 3 ibid., chapters 5 and 7.

page 71 note 1 Penelhum, Terence, Survival and Disembodied Existence, p. 67.Google Scholar

page 74 note 1 Nielsen, , Contemporary Critiques, pp. 125–6.Google Scholar Cf. Evans, Donald, ‘Commentary on Paul Edwards' Paper’, in The Idea of God, eds. Farber, Madden Handy, p. 84.Google Scholar

page 74 note 2 Meynell, Hugo, God and the World: The Coherence of Christian Theism (London, 1971), p. 120.Google Scholar Cf. Penelhum, op. cit., chapter 3.

page 74 note 3 Nielsen, ibid., pp. 119–20.

page 76 note 1 Edwards, , ‘Reply to Commentators’, in The Idea of God, p. 95.Google Scholar

page 77 note 1 Flew, , op. Cit., 2.20.Google ScholarDaher, , loc. cit., p. 34.Google Scholar

page 77 note 2 Nielsen, Kai, ‘Can Faith Validate God-Talk?’ in Philosophy and Religion: Some Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Gill, Jerry H. (Minneapolis, Minn., 1968), p. 238Google Scholar (reprinted from Theology Today 20 (1963Google Scholar). Cf. Nielsen, , Contemporary Critiques, pp. 43, 119.Google Scholar

page 78 note 1 Nielsen, ibid., pp. 63–4. Nielsen's earlier emphasis, ibid., pp. 56–60, on empirical experience by us as a necessary condition of factual intelligibility is mistaken, as the immediately succeeding text above here indicates.

page 79 note 1 This is taken from Strawson, P. F., Individuals (London: Methuen, University Paperbacks, 1964), see esp. p. 16.Google Scholar

page 79 note 2 See e.g. Hartshorne, C., ‘Strict and Genetic Identity: An Illustration of the Relations of Logic to Metaphysics’, in Henle, P., Kallen, H., and Langer, S., eds., Structure, Method and Meaning: Essays in Honor of Henry M. Scheffer (New York, 1951).Google Scholar