Wittgensteinian Account of Religious Belief - forthcoming in European Journal of Philosophy: pre-publ. draft.
Wittgenstein's
views on religious belief are cryptic. We have comparatively few of his
comments on religion, and most of what we do have were neither recorded by
Wittgenstein himself nor intended by him for publication. Here I aim to assess
some of the arguments that have been attributed to Wittgenstein in support of a
view about religious belief that I call No
Contradiction:
No
Contradiction. When atheists deny the beliefs they take to be expressed
by such sentences as
(a) 'God exists'
(b) 'God created the world'
(c) 'Jesus rose from the dead'
(d) 'We will face a Judgement Day'
they
fail to contradict the religious
beliefs such sentences are used to express.
Immunity.
Even if an atheist were successfully to refute the belief they took such a
sentence to express (by providing empirical evidence to the contrary, say),
they would fail thereby to refute the religious
belief expressed.
There
are passages in which Wittgenstein does appear to commit himself to something
like No Contradiction. Consider:
If
you ask me whether or not I believe in a Judgement Day, in the sense in which
religious people have belief in it, I wouldn't say: 'No. I don't believe there
will be such a thing.' It would seem to me utterly crazy to say this.
And then I give the explanation: 'I don't
believe in ...', but then the religious person never believes what I describe.
I can't say. I can't contradict that person. Lectures and Conversations p55
Simon Glendinning interprets
this and the surrounding text as articulating a criticism of what Glendinning calls
the 'modern atheist'. According to Glendinning's Wittgenstein,
the
crucial feature of the one who takes an atheist position, the one, for example,
who feels obliged on occasion to insist that there will be no Judgement Day, is
that he or she does so because (by his or her lights) another person
believes the opposite, believes, in this case, that there will be a
Judgement Day. (2013, 42)
The
religious believer’s beliefs are of a very distinctive sort, quite different to
typical scientific beliefs, but the modern atheist’s assertion of double
belief—that 'there won’t be a Judgment Day, but another person says there will'—supposes
that there are two beliefs in view here that can be traded in the marketplace
of reason; just as if one were to assert that 'there won’t be an eclipse
tomorrow, but another person says there will.' In the latter case the two
market sellers may well contradict each other, 'they mean the same.' (2013, 50)
But
why don't the religious believer and the atheist 'mean the same' by 'There will
be a Judgement Day'? Why is the atheist who says 'There won't be a Judgement
day, but another person says there will' mistaken in supposing they contradict
what the religious person believes? I examine Glendinning's explanation at the
end of this paper. In the meantime, let's establish an overview of some of the
explanations on offer.
While
commentators disagree about precisely what Wittgenstein's views on religious
belief are, there is a broad consensus on at least this much: that
Wittgenstein's aim is to clarify the nature of religious belief by clarifying
the way in which expressions of such belief are used and the role they play in
the lives of the faithful. What Wittgenstein supposes such an investigation
reveals, it is generally agreed, is that the way in which the religious use such
sentences as (a), (b), (c), and (d) is very different to the way in which we
typically use the superficially similar sentences 'Electrons exist', 'Bevin
created the National Health Service', 'John rose from his bed', and 'We will
come before a judge and jury'. It is this difference in use that some then
suppose delivers No Contradiction. When an atheist - certainly one of
Glendinning's 'modern' variety - targets the religious beliefs expressed by
such sentences as (a) to (d), they betray a misunderstanding. They suppose
these sentences are indeed used by the religious to make claims akin to those
made using 'Electrons exist', 'Bevin
created the NHS', etc. But the religious person uses sentences (a) to (d) very
differently, and so with a quite different meaning[ii].
So when the atheist says e.g. 'God does not
exist', 'It's false that God created
the world', 'Jesus did not rise from
the dead', and 'There won't be a
Judgement Day', they fail to contradict the beliefs expressed by the religious using
(a) to (d). Moreover, some would add that what such atheists attempt to refute
when they target the religious belief expressed by (a) to (d) is not what the
religious actually believe.
What
is controversial among those Wittgensteinians who sign up to No Contradiction is
precisely how such religious sentences
are used, and precisely why this difference in use should have No
Contradiction, and perhaps also Immunity, as a consequence. Let's look at the
three main views on offer: non-cognitivist, 'juicer', and atheist-minus (as I
shall call them).
Non-cognitivist views
One
of the most obvious ways of arguing for No Contradiction and Immunity is
offered by the non-cognitivist. That Wittgenstein offers a non-cognitivist
account of religious language has been held by a number of philosophers,
including Hans-Johann Glock, who supposes Wittgenstein's view involves the
thought that 'religious statements do not describe any kind of reality,
empirical or transcendent, and do not make any knowledge claims' (1996, s.v.
'religion'). If no claim is made by the religious using sentences (a) to (d)
then there is none for the atheist to contradict or refute. Here are three examples
of non-cognitivist accounts of religious language use.
1. Expressivist accounts
What
I shall call expressivist accounts
offer a view of religious discourse akin to that offered by emotivism for
ethical discourse, on which 'Stealing money is wrong', say, 'has no factual
meaning' and merely 'expresses certain sentiments' (A.J. Ayer, 2001, 107). The
faithful who say 'God exists' and 'Jesus rose from the dead' should similarly be
understood, not as putting forward claims that might then be contradicted or
refuted by the atheist, but as expressing certain emotions and/or attitudes
- including certain attitudes towards life, such as an intense form of
reverence, and/or awe, and/or optimism. If no claim is made by the religious
believer, then there is none for the atheist to contradict or refute.
2. 'System of reference' account
Wittgenstein
says at Philosophical Investigations
that:
[t]here
is one thing of which we can say neither that it is one metre long, nor that it
is not one metre long, and that is the standard metre bar in Paris. But this is, of course, not to ascribe any
extraordinary property to it but only to mark its peculiar role in the
language-game of measuring with a metre-rule'. (2009, (I) §50)
On
Wittgenstein's view, while the sentences 'The dining table is one metre long'
and 'The standard metre bar is one metre long' are superficially similar, their
use is very different. The former is typically used to make a claim, a claim
that might be contradicted, or empirically confirmed or disconfirmed. However,
the latter sentence is used, not to make a claim, but to determine what is meant by 'one metre'. What the latter
expresses is, as it were, 'placed in the archives', forming part of the
grammatical framework within which it then becomes possible to describe other objects
as being, or failing to be, one metre long.
Wittgenstein
suggests something similar regarding 'Here is a hand'. 'Here is a hand' can be
used to make a claim. For example, I might say 'Here is a hand' on an
archaeological dig, while excavating some small bones buried in the soil. Under
such circumstances, it makes sense to ask how I know and what my evidence is,
and there is the possibility that my claim might be refuted. However, 'Here is
a hand', can also be used to provide an ostensive definition - to explain what
the word 'hand' means - when said in broad daylight in front of a class
learning English, say. Wittgenstein suggests that, on this second,
meaning-determining use, no claim is made. Thus it makes no sense to ask for
supporting evidence, or to suppose that what is said might be, say, empirically
refuted.
The
skeptic about the external world attempts to submit what's expressed by such
sentences as 'Here is a hand', said while holding up ones hand in broad daylight
etc., to doubt. They treat what is expressed as a claim, a claim for which the
skeptic demands justification and, on finding it lacking, concludes we don't know. The Wittgensteinian solution
to this skeptical puzzle is to recognise that, despite the obvious similarity
between 'Here is a hand' as used on an archaeological dig and as used to
explain meaning (it is the very same sentence that is in play), the use is very
different. When used to explain meaning, no claim is made, and thus demands for
justification make no sense.
Indeed,
the skeptic's doubt is self-defeating. For in trying to doubt whether this is a hand under such circumstances,
the skeptic leave the 'archives' - the store of meaning-constituting uses of
such utterances - empty:
If
I wanted to doubt whether this was my hand, how could I avoid doubting whether the
word 'hand' had any meaning (1975, §383)
The
situation is akin to trying to continue to describe objects as being 'one metre
long' when nothing - not even the standard metre bar - has been used to determine
what 'one metre' means.
But
then what if sentences such as 'God exists' are similarly used by the
religious, not to make claims that might be known or not known, but in
something like this meaning- or reference-fixing way? Call such non-cognitivist
accounts of how religious language is used meaning-fixing
accounts.
Does
Wittgenstein offer a meaning-fixing account? Wittgenstein does at least suggest
that religious belief involves something like a 'passionate commitment to a
system of reference' (1998, 64). And if 'God exists' etc. were used in
something like the way Wittgenstein supposes the sentence 'The standard metre
bar is one metre long' is used, then no claim would be made by the religious
person who says 'God exists'. And so, again, the atheist would be left with
nothing to contradict or refute.
3. Lash's promissory account
Theologian
Nicholas Lash offers a different Wittgenstein-inspired account of religious
language use. Lash writes:
If
someone is asked: 'Do you believe in God?' and replies 'I do', they may be
saying one of two quite different things, because the English expression 'I
believe in God' is systematically ambiguous. On the one hand, it may be the
expression of an opinion; the opinion that God exists. On the other hand, as
used in the Creed, in a public act of worship, it promises that life, and love,
and all one’s actions are henceforth set steadfastly on the mystery of God, and
hence that we are thereby pledged to work towards that comprehensive healing of
the world by which all things are brought into their peace and harmony in God.
'Nicholas Lash, do you take Janet Chalmers to be your lawful wedded wife?' 'I
do.' 'Janet Chalmers, do you believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of
heaven and earth?' 'I do'. The grammar of these two declarations is the same.
(2008, 34)
So there are, Lash says, two kinds of
theist: those whom, in response to the question 'Do you believe in God?' use 'I
do' to express agreement with an opinion,
and those who use 'I do' to enter into a promise.
There are, correspondingly, two kinds of atheism: the atheism that rejects the
opinion that God exists, and the atheism that involves a refusal to enter into
any such promise. According to Lash, atheists like Richard Dawkins (and no
doubt Hitchens and Dennett) are attacking a crude form of theism on which
belief in God amounts to belief in the truth of a certain opinion. Lash says,
the
atheism which is the contradictory of the opinion that God exists is both
widespread and intellectually uninteresting. (2008, 34)
On
Lash's view, when religious folk like himself say 'I do' in response to the
question 'Do you believe in God', they use it, not to assent to the truth of
some claim, but to make a commitment. But then, as no opinion is offered, that
again leaves atheists like Dawkins et al
with nothing to contradict or indeed refute.
Lash,
incidentally, also goes on to argue that the latter sort of atheism is impossible, as ‘effective refusal to
have anything to do with God can only mean self-destruction, annihilation,
return to the nihil from which all
things came’ (2008, 35) Lash’s argument for the impossibility of this kind of
atheism contains two obvious flaws, (i) Lash here just assumes that there is a
God from which all things came, and (ii) in any case Lash muddles up two senses
of ‘refusal to have anything to do with’. I can refuse to have anything to with
my mother in the sense that I can ignore her, etc. but of course I still have something to do with her, and indeed
necessarily so: it remains true that if she had not existed, then neither would
I. Similarly, atheists might 'refuse to have anything to do with God' even if
there is, as Lash here just assumes, a God on which their existence depends.
Some difficulties with the above
accounts
All
three of the above accounts of how religious language function are
non-cognitivist in that all deny that religious belief involves assent to some
sort of claim (such as the claim or, as Lash puts it, 'opinion' the atheist
takes 'God exists' to express). All three accounts have also been associated
with Wittgenstein, though it's unclear to me whether Wittgenstein would be
willing to endorse any sort of non-cognitivist account, let alone one of these
specific suggestions.
Non-cognitivist
views face a range of objections, including:
1.
While what the atheist denies may not be asserted by the religious, it is at
least presupposed
The second and third of the above
non-cognitive accounts face the objection that, while the religious person might
not use religious utterances in order to make claims, nevertheless, on the
proposed accounts, the truth of certain claims contradicted by the atheist would
appear to be presupposed.
Consider, first, Lash's promissory
account of how 'I do' functions in response to the question 'Do you believe in
God?' On the promissory account, 'I do' is not used to assent to the truth of a
claim or opinion. Still, when we issue a promise, we issue it to someone – to something like a person.
You can’t make a promise to a brick or a daffodil. Were you to try, you would
be guilty of anthropomorphizing – of mistakenly supposing that the brick or
daffodil is something like a person. But then if 'I do', said in response to
'Do you believe in God?', really is used to issue a promise, that raises the question:
to whom is this promise made?
Presumably, Lash is not merely making a
promise to either himself or, say, other Christians (if he were, then he, or
they, might release him from that promise whenever wished, but presumably that
is not within their power). It appears that, if Lash is issuing a promise, the
person to whom Lash is issuing that promise God.
But then, even if Lash does use 'I do' to do something other than assent to the
opinion that there exists a person-like God, it seems Lash nevertheless presupposes
there exists a person-like God to whom such a promise might be made. But that
there exists such a person-like God is precisely the claim that atheists like
Dawkins, Dennett, and Hitchens contradict, and might even succeed in refuting.
The 'system of reference' account faces
the same sort of objection: that truth of what the atheist denies, if not
asserted, is at least presupposed. Let's return for a moment to our
Wittgensteinian response to the skeptic. The Wittgensteinian insists that 'This
is a hand', said while holding up one's hand in broad daylight in order to
explain the meaning of 'hand', is used to give a definition, not make a claim.
Perhaps so, the skeptic may reply, but the truth of an empirical claim is presupposed.
For such a definition takes for granted the fact that one actually is holding
up a hand by reference to which the word 'hand' might then be defined. The
intended definition will succeed only if that presupposition is correct. But
that the presupposition is correct is
precisely what the skeptic throws into doubt. Similarly, while 'The
standard metre bar is one metre long' may not be used to 'say' anything, its
use to define what's meant by 'one metre' does at least presuppose something:
the existence of a metre bar possessing a length. Without that bar, the
reference-determining use of the sentence cannot succeed.
But then, also similarly, the
suggestion that religious beliefs involve a passionate commitment to system of
reference - a system explained by means of such propositions as 'God exists',
God created the world', and so on - would appear if not to assert then at least
to presuppose what the atheist denies: the existence of a divine reality. Just
this objection is raised by John Cottingham:
the
adoption of such a system does nevertheless presuppose
certain truths - for example, the actual reality of the standard posited by the
system (the paradigm 'meter bar'[...]). In the same way, a religious 'system of
reference' can be said to have cognitive implications (by presupposing that
supreme creative reality without which the system would make no sense)...
(2009, 221)
At
the very least, it appears more work needs to be done by this brand of
non-cognitivist to explain why religious
'systems of reference' neither assert nor
presuppose what the atheist denies: the existence of a divine reality.
2. Surely logic applies to religious
beliefs, and so they do remain potentially refutable by the atheist
John
Hyman points out that
it
certainly is not possible to insulate religion entirely from rational
criticism: 'If Christ be not risen, our faith is vain' implies 'Either Christ
is risen or our faith is vain' for exactly the same reason as 'If the weather
is not fine, our picnic is ruined' implies 'Either the weather is fine or our
picnic is ruined'. (2010, 185)
Hyman
is surely correct that even religious beliefs are amenable to, and thus 'not
invulnerable to logic' (2010, 185). But this opens up the possibility that such
beliefs might then be shown to be, say, logically inconsistent, which is indeed
the aim of some atheist arguments (those aiming to show that the concept of God
involves a logical contradiction, for example).
In
response, a Wittgensteinian may point out, correctly, that Immunity does not
rule out the possibility of religious beliefs being refuted by the atheist period, it merely rules out refutation
of religious beliefs by way of refutation of
what the atheist takes such religious sentences to express. However, there
remains the concern that non-cognitivist accounts struggle to accommodate the
fact that logic can be applied to religious belief at all, e.g. if expressions
of religious belief assert nothing, how are they able logically to contradict
each other?[iii]
3. The non-cognitivist account struggles
to make sense of the character of religious doubt
The
faithful often entertain doubts about the existence of God, the resurrection of
Jesus, and so on. How are such doubts to be accommodated on a non-cognitivist account?
If no claim is made by 'God exists' and 'Jesus rose from the dead', then no
claim is made about which one might then entertain a doubt.
In
response, it may be said that religious doubts aren't doubts about the truth of
claims or opinions. Consider the metric system of measurement. On
Wittgenstein's view, 'The standard metre bar is one metre long' is used, not to
make a claim, but to fix what is meant by 'one metre'. If no claim is made,
then there is none to doubt. And yet one might still have doubts about, say,
whether the metric system is a good system to adopt. After all, not all systems
of measurement are useful or appropriate (a system using a standard measure
made out of a material that dramatically and randomly expands and contracts
would be quite useless for our usual purposes, for example). But then why can't
a non-cognitivist account of religious language accommodate religious doubt in
the same way? If no religious claims are made, then there are none to doubt,
but I might still doubt whether the Christian 'system of reference' is a useful
or appropriate framework for me to adopt. Indeed, I might discover good reasons
not to adopt it.
An
obvious difficulty with the above reply (and the associated account of how even
the non-cognitivist might accommodate the thought that there could be good reasons to accept or reject
particular religious systems of belief) is that it does not appear to be true
to actual practice. When the religious profess doubts, they don't merely
profess doubts about whether engaging in their particular religious practice is
a good idea. They typically profess doubts about whether certain core doctrines
are true.
Of
course there are differences between doubts about the existence of God and
doubts about, say, the existence of electrons. The religious doubt is usually
far more momentous, for example. Still, expressions of religious doubt do appear
to bear many of the grammatical hallmarks of doubt about truth claims. For
example, religious doubts, and subsequent loss of belief, are often motivated
by an application of logic and reason - not
primarily to the question of whether religious belief is useful, mature,
appropriate, etc. - but rather to the question of whether various core
doctrines are true. Arguments are constructed, evidence marshalled, and defences
run regarding the truth of those core
doctrines. When faith is lost, it is lost, more often than not, because
this intellectual activity, focussed on defending the truth of those doctrinal
claims, is deemed to have failed.[iv]
4. The non-cognitivist account is not
true to ordinary religious linguistic practice
A
fourth objection is that if the non-cognitivist account of religious language
did succeed in making religious belief something the atheist can neither
contradict nor straightforwardly refute, it
fails accurately to capture how religious language is actually used by the vast
majority of believers.
Wittgenstein
encourages us not to assume how language is used, but to look and see - see
e.g. (2009 (I) §66)
'Don't think, but look!' He also encourages us to focus on ordinary linguistic
practice. But ordinary religious linguistic practice does not appear to be what
the non-cognitivist claims. A majority of religious people do indeed appear to
use religious language in much the way the atheist supposes: to put forward
various metaphysical, historical, and other truth claims.
In
the US, for example, polls[v]
consistently indicate that around 130 million citizens believe the Earth was
created by God sometime in the last ten thousand years (Bishop Ussher famously
dated creation at 4004BC, and many Christians think this is about right). Most
of these Christians also believe science supports this view at least as well as
it supports the Old Earth/Evolutionary alternative. Even those Christians who
accept that the universe is billions of years old nevertheless often suggest
that there is empirical evidence to support belief in an intelligent creator
and thus God (the fine-tuned character of the universe, for example). A
majority of Christians also offer intellectual responses to the evidential
problem of evil, appealing to theodicies, or at least God's mysterious reasons,
in an attempt to defuse what they acknowledge is a problem: that the depth of
evil we observe does at least appear to provide good evidence against the
existence of omnipotent, omniscient, and supremely benevolent creator. On the
non-cognitivist view, it's hard to see how we are to make sense of there even
being a problem (for if no claim is
made, then there is none for there to be evidence against). In short, more
often than not, religious practice appears to exhibit very many of the markers
of one in which claims are indeed put forward, developed, evidentially
supported, contradicted, doubted, defended, abandoned, and so on. Christian
discussion of the Resurrection provides a particularly good example. Christians
often argue for the truth of the Resurrection, typically using a 'minimal
facts' or best-explanation approach based on supposedly reliable historical
reports of an empty tomb, the post-mortem appearance of Jesus, and so on.[vi]
Those Christians who believe the Resurrection is at least fairly well supported
by Biblical and other historical sources (such as Josephus and Tacitus), or
that fine-tuning provides evidence for the existence of a creator God, and so
on, are not a small minority among the faithful but mainstream believers. They
include a good many of the world's most well-respected Christian philosophers
and theologians. These Christians do take themselves to be committed to the
truth of various claims - including the historical claim that Jesus rose from
the dead. Yet Wittgenstein suggests that
The
historical accounts in the Gospels might, historically speaking, be
demonstrably false and yet belief would lose nothing by this... (1998, 32)
Both
what Wittgenstein says here, and non-cognitivism, appear to be at odds with
actual religious practice. For what percentage of Christians is it irrelevant
to their belief whether or not the claim the atheist supposes is made by 'Jesus
rose from the dead' - that is to say, an historical and potentially empirically
refutable, claim - is actually true? For a very small percentage, surely.
In
response, it might be said that my observations are far from 'grammatical'.
They reveal only that, when Christians say 'Jesus rose from the grave', they intend to make an historical claim for
which many suppose they can also provide at least some evidence. But that does
not establish that's what they're actually
doing. Perhaps these Christians are confused. Perhaps an examination of their
actual linguistic practice reveals that, though they might not realize it, they
are using 'Jesus rose from the dead' in just the way non-cognitivists suppose.
But
why should we accept that, contrary to what most of them suppose, Christians
don't use 'Jesus rose from the dead' to make an historical claim? Merely
pointing to the undeniable fact that the Christian often has an enormous
emotional investment in, and won't let anything count against, what they
express using that sentence, doesn't establish that they aren't using the
sentence to make an historical claim. So what does? In the absence of any
reason for supposing they're not making an historical claim, the case for
supposing that they are looks very strong.
An alternative response would be to suggest that, rather than giving
an account of how most mainstream religious folk actually use religious
language, Wittgenstein intends only to outline the kind of religious faith he himself considers respectable.
Perhaps that is the case. However, the kind of non-cognitivism outlined above
is, as I say, not an option for most religious believers, and moreover what it
describes is arguably not a form religious belief at all, given there's nothing
that the believer believes to be true
(indeed, Schonbaumsfeld makes the point below that, on purely expressivist
accounts, religious faith seems to boil down to nothing more than 'some bizarre
sort of rapture' (207, 186)).
An alternative: the juicer view
So
non-cognitivist accounts do not appear accurately to capture how religious
language is used. But perhaps that is not the sort of account Wittgenstein is
offering. A number of commentators suggest Wittgenstein supposes religious
belief does involve belief that certain creedal and other claims are true.
However, on this other interpretation, the way in which the religious person
uses such sentences as 'God exists' and 'Jesus rose from the dead' involves a
rich practical and emotional dimension that is missing from the use to which
the superficially similar sentences 'Electrons exist' and 'John rose from his
bed' are put. Hence what the religious person means by the former utterance is
largely or entirely lost on the atheist who understands the former sentences as
expressing beliefs akin to those expressed by the latter.
Severin
Schroeder takes the view that Wittgenstein does not deny religious belief
involves signing up to truth claims. Schroeder says:
Contrary
to [a] widespread view, Wittgenstein did not propound a purely expressivist
construal of credal statements. Wittgenstein stresses the importance of commitment,
the practical dimension of religious faith, without denying that it is, or
involves, also believing certain things to be true. (2007, 445)
John
Cottingham and Stephen Mulhall concur.[vii] True,
Wittgenstein does say that religious belief 'can only be something like a
passionate commitment to a system of reference', but as Cottingham notes:
[i]n
saying that religious belief 'can only be
a passionate commitment', he may simply be underlining the inescapability of a passionate, volitional element; he need not be
saying that what is involved in the belief is merely the commitment. (2009, 216)
Cottingham
provides the following helpful 'fruit juicer' analogy to explain the mistake he
thinks is made by many atheist analytic philosophers when it comes to assessing
religious belief.
Our
language games are interwoven with a web of non-linguistic activities, and
cannot be understood apart from the context that gives them life. ... analytic
philosophers are often prone to use the 'fruit juicer' method when approaching
modes of thought of which they are skeptical: they require the clear liquid of
a few propositions to be extracted for examination in isolation from what they
take to be the irrelevant pulpy mush of context. Yet to demand an answer to the
Yes/No question: Do you or do you not believe that P?' where P stands for a
statement or series of statements in one of the Creeds, or some other doctrinal
summary, often tells us surprisingly little about how a religious worldview
informs someone's outlook. A juice extractor does not, as might first be
supposed, give us the true essence of a fruit; what it often delivers is a not
very palatable drink plus a pulpy mess. Someone who has only tasted
strawberries via the output of the juicer, and has firmly decided 'this is not
for me', may turn out to have a radically impoverished grasp of what it is
about the fruit that makes the strawberry lover so enthusiastic. (2009, 209)
Like
Mulhall, Schroeder, and Cottingham, Genia Schonbaumsfeld also rejects
non-cognitivist readings of Wittgenstein or religious belief. On her view, Christianity
involves more than just accepting the truth of certain claims, but that
is
not to say that therefore the 'doctrine' - Christian claims - are irrelevant,
as this would be as absurd as thinking that because a song can be sung both
with and without expression, you could have the expression without the song. (2007,
186)
Schonbaumsfeld
holds that religious belief, stripped of all doctrine and reduced to mere
passion in the way the non-cognitivist suggests, becomes 'either unintelligable
or some bizarre sort of rapture' (2007, 188). Religious belief involves claims. Still, while Schonbaumsfeld supposes religious
belief involves acceptance of certain claims, she defends No Contradiction. She
denies (as she supposes Wittgenstein denies) that what the atheist attempts to
contradict is something the religious person believes. To illustrate why, Schonbaumsfeld
provides a further musical analogy:
someone
who 'does not possess a 'musical ear' will not be able to contradict the
judgement of a connoisseur, as such a person will not have sufficient musical
sensibility even really to understand what the connoisseur is saying. ...For
exactly analogous reasons Wittgenstein feels that he cannot contradict what the
religious person is saying, since he, as yet, lacks a real grasp of the
concepts involved. That is to say, just as there is a musical sensibility and
tone deafness (and to be sure, much in between), there is also religious
sensibility and blindness for religion, and neither musical nor religious
sensibility is acquired by learning a set of theses, doctrines, by heart -
about who the great composers were, about the laws of counterpoint or about
transubstantiation - since this would only bring about an 'external', that is,
purely intellectual, understanding of the subject comparable to having learnt a
code. But what is required here is the kind of understanding that makes the
musical work or the prayer (the religious words) live for me, not the kind that allows me to parrot a form of words.
(2007, 187)
Schonbaumsfeld
supposes that, for the religion-blind atheist, and others (including
Wittgenstein) who can only understand the 'external', purely-intellectually-graspable
meaning of a religious utterance, any attempt to contradict what the religious
person says using that form of words must inevitably fail.
Let's
call Schonbaumsfeld's argument that the religion-blind atheist cannot contradict
the religious person who says 'God exists', 'Jesus rose from the dead', 'We
will face a Judgement Day', etc. because they do not so much as understand what
the religious person means the Juicer Argument,
as it echoes Cottingham's juicer view that what the atheist (who approaches
such religious utterances in the spirit of dispassionate intellectual inquiry) grasps
is not the substance of what the religious person believes, but a thin, perhaps
unappetizing and misleading, extract shorn of its true religious significance.
Why the Juicer Argument fails
As
it stands, the Juicer Argument fails to establish No Contradiction. Suppose
John says 'Otto is a Kraut'. In so saying, John clearly communicates his belief
that Otto is German. However, John may also being doing much more than that. He
may, in using these words, intend also to express his contempt for Germans, and
thus Otto. The real point of John's utterance may be to belittle and insult. Now
suppose that Mary, who hears John's remark, suffers from a condition that makes
her, as it were, insult-blind.
Consequently, Mary fails properly to understand the full use of the word 'Kraut',
and in particular, the way John is using that expression on this particular occasion.
The rich and varied use of the kind of vocabulary to which 'Kraut' belongs is
entirely lost on Mary, who thinks 'Kraut' just means 'German'. And so, knowing that
Otto isn't German, she says to John: 'No, you're mistaken: Otto is not a Kraut - he's not German.' Has Mary
succeeded in contradicting John?
Surely
she has. True, Mary may have only a thin, insult-blind, 'juicer' understanding
of how John is using 'Otto is a Kraut', but that doesn't prevent her from
successfully contradicting, and indeed perhaps straightforwardly refuting, what
John said.
But
then similarly, even if atheists have only a thin, religious-meaning-blind, 'juicer'
understanding of what the religious person expresses using 'God exists', 'Jesus
rose from the dead', etc., it does
not follow that they cannot contradict the religious beliefs expressed using
such sentences. Nor does it follow that they cannot straightforwardly refute
what the religious person believes, by showing the belief they take the
religious sentence to express to be false.
Variant Juicer views
1. Juicer-plus-indifference
The
juicer argument, as it stands, fails. But what if we develop the juicer view of
religious language a little? Suppose we add the thought that, while what the religious
person says using 'God exists' and 'Jesus rose from the dead' does involve a
commitment to the truth of the claims our atheist takes such sentences to
express, it's a wishy-washy commitment at best. The truth of such claims is
something about which the religious person is largely indifferent. What really
matters to the religious person are those other
dimensions of meaning that are lost on the atheist. Thus the response of
religious person to atheistic refutations of such claims may be just to shrug
and insist that the real point is being missed.
An
analogy would be: John says 'Otto is a Kraut' intending to insult Otto. When
Mary points out that Otto isn't German, John shrugs and says, 'I don't care -
Otto is still an ass.' It turns out that Otto's German nationality is of
comparatively little importance to John. What really matters to John - what he's
really attempting to articulate when he says 'Otto is a Kraut' - is something
else (something that entirely passes the insult-blind Mary by): his contempt
for John irrespective of John's nationality.
Call
this view juicer-plus-indifference. There
are places where Wittgenstein makes comments that would at least be explained
by his holding this view. As noted above, he says:
The
historical accounts in the Gospels might, historically speaking, be
demonstrably false and yet belief would lose nothing by this ... (1998, 32)
However,
whether or not this is Wittgensteinian's view of how at least some religious
language is used, it faces two serious problems. First it fails to have the desired
consequence that the atheist cannot contradict or even straightforwardly refute
what the Christian claims. It merely has the consequence that what's
contradicted and perhaps refuted is of little importance to the religious
believer.
Second,
it's not true that most religious people are indifferent to the truth of such
claims as expressed by the atheist who says, for example, 'Jesus did not rise from the dead'. The truth of
that particular historical claim is, surely, integral to the faith of the
majority of Christians.
2.The strong juicer view
Rather
than supposing that the religious person uses 'God exists' and 'Jesus rose from
the dead' both to commit to the truth of the claims that our atheist
understands such sentences to make, and to do other things missed by the
atheist, we might instead understand the religious person as doing only those other things. It is only the further rich dimensions of
meaning lost on the atheist that are actually in play. Call this the strong juicer view. This view does
deliver No Contradiction: what the religious mean by such sentences does not
overlap at all with what the atheist denies.
But
doesn't the strong juicer view bring us back to the kind of non-cognitivism
that we earlier rejected: the view that no claim at all is made using such forms
of words; the view that they are merely used to emote, define, promise, etc.,
rather than assert?
Not
necessarily. Those dimensions of meaning and significance that pass our atheist
by need not be restricted to the emotive, definitional, promissory, etc. Consider,
by way of illustration, metaphorical
meaning. Metaphors may not be literally true, but - unlike mere non-cognitive
emotings or rule-givings - perhaps they are able to articulate or communicate
truths. Schonbaumsfeld illustrates metaphorical meaning with example of 'Juliet
is the sun' as said by Romeo in Romeo and
Juliet. Suppose Mary is not just insult-blind, but also metaphor-blind. Mary
hears Romeo say 'Juliet is the sun' and responds: 'But Juliet is obviously not the sun: she's not a massive, hot object
about which the Earth rotates!' Here, it's clear Mary fails to contradict and indeed
refute what Romeo says. Or suppose Mary hears John say 'Tom is the moth to your
flame'. Were Mary to respond that there's good evidence she is not a glowing
body of ignited gas, that Tom lacks wings and mandibles, etc. she would obviously
neither contradict nor refute what John intends to communicate.
Schonbaumsfeld
suggests atheists exhibit a similar kind of misunderstanding when they suppose that
they are able to contradict what the religious person says. Clearly, the belief
expressed by Romeo's sentence as understood by the metaphor-blind Mary is not a
belief held by Romeo at all. But then, similarly, the belief expressed by
'Jesus rose from the dead' as understood by an atheist blind to religious
dimensions of meaning may not be a belief held by the religious person at all.
However,
this variety of 'juicer' view, on which (pace
the non-cognitivist) the religious are indeed committed to the truth of certain
claims, only not those that atheists takes such sentences as 'God exists', etc.
to express, again runs into the problem that a majority of religious folk
surely do use such sentences to commit to beliefs that atheists then deny. When
atheists give arguments against the claims to which they take the religious to
be committed, the religious typically respond with counter arguments, defences,
and so on. This makes no sense if the religious actually make no commitment at
all to such claims, and use such sentences only in, say, a metaphorical way. So,
for example, in response to the evidential problem of evil as raised against
the belief atheists take 'God exists' to express, the religious do not
typically shrug and insist the atheist has entirely misunderstood. Rather, they
offer theodicies or suggest that for all we know there are unknown
God-justifying reasons for allowing such evils. If the religious meaning of
'God exists' were only metaphorical, this response would make as much sense as
Romeo's responding to Mary by, say, suggesting that the evidence that Juliet is
not a massive hot body about which the Earth rotates is less than decisive.
Of
course, some religious may insist that, while other religious folk may use the
target sentences (a) - (d) in the way atheists supposes, they do not themselves
use them in that way. Rather, these particular religious individuals really do
use such sentences in a wholly metaphorical way. In which case the views of
this religious minority, at least, are immune to atheist contradiction and refutation.
However even supposing some religious do use the target sentences in a wholly
metaphorical way, so that the strong juicer view is correct of them, it does
not follow that the atheist could not
contradict or indeed refute what those individuals believe. Once the metaphor has
been explained to them - once it is clear what such a religious person is committed to - then the atheist might
go on to contradict and indeed refute such a religious person, much as Mary,
once she does come eventually to understand what John does mean by 'Tom is the
moth to your flame', might then still succeed in contradicting and indeed refuting
what Tom intends to convey.[viii]
To
summarise: the modest 'juicer' view, as expressed by Cottingham, which says
that there are dimensions to meaning of sentences such as (a) to (d) that are
lost on the atheist, is perhaps not so implausible. However, as it stands (and
contrary to what Schonbaumsfeld suggests) it fails to deliver No Contradiction.
Perhaps some version of the strong juicer view, on which what the religious mean by such
sentences is entirely lost on the atheist,
will indeed deliver No Contradiction. However, as I just noted, that version on
which the intended meaning is entirely metaphorical does not appear to prevent
atheists contradicting what the religious believe. Furthermore, the strong
juicer view in any case requires an implausible account of how religious
language is actually used.
The atheist-minus view
All
the above views are 'juicer' views in that they suppose the religious person
uses sentences like (a) to (d) to express something over and above what the atheist grasps (with the strong juicer view
insisting that what the religious express is something exclusively over and above what the atheist grasps). But there is
another way in which we might argue for No Contradiction. Our argument might turn,
not on the thought that what the religious mean by (a) to (d) is something beyond what the atheist means, but on
the thought that what the religious mean, while overlapping to some extent with
what the atheist means, is rather less
than what the atheist means.
Suppose,
for the sake of argument, that by 'God', Peter means an omnipotent, omniscient,
and supremely benevolent being. Peter claims such a being exists. Suppose that Mary,
an atheist, attempts to deny what Peter asserts. Only Mary has a thicker
conception of God then Peter. Mary understands 'God' to refer to an omnipotent,
omniscient, and supremely benevolent being that
lives on a cloud. If that is what Mary means by 'God', then, when she says
to Peter: 'No, there is no God' using 'God' as she understands the term, she
fails to contradict Peter. Peter and Mary might both be correct (if there is an
omnipotent omniscient and supremely benevolent being, but not one that lives on
a cloud).
One
obvious way in which atheists might misunderstand the religious is if the
religious explain what they mean by analogy, and the atheist then takes that
analogy too literally. For example, if a religious person explains that 'God' refers
to something like a father who watches over us, and if the atheist understands this
to mean that God is a physical person who literally looks down on us from the
sky, then when the atheist says 'God does not exist', using the term as they
understand it, they will fail to contradict the belief expressed by the
religious person who says 'God exists'.
Call
the view that the religious mean in some respects rather less than what the
atheist understands such sentences to mean the atheist-minus view and the associated argument that the atheist
therefore fails to contradict what the religious believe the atheist-minus argument.
There
is certainly a long intellectual tradition on which 'God' talk is to be
understood analogically, and so, at least for those within that tradition,
perhaps there is a case to be made for saying that many atheists take such
analogous talk too literally, and so fail to contradict the beliefs that the
religious thereby express.
The
atheist-minus and juicer views are compatible. We might suppose both that there
are religious dimensions of meaning associated with sentences (a) to (d) that
are lost on the atheist, and also (perhaps because the atheist has an
over-literal grasp of what the religious mean by 'God') that in other respects the
religious mean rather less than what the atheist means by such terms.
Here
is an illustration of how what the religious mean by 'God' might be, in certain
respects, thinner than what the atheist means. Many theologians suggest that whether
or not God exists is not, as they suppose atheists think, a matter of whether or
not some 'thing' exists. According to Professor Denys Turner, for example,
'God' is not the name of a 'thing' that exists in addition to chairs, tables,
planets, and the universe. Turner says to the atheist:
It
is no use supposing that you disagree with me if you say, 'There is no such
thing as God'. For I got there well before you. (2002, 19)
Given
the atheist does define 'God' as a 'thing' that exists in addition to all other
existent things, then, however else they may characterize God, in denying that
'God' exists, the atheist will indeed fail to contradict what Turner believes.
In Culture
and Value, Wittgenstein similarly says that, when we consider God's
existence, what is at issue is 'not the existence of something' [daß
es sich hier um eine Existenz nicht handelt] (1998, 82). So perhaps
Wittgenstein is here making, or would wish to make, the same point Turner makes
above: that the atheist's denial that there is such a 'thing' as God is a
denial of something no sensible religious person actually believes?
For reasons outlined earlier, the prospects
of our justifying No Contradiction by means of either non-cognitivist or juicer
views of religious belief look poor. Does the atheist-minus argument offer
Wittgensteinians a more plausible way of justifying No Contradiction? Perhaps.
But note the following:
First, while the atheist-minus view, if
correct, will deliver No Contradiction, the onus is surely on those Wittgensteinians
who wish to use atheist-minus to justify No Contradiction to show that it
actually is correct, by showing, for
example, that what the religious person means by 'God', 'Judgement Day', etc. really
is rather less than what the atheist means.
Second, the prospects of showing the
atheist is guilty of such a misunderstanding of what the religious mean by at
least some of the target sentences - such as 'Jesus rose from the dead' - look
bleak. Perhaps 'God exists' and 'There will be a Judgement Day' are sentences
used by the religious to make much thinner claims than the average atheist,
with their over-literal understanding of God and Judgement Day, supposes. But
surely the average Christian does not mean anything less by 'Jesus rose from the dead' than does the atheist.
Third, the atheist-minus view, even if
it does deliver No Contradiction, fails
to guarantee Immunity. Let's return to Peter and Mary. Suppose Mary
attempts to refute Peter's belief in God using the evidential problem of evil.
It won't do for Peter to respond: 'But you misunderstand me: you conclude
there's no omnipotent, omniscient, and supremely benevolent being that lives on a cloud, and that's not
what I believe!' If Mary, by means of the evidential problem of evil, has
succeeded in showing there is no omnipotent, omniscient, and supremely
benevolent being, then she has succeeded in refuting what Peter believes, even
if, when Mary concludes 'God does not exist', she fails actually to contradict him.
Fourth,
note that the atheist-minus view merely has the consequence that atheists do not contradict what the religious
believe. It does not, as it stands, justify the conclusion that atheists cannot contradict what the religious
believe. While the atheist minus view, on which the atheist understand
sentences (a) - (d) as committing the religious person to rather more than the
atheist supposes, delivers No Contradiction, it doesn't prevent atheists from
realizing they have misunderstood and then
contradicting what the religious person believes. In order to deliver the
stronger conclusion that atheists can't
contradict what the religious believe, further argument would be needed, perhaps
along the lines that to grasp what the religious person means, one must actually believe. However, given that
what the religious believe is, on the atheist minus view, less than what the atheist initially supposes, it's hard to see why
the atheist can't immediately grasp and successfully contradict what the
religious believe by just dropping certain commitments from what they
originally supposed the belief to involve, such as that e.g. God is a 'thing'
or that God lives on a cloud. Indeed, surely this is all that's required?
Conclusion
How,
exactly, do religious and atheist uses of (a) to (d) differ, and why should we
suppose this difference has No Contradiction as a consequence? We have surveyed
a number of answers to this question.
First
we looked at non-cognitive accounts of religious belief, and found them
implausible as accounts of how religious language is generally used.
We
then examined two varieties of the view that the religious use sentences (a) to
(d) to make claims. The first variety is the Cottingham/Schonbaumsfeld-type
'juicer' view on which what the religious mean by such sentences is something over and above what the atheist is able
to grasp. The second variety is the atheist-minus view, on which, while there is
overlap between what the religious and atheists mean using such sentences, the
religious mean rather less than the
atheist means.
We
saw that the 'juicer' view of how religious language is used appears incapable
of justifying either No Contradiction or Immunity. A variant of the juicer view
- the strong juicer view, on which there is no overlap at all between what the religious and atheist mean by such
sentences in what - would, if shown to be correct, justify No Contradiction. However,
the strong juicer view also looks implausible as an account of how religious
language is actually used.
The
atheist-minus view, if correct, would justify No Contradiction. However, the
onus is very much on Wittgensteinians wanting to take this route to No
Contradiction to show that the atheist-minus view is correct and, at least for
certain target sentences (such as 'Jesus rose from the dead'), the prospect of
showing that it is correct also looks dim. We saw, in addition, that even if the
atheism-minus view did deliver No Contradiction, it fails to guarantee
Immunity, and also fails to deliver the stronger conclusion that the atheist cannot contradict what the religious
person believes.
If
you are a Wittgensteinian committed to No Contradiction, it seems to me that you
have, at this point, some explaining to do. If you are a Wittgensteinian
committed to Immunity, your position looks to me to be untenable.
Let's
now return to Simon Glendinning: why does Glendinning embrace No Contradiction?
According to Glendinning[ix], his explanation comes within his
discussion of Nietzsche's parable of the 'madman'. In that parable, a madman
wanders around in broad daylight with a lantern saying, 'I seek God, I seek
God':
Haven’t you heard of that
madman who in the bright morning lit a lantern and ran around the marketplace
crying incessantly 'I seek God, I seek God.' Since many of those who did not
believe in God were standing around together just then, he caused great
laughter. (Nietzsche 2001, §125)
Then
all fall silent and the madman throws his lantern to the ground saying, 'I have
come too early.' He adds: 'my time is not yet. This
tremendous event is still on its way, wandering. It has not yet reached the
ears of men.'
(2001, §125)
On
Glendinning's view, the import of Nietzsche's parable is that
the madman is not one
with the atheists of the marketplace. Their understanding of God perhaps
belongs very squarely within an epoch of the death of God, but it is not the
madman’s understanding. For the madman the idea of 'God' is not the idea of an
existent being, or the intentional object of a religious belief, but (as it
were) the intentional correlate of an entire way of thinking and believing; the
point of focus for a whole life. The event of the death of God cannot then be
understood simply like the death of something or someone within the
world, or an event within the domain of everything that is. Rather, it is an
event, some 2,000 years in the making, which is the opening up and holding sway
of a world within which such worldly events take place, including the worldly
crucifixion event which, we can now say, took place within the very world it
came to open up.
Moreover, this event is
not over. The deed—the murder of God—has been done by 'all of us' the madman
says, and yet we know not what we have done: the news of the deed has yet to
reach the ears of the atheists of the marketplace. (2013, 46-7)
Before I examine
Glendinning's argument, here is a brief clarificatory point. The above passage
suggests Glendinning supposes that the thought that:
(A) the idea of
God is the 'intentional correlate of an entire way of thinking and believing,
the point of focus for a whole life'
stands in opposition to thought that:
(B) God's death
or ceasing-to-be can be 'understood simply like the death of something or
someone within the world, or an event within the domain of everything that is.’
Yet it is by no
means obvious that these two thoughts are in opposition. Consider a child whose
whole life is built round Santa and the North Pole Xmas mythology. For this
Santa-obsessed child, Santa Claus and Rudolph are the intentional correlates of
her entire way of thinking and believing, the point of focus for her whole life.
Clearly, it does not follow that, for this child, finding out that there's no
Santa or Rudolph does not involve finding out about the absence of someone or
something within the world.
So what is the argument
for No Contradiction? Thought (A), which Glendinning wants to endorse, is at
least suggestive of the juicer view that what the religious mean by 'God' is
something richer than the atheist understands by that term - something it takes
full immersion in a religious form of life to grasp. However, we've already seen
that the juicer view fails to deliver No Contradiction. An atheist might successfully
contradict (and indeed refute) what the religious mean by 'God exists' even if
it's true that, as a matter of fact, what the religious mean by 'God' extends
far beyond what the atheist is capable of grasping. If Glendinning's argument
for No Contradiction is the juicer argument, then it fails.
On the other
hand, Glendinning, in rejecting (B) (along, he supposes, with Nietzsche's
madman), seems also to be gesturing towards another view: perhaps the
atheist-minus view on which the religious mean in certain respects rather less by sentences (a) to (d) than does
then atheist, or perhaps the strong juicer or even the non-cognitivist view on each
of which there is no overlap at all
between what the religious mean by such sentences and what the atheist means. Glendinning
appears to think the atheist mistakenly supposes that belief in God involves
belief in the existence of some being within the world - some addition to the
list of 'things' that exist - whereas religious
belief actually involves no such commitment. Hence what the atheist denies
is not what the religious believe.
However, as we noted
above, the onus is very much on those offering this sort argument to show that terms
like 'God', 'Judgement Day', etc. actually are
used in a thinner, or even an entirely different, way by the religious than by
the atheist. Glendinning makes no attempt to do that here. We also saw that the
atheist-minus argument fails to deliver Immunity (though Glendinning does not explicitly
commit himself to Immunity). And, perhaps most seriously, when we consider e.g.
the Christian use of the sentence 'Jesus rose from the dead', it's implausible that
the vast majority of Christians aren't committed to the truth of what the
atheist takes that sentence to express. Surely, when Hitchens and Dennett, with
whom Glendinning says he is 'disgusted', deny 'Jesus rose from the dead', they
really do deny the truth of a claim to which the vast majority of Christians
are committed. Certainly, I think it is at least safe to say Glendinning has
not yet shown otherwise. Glendinning's disgusted reaction looks, at best,
premature.
Finally, consider
a Christian who insists that, while a majority of other Christians might indeed
be committed to the truth of what atheists like Dawkins, Hitchens, and Dennett
deny, she herself is not. She really does use sentences (a) to (d) in the way
the atheist-minus - or perhaps even the strong juicer or non-cognitivist - view
suggests. Perhaps this is the kind of Christian belief Wittgenstein was
investigating. He was interested in articulating, not what the broad Christian
masses believe, but what might be believed by the philosophically sophisticated
Christian.
However in
order for a Christian to take such a position, she will have to embrace, not the
juicer view that what she means by 'Jesus rose from the dead' extends beyond what the atheist is capable of
grasping, but something like the atheist-minus, strong juicer, or
non-cognitivist views on which she would not be committed to the truth of what
the atheist denies when the atheist denies 'Jesus rose from the dead'. Surely there
are very few Christians who could, in good conscience, describe their Christian
belief in such terms. In which case, going 'Wittgensteinian' in order to
achieve No Contradiction is simply not an option for most Christians,
including, I suspect, many who currently think of themselves as
Wittgensteinians. Perhaps some sense can still be made
of Wittgenstein's claim that he, as a non-religious person, cannot 'contradict'
what the religious person believes. However, if Wittgenstein really means to
suggest that he literally cannot contradict what most religious folk mean by
such sentences, then it seems to me he is mistaken.
REFERENCES
Bob
Altemeyer and Bruce Hunsberger (1997) Amazing
Conversions: Why Some Turn To Faith And Others Abandon Religion (Amherst
NY: Prometheus).
A.J.
Ayer (2001) Language, Truth and Logic New
Edition (London: Penguin books).
John
Cottingham (2009) 'Lessons in Life: Wittgenstein, Religion and Analytic
Philosophy' in P.M.S Hacker, Hans-Johann Glock and John Hyman (eds.) Wittgenstein and Analytic Philosophy: Essays
for P.M.S. Hacker (Oxford: Oxford University Press): 203-227
Simon Glendinning (2013) 'Three Cultures
of Atheism: On Serious Doubts About The Existence of God', International Journal For The Philosophy of Religion 73: 39-55.
Hans-Johann
Glock (1996) A Wittgenstein Dictionary
(Oxford, Blackwell).
Gary Habermas and Michael Licona (2004) The Case For The Resurrection of Jesus
(Grand Rapids MI: Kregel Publications).
John
Hyman (2010) 'Wittgenstein', in Charles Taliaferro, Paul Draper and Philip
L.Quinn (eds.) A Companion to Philosophy
of Religion, 2nd Edition Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell): 176-188.
Nicholas
Lash (2008) Theology for Pilgrims
(London: Darton, Longman and Todd).
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Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth' in William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland
(eds.) The Blackwell Companion to Natural
Theology (Oxford: Blackwell).
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Mulhall (2001) Philosophy of Religion in the 21st Century' in D. Z. Phillips & Timothy Tessin
(eds.) Wittgenstein and The
Philosophy of Religion
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Friederich
Nietzsche (2001) Bernard Williams (Ed.) The
Gay Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Genia
Schonbaumsfeld (2007) A Confusion of
Spheres (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Severin
Schroeder (2007) 'The Tightrope Walker', Ratio
XX: 442-462
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(1998) Culture and Value (Oxford: John Wiley and Sons)
(2009) Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell)
[i]
They are related in at least this sense: if No Contradiction holds because the belief the atheist takes the
sentence to express is not the belief that religious person uses the sentence
to express, and if, in addition, reasonable or appropriate religious belief
does not require the believer to assign a high level of credence to the belief
the atheist takes such a sentence to express, then the atheist's attempts to
refute the latter belief will leave the reasonableness or appropriateness of the
religious belief largely unscathed.
[ii] Wittgenstein suggests that 'For a large class of cases - though not for all - in which we employ the word 'meaning' it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.' (Philosophical Investigations I. §43) The suggestion that, in an important sense, the religious person and the atheist do not 'mean the same' by the sentence in question turns on the thought that they use it very differently.
[iii] This
list of objections is not supposed to be exhaustive. Expressivist accounts also face e.g. the Frege/Geach
objection that sentences given an expressivist treatment can crop up in
asserted contexts in which they are not being used expressively. So, to illustrate,
take the Wittgensteinian expressivist view that 'I am in pain' is used not to
make a claim but to replace natural expressions of pain, such as going 'Ow!'
This expressivist account has the advantage of neatly explaining why we seem to
be infallible about whether we are actually, currently in pain (if no claim is
made, then there is none to be mistaken about). But (the Frege/Geach objection
then runs) what treatment do we then give of the conditional 'If I am in pain,
then I should go to the doctor'? In this context, 'I am in pain' is not used to
express pain. But if we then give a different, non-expressivist account of the
meaning of 'I am in pain' in such unasserted contexts (so that 'I am in pain'
has a different meaning in such contexts), we then face the problem of
explaining why the argument: I am in pain, If I am in pain, I should go to the
doctor, therefore I should go to the doctor, is deductively valid.
[iv] See
for example Altemeyer and Hunsberger's Amazing
Conversions (1997). Altemeyer and Hunsberger's survey found that those who
have moved from strong religious backgrounds to atheism 'almost always changed
because they felt intellectually compelled to do so'. They 'found too many
inconsistencies, too many unprovens, too many implausibilities - and also too
much sexism and too much unfairness - to base their lives any longer on what
they came to see as a pack of fables. They had an unusual drive for the truth
and personal integrity.' (1997, 212). The authors add that several former believers
'mentioned the parallel to Santa Claus: "My parents told me that was true,
too. What was the evidence for God, really?"' (1997,111)
[v]
See for example the Gallup
report 'Evolution, Creationism, Intelligent Design' at
http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolution-creationism-intelligent-design.aspx
(accessed 15 September 2015).
[vi]
For examples of arguments for
an historical resurrection see Gary Habermas and Michael Licona (2004) and Tim
and Lydia McGrew (2009).
[vii]
Stephen Mulhall (2001). Mulhall says (2001, 100) 'Wittgenstein does not claim
that coming to believe that God exists is nothing but a passionate commitment
to a system of reference; he claims that 'religious belief' could only be
something like such a commitment.'
[viii]
I am grateful to XX for encouraging
me to reinforce this point.
[ix]
Confirmed by private correspondence between Glendinning and myself.
Comments
You write:
"How, exactly, do religious and atheist uses of (a) to (d) differ, and why should we suppose this difference has No Contradiction as a consequence? We have surveyed a number of answers to this question."
The prime difference between (a), (b), (c), (d) is that (a) is non-temporal and (b), (c), (d) are temporal.
Confusion will arise should (b), (c), (d) be treated non-temporally.
However, by treating (b), (c), (d) temporally then Wittgenstein's view is correct.