The falsification principle was originally penned by Karl Popper and was later padded out by Anthony Flew. It is the idea that you cannot convert a religious beliver to not believing with empirical evidence and knowledge because they have a blik, or an unshakeable belief. A blik can occur within a person for many reasons; upbringing or a religious experience are just a couple of reasons. Where the verification principle failed, Popper and Flew stepped in to create a new challenge. Popper wrote the foundation of the principle, but flew went a bit further with it.
‘Is what is pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved?’ In Plato’s Euthyphro dilemma, Plato is asking ‘is x good because God loves it or does God love x because x is good?’ An example of this is murder; is murder wrong because God says it is or is murder wrong because it is wrong morally? If ‘x’ was already good before God commanded it then there would be no purpose to God whereas if God commanded ‘x’ because it’s good, then God would have a purpose as he would have to guide us with what is moral and what isn’t. The view that moral rules are true are good because they were commanded by God is called the divine command theory. ‘The Good consists in always doing what God wills at any particular moment.’ If moral actions are good or bad because they are commanded or forbidden by God, certain things follow such as; if they had not been commanded or forbidden by God then they wouldn’t have been good or bad. Furthermore, if God had said the opposite to what He did say then the things that would have been good is now bad.
Flew argued that religious believers don’t allow any evidence to account against their beliefs therefore Flew comes to the conclusion that religious language is meaningless. Flew uses John Wisdom’s parable of the gardener, in which there are two explorers they come across a clearing. One believes that a gardener is responsible for the clearing and the other one doesn't. There is no evidence for the believers claim however he still believes that a gardener is responsible by changing his hypothesis, the gardener is invisible. Just like a religious believer who states “god loves us” but can’t explain the contradiction of evil in the world, believers qualify their statements by explaining god’s love is not like humans love he calls this “death by a thousand qualifications”.
From this Moore claimed that it is impossible to derive an ‘is from an ought’. This criticism became known as the naturalistic fallacy. In addition to this G.E Moore claimed that naturalism was not able to stand up to the open question argument. ethical naturalism claims to be based on moral facts, it would therefore seem logical that these facts should stand up to scrutiny. Yet, if we observe that pleasure is good, we should be able to ask is good pleasure.
Ibbetson makes a blatant appeal to authority by saying that lack of god in the debate over stem cell research will lead to “…an ending point worse than past atrocities.” Not only does Ibbetson contradict himself by having earlier criticized Bush for basing his stance on stem cell research on his religious beliefs, he also manages to somehow tie Hitler back into the debate, although far more subtly this time around through the use of the phrase “past atrocities.” When taking an outward perspective at the argument Ibbetson makes one can realize how ridiculous it truly is. Aside from actually providing any legitimate solutions, Ibbetson essentially states that Stem cell research is a godless and vile science and in Obama’s support of it he will only succeed in reenacting actions brought forth by Hitler. Based merely on the first amendment alone Ibbetson’s final statement clearly has no place in the real life debate on stem cell research, however aside from that its only purpose is the same as any of his other arguments, to demonize those that actually support stem cells by essentially stating they are going against
McCloskey attempts to make an argument for the non-existence of God and to give reasons why atheism is more comforting than theism. This paper is a response to that article which will address certain ideas raised by Mr. McCloskey. This author is a theist and will present arguments to show the reasoning for the existence and necessity of God. To begin with, McCloskey suggests in his article that the theist’s arguments are “proofs” which do not provide definitive evidence for the existence of God, so therefore, they should be discarded. This is not a justified argument due to the fact that theists do not try to definitely prove the existence of God.
She weathered the jilt by asking God to justify being left at the altar and granny takes it as jilt after not getting a sign from God. Although it is not known if God did what Granny asked of him. Years after the jilt the memory of throwing out the cake was a symbol that Granny was letting go of the pain she was left with when George left her at the altar. Before Granny died she had requested Cornelia to do one more thing for her. “I want you to find George.
It is evident that there is a fundamental tension between the two world views. However, it would be incorrect to reject one view completely in favor of the other. So, while recognizing the post modern view that truth is unknowable and that we cannot be absolutely certain of our knowledge, I would also like to acknowledge the importance of human dignity. I would also like to state that some of the ethical tenets like Kantian Categorical Imperatives have their basis in human dignity. In other words, we could discover the best in science and social science on the strength of western world view.
‘Religious language is meaningless.’ Analyse and evaluate this claim with reference to the verification and falsification debates. I disagree with the statement that religious language is meaningless, but Logical positivist within the Vienna circle applied the idea of the verification principle to religious language, and saw religious language as meaningless. The verification principle is the philosophical movement which claims that language is only meaningful if it can be verified by sense-observation or if it is known as a tautology. And they saw that religious language cannot be empirically tested through the senses, and neither is it known as a tautology so then it is considered as meaningless. Philosophers like Moritz Schlick and others who were supporters of the verification principle, believed that the meaningless of a statement is shown by the way in which you verify it.
What does Paul Feyerabend’s notion of “Epistemological Anarchism” mean? Evaluate this in relation to his critique of Kuhn’s Paradigms. While Emphasizing the subjective side of science, Kuhn claimed that operating within science means existing within the restrictive confines of the dominant paradigm, which attempts to limit particular questions that can be asked, how these are asked, and how their answers are formulated into viable scientific facts that are accepted by fellow scientists. This paradigm, in turn may actually obstruct the progress of science by nature of being untranslatable to other paradigms and impede rational argument. Kuhn states that a scientist’s switch between one paradigm to the next is similar to a “gestalt switch” where neural programming is required rather than argument and persuasion.