A .J.

Ayer and the Verification of Religious

Dsicourse
While it seems odd to find a philosophy text as core reading for a theology
module, even if the module in question is “Essentials of Philosophy of Religion”,
A. J. Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic raises important issues about the
significance and meaning of theological language. This essay will accordingly
concentrate on the implications of Ayer's theory of verification for theological
discourse, and will conclude that while his argument may have served a useful
service in sharpening the articulation of theological statements, it is ultimately
flawed by a defective understanding of the nature of theological language and a
suspect epistemology.

Ayer's work draws on the tenets of the “Vienna Circle” of philosophy, which
held that statements were meaningful only if they could be proved or “verified”.
Insofar as religious statements were metaphysical in character and could not be
reduced to pictorial representation of scientific facts, they were meaningless
(Clack, 2008: p. 100-101; see also McGrath, 2007: p. 178). In line with this, Ayer
states baldly that “it cannot be significantly asserted that there is a non-empirical
world of values” (Ayer, 2001: p. 10), while no statement purporting to refer to a
reality transcending sense-experience “can possibly have any literal significance”
(Ayer: p. 14). Such statements can have significance only if they are “translated
into statements of empirical fact” (Ayer: p. 106): failing this, “they are not in the
literal sense significant, but are simply expressions of emotion” (Ayer: p. 104).

There are obvious implications here for religious faith, which Ayer is not slow
to draw. He holds that it cannot be affirmed “that men have immortal souls, or that
there is a transcendent God” (Ayer: p. 10) and maintains that, since “God exists”
is a metaphysical utterance it “cannot be either true or false....no sentence which
purports to describe the nature of a transcendent god can possess any literal
significance” (Ayer: p. 120). As far as he is concerned, “all utterances about the
nature of God are nonsensical” (Ayer: p. 121).

It is important to define the nature of Ayer's challenge to religious faith. He can

appear to be a champion of atheism; in his foreword to the edition of Ayes I use
here, Ben Rogers suggests that if his arguments were accepted, “religion would
wither away” (Ayer: p. xvi). Strictly speaking, however, Ayer does not issue a
verdict on the question of God's existence; it is more accurate to say that he
refuses to admit the question at all, ruling that it is simply one which philosophy
cannot discuss. While Ayer is adamant that the theist's assertions cannot possibly
be valid, he also holds that they cannot be invalidated (Ayer: p. 121).

Rogers may nevertheless be right that religion would wither away if Ayer's
arguments are accepted. If religious truth, like other metaphysical and value-laden
discourses such as ethics, cannot be expressed in language, then for Ayer it
follows that they cannot be truly apprehended. Insofar as the sentences used to
“express such 'truths' are not literally significant” (Ayer: p. 123) then they do not
ultimately have any bearing on our lives and do not “exist”.
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 The issue is further complicated by a suspicion that a hidden agenda may lie
behind Ayer’s argument. A comparison with the views of the early Wittgenstein,
whom Ayer regards as a predecessor (Ayer: p. 9) is illuminating in this respect.
Although Wittgenstein's early understanding of language as “pictorial” led him to
conclude that statements which were non-scientific and could not be reduced to “a
pictorial representation of a fact” were without meaning (Clack: p. 101), he also
insists that the factual is not all that should concern us. For Wittgenstein, there is
a mystical dimension beyond language and the facts of the world which is not
insignificant or worthless, even it cannot be spoken of (Clack: p. 120). Indeed, as
Engelmann suggests, “Wittgenstein passionately believes that all that really
matters in life is precisely what, in his view, we must be silent about” (Clack: p.
120).

In other words, whereas Ayer seems to suggest that religious belief is

worthless because its affirmations are “non-sense”, Wittgenstein seems to hint that
our attempts at stating religious truth are nonsensical because our understanding
and language are unequal to the task. Language, on Wittgenstein's view, can deal
only with the “humdrum” and cannot express “what is higher” (Clack: p. 121). On
this showing, Ayer’s position amounts to an admission that philosophy, being only
“a department of logic” is incompetent to deal with ultimate questions (Ayer: p.
44) or even with debates of opinion and value. This represents a significant
impoverishment of the scope of philosophy’s traditional concerns, and it is hardly
surprising that, as Inwagen points out, the principles of empirical verification
principles are of no help in dealing with the live issues of politics or even
philosophy itself (Stump & Murray, 1999: p. 273ff), still less in deciding the
practical applications of scientific insights, because in all these areas, no less than
with religion, “discussion can go on forever. New experiments can always be done
to test Quantum theory, new interpretations can be proposed for old experiments,
forever” (Swinburne, 2010: p. 122)

It is also questionable if Ayer properly understands the nature of theological

language. Perhaps because of his distaste for metaphysics, Ayer seems to be
unaware that there is a long tradition of debate and reflection within theology on
the character of its’ own discourse. Classical theology entirely agrees that its
statements are not literal. Rather, working on the premise that there is a
fundamental analogia entis between the Creator and creation such that natural
entities can provide analogies for understanding God, Christian theology holds
that its statements are analogical in nature (McGrath: p. 194). This basic position,
as first formulated by Aquinas, is a constant in theology’s self-understanding and
underlies modern hypotheses, such as those of Tillich, who maintained that
“religious faith….can express itself only in symbolic language” (Hick, 1990: p.
86) or McFague, who proposes that theological language is metaphorical
(McGrath: p. 197).

Ayer, of course, would regard such discourse as meaningless, precisely because

it is not literal. Behind this lies a very definite epistemology. Like the Vienna
Circle, Ayer placed “a particularly high premium on the methods and norms of the
natural sciences (which were seen as the most empirical of the human
disciplines)…” (McGrath: p. 178). For Ayer it is axiomatic that “the truth
regarding any aspect….of reality is to be found by the application of scientific
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methods to the relevant phenomenon” (Hick, 1990: p. 93). Behind Ayer’s version
of the verification principle – that a statement is significant only if its proponent
can clearly specify what observations would confirm or invalidate it (Ayer: p. 16)
- lies the related premise, derived from Descartes “that knowledge consists in the
possession of clear and distinct ideas, and is increased by chains of such ideas…in
the form of demonstrative proofs” (Hick, 1988: p. 77).

Several fundamental issues must be addressed at this point. For a start, while
such a model of knowledge and learning may rule in the academy, in ordinary life
we seem to arrive at most of our certainties not by the acquisition of Cartesian
concepts and chains of reasoning, but by “appreciating the drift of a miscellaneous
mass of evidence” (Hick, 1988: p. 81). It follows that “we can know without
being able to prove” (Hick, 1988: p. 80) because much of our knowledge derives
from “the acquired capacity to respond to indefinable indications in a given field
and to marshal a mass of apparently unrelated evidences and divine their trend”
(Hick, 1988: p. 91). We know more than we can explain, and verification thus
becomes problematic.

Furthermore, it is doubtful whether serious scientific discourse has ever taken

the shape of stark statements about “facts”. On the contrary, science typically
proceeds through the formulation of tentative hypotheses which are modified or
qualified by subsequent observation (McGrath: p. 179). Also, as illustrated by the
possible “discovery” of the Higgs boson (see McGrath, “The particle of faith”,
2011), scientific “fact” cannot always be verified by direct observation: for
modern science “despite difficulties in representing or detecting them,
‘theoretical’ or ‘unobservable entities’ may be held to genuinely exist….
difficulties in depiction cannot be taken as an indication that something does not
exist” (McGrath, 2007: p. 180).

Recent trends in scientific epistemology also reflect unfavourably on Ayer’s

empiricism. Rather than seeing the scientific enterprise as a neutral investigation
of an objective world by a detached observer, modern science recognises that the
observer is inextricably involved in the reality under investigation, and his very
presence creates dynamics which may influence the processes being observed.

Such models of knowledge have much in common with Aquinas, who

understood “the encounter between subject and object not as a confrontation but
as a collaboration in which the mind actively participates in reality” (Eagleton,
2009: p. 78). For Aquinas the subject is a corporeal self and thus “an active
project of engagement with the world, rather than a detached, contemplative
window onto it” (Eagleton: p. 79). Contemporary science and classical theology,
far from clashing, increasingly agree that “knowledge is gleaned through active
engagement” (Eagleton: p. 121). The emerging model of rationality and
knowledge is less that of the neutral observation of a passive object by a detached
subject, and more that of the dynamic interplay of personal subjects (Eagleton: p.
128) - and to know others, as William James proposed, we must “make a venture
of faith and meet them halfway” (Hick, 1988: p. 41).

Innovative though Ayer’s views may have been when first published, they now
look decidedly dated. Regardless of whether they are still current among
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philosophers or not, they certainly hold no fears for Christian theologians. Ayer’s
rigour may have had a healthy effect on theological discourse by discouraging
facile and quick appeals to transcendent mystery, but his argument rests on a
questionable epistemology and a misapprehension regarding the nature of
Christian language and truth-claims.

Bibliography

Ayer, A. J. (2001), Language, Truth and Logic (Penguin: London)

Clack, Beverley & Brian (2008), The Philosophy of Religion (Polity Press:
Cambridge)

Eagelton, T. (2009), Reason, Faith and Revolution (Yale University Press: New
Haven).

Hick, J. (1988), Faith and Knowledge (McMillan Press: Basingstoke & London).

(1990), Philosophy of Religion (Prentice-Hall: Englewood Cliffs, N.J.).

McGrath, A. (2007), Christian Theology: An Introduction (Blackwell: Oxford)

(2011) “Higgs boson: the particle of faith” in The Telegraph, 14th

December 2011. Also online at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/8956938/Higgs-boson-the-particle-of
faith.html (accessed 14.12.2011)

Stump, E. & Murray, M.J. (1999), Philosophy of Religion: The Big Questions
(Blackwell: Oxford)

Swinburne, R. (2010), Is There a God? (Oxford University Press: Oxford)