Religious Claims Over the last several decades, phi

Verifiability and Reasonableness of Religious Claims

Many contemporary philosophers agree that neither empirical investigation nor deductive reasoning can, with certainty, verify or disprove religious claims such as the claim that God exists (see: Ayer, 1956; Dewey, 1966). In other words, in so far as a religious claim---such as "God exists"---is intended to be making an empirical claim, most philosophers would not expect the truth of this claim to be demonstrated by pure logical reasoning or by scientific methods. The inadequacy of inductive evidence to show that religious claims are true or false has raised serious questions for the rationality of believing that God exists.

Some philosophers--both theistic and atheistic--have concluded that the inadequacy of inductive evidence to show religious claims to be true or false (sometime referred to as the noncognitive nature of religious claims) must necessarily leads to the conclusion that belief in God is not rational and said claims are, therefore, not meaningful. Other philosophers, however, have attempted to maintain the rationality of religious claims, despite the inability of inducti

. . .
, such an understanding is one that humans can grasp but cannot express. In other words, the problem is not with the claim persay, it is with the adequacy of the semantic structure of human language to express claims, a component of which is the mystical experiential. Another defense of the meaningfulness of religious claims that rests on both language and experience is the notion offered by Grennan (1976) who states that non-believers do not disagree with believers because of language differences but rather because non-believers take religious utterances as being truth claims, which they are not. Instead, such utterances are said to be vehicles for conveying feelings that cannot themselves be expressed. Thus, for him, the understanding of religious utterances is not, in principle, confined to believers. In response to the charge that religious language, being unverifiable, is meaningless, Arrington (1974) has stated that religious claims have meaning so long as it is understand that such claims are faith-based and not empirically based. Specifically, he argues that the challenge of the verificationist is one which can be met by the religious believer, i.e., That god-talk can be verified; and that, moreover, the precise man
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Kierkegaard Wittgenstein, Religious Claims, Van Buren, God Faith, According Arrington, Thomas Sullivan, According Hepburn, religious claims, , God God, Religious Studies, meaningfulness religious, meaningfulness religious claims, true false, religious claims despite, claims despite, religious claims arguments, claims true, god rational, noncognitive nature, inductive evidence, claims true false, religious utterances, claims arguments, evidence religious claims,
Approximate Word count = 1813
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)