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The Falsification Challenge
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
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Not too many years ago Antony Flew voiced a challenge. His challenge was directed to religious believers and it was this: ‘What would have to occur or to have occurred to constitute for you a disproof of the love of, or of the existence of, God?’ It was Flew's implicit argument that unless such a challenge could be met an utterance like ‘There is a God’ in fact denied nothing and so asserted nothing either (since the meaning of an assertion is the negation of its denial). One great merit of Flew's challenge was that it crystallised a malaise felt by many into a hard, pointed question. As a challenge this question elicited two basic reactions.
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References
page 69 note 1 Flew, Antony, ‘Theology and Falsification’, New Essays in Philosophical Theology (London. S.C.M., 1955), p. 99.Google Scholar
page 69 note 2 That religious utterances indicate a blik was contended by Hare, R. M. in his contribution to ‘Theology and Falsification’, New Essays in Philosophical Theology (London. S.C.M., 1955), pp.99–103.Google ScholarThat they indicate an intention to subscribe to a way of life was contended by Braithwaite, R. B. in An Empiricist's View of the Nature of Religious Belief (Cambridge, England, and New York. Cambridge University Press, 1955).Google ScholarFor discussions of the reactions to Flew's challenge see Blackstone, W., The Problem of Religious Knowledge (Englewood Cliffs. Prentice-Hall, 1963), pp. 73–124;Google Scholarand Ferré, F., Language Logic and God (New York, Evanston, and London. Harper & Row, 1961), pp. 121–45.Google Scholar
page 69 note 3 The first was argued by Mitchell, B. in his contribution to ‘Theology and Falsification’, New Essays in Philosophical Theology (London. S.C.M., 1955), pp. 103–5.Google ScholarThe second was argued by Hick, John in ‘Theology and Verification’, Theology Today, XVII (1960), pp. 12–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 70 note 1 It was done by Mavrodes, George I., ‘Bliks, Proofs and Prayers’, Pacific Philosophy Forum, Vol. V, No. 2, (1966), pp. 49–54.Google Scholar
page 70 note 2 Cf. Clifford, Paul R., ‘The Factual Reference of Theological Assertions’, Religious Studies, Vol. III, No. I, (1967), p. 344Google Scholar; and Crombie, I. M., ‘Theology and Falsification’, New Essays in Philosophical Theology (London. S.C.M., 1955), p. 124.Google Scholar
page 70 note 3 Hick, John, Faith and Knowledge 2nd ed. (Ithaca. Cornell University Press, 1966), p. 167.Google Scholar
page 70 note 4 Cf. Neilson, Kai, ‘On Fixing the Reference Range of God’, Religious Studies, Vol. II, No. I, (1966), p. 16.Google Scholar
page 70 note 5 Cf. Wisdom, John, ‘The Logic of God’, Paradox and Discovery (Oxford. Blackwell. 1965), p. 9.Google Scholar
page 71 note 1 Flew, , op. cit., p. 98 n.Google Scholar
page 72 note 1 Flew, , op. cit., p. 98.Google Scholar
page 73 note 1 Flew, , op. cit., p. 98.Google Scholar
page 74 note 1 This is not to say that everyone who believes in God would fill out what his belief denied in the same way. Not everyone would of course. But it is not essential that they should. All that is essential is that ‘There is a God’ have a denial that is filled out some way. It should come as news to no one that men think of God in different ways, or, if you like, mean different things by ‘God’.
page 76 note 1 See, for instance, Kierkegaard, Soren, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, tr. Swenson, D. F. and Lowrie, W. (Princeton. Princeton University Press, 1944), Bk. II, Pt. II, Ch. IIGoogle Scholar; Buber, Martin, ‘Religion and Philosophy’ Eclipse of God (New York. Harper & Row, 1952), pp. 32–3;Google ScholarMalcolm, Norman, ‘Is it a Religious Belief that ‘God Exists’?’ Faith and the Philosophers ed. Hick, John (New York. St. Martin's Press, 1964), pp. 106–10Google Scholar