FLEW & HARE (1971) "THEOLOGY & FALSIFICATION: A SYMPOSIUM"
Part 2
Part 2
Flew & Hare's essay begins with Antony Flew setting out the Falsification Principle and its implications for Religious Language. In this section, R.M. Hare (Richard or Dick to his friends) responds to Flew's challenge to explain how religious language might be meaningful even if it isn't falsifiable..
Hare introduces the concept of bliks which are unfalsifiable but meaningful ideas. Hare introduces a parable of his own - the Parable of the Paranoid Student - to illustrate the idea of bliks. |
Hare's parable describes someone with an unfalsifiable belief - the lunatic's belief that the dons want to murder him. "Don" is a rather old-fashioned word for the lecturers at universities like Oxford and Cambridge (Hare taught at Oxford before moving to America). This student thinks his teachers are trying to kill him.
The important thing about the story is that there is nothing you can do to show the student that he is wrong about his teachers. No matter how pleasant the teachers are towards him, the student thinks this is a ruse to disguise their murderous intentions: in reality they are "plotting" and their friendliness is just "diabolical cunning". |
But sometimes your teachers ARE trying to kill you and their niceness IS just diabolical cunning...
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Hare starts off by saying he isn't trying to "defend Christianity" (although Hare himself is a Christian).
Hare's parable certainly doesn't look like he's defending Christianity, or any other religion. The Lunatic in the parable stands for any religious believer and the paranoid belief that the dons are plotting to murder him stands for belief in God. So Hare is comparing religious belief to a paranoid delusion. |
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Hare supports his idea of bliks by tracing it back to David Hume. Hume is famous for his scepticism - the idea that all knowledge should be doubted. In his Treatise of Human Nature, Hume tries doubting EVERYTHING - the reality of the world and other people, the trustworthiness of his own memories, the likelihood that anything will happen in the future. Hume thinks that, if you adopt this position of TOTAL SCEPTICISM, then you can find no good reason to believe in ANYTHING.
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I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours’ amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther - David Hume Hare and Hume are both saying that we have certain foundational beliefs about the world which we cannot verify (or falsify), but which it is "strained and ridiculous" to question. Better to play backgammon instead.
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without the influence of custom we would be entirely ignorant of every matter of fact beyond what is immediately present to the memory and senses - David Hume
the earth is weak and all the inhabitants thereof: I bear up the Pillars of it - 1928 Book of Common Prayer
Another aspect of bliks seems to appear in John Hick's Pluralistic Hypothesis. Hick regards religious experiences as rather like bliks because the reality of the divine can't be grasped by the human mind. Instead, different religious traditions provide their own interpretations. These traditions don't "cancel each other out" because they can all be valid insights into the divine. This makes them like bliks because they're not falsified by rival religious experiences.
Hick's idea is summed up in the Parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant. Even though the blind men (religions) say contradictory things, their statements aren't falsified.
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To show how different modern religion is, Hare quotes the French astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace. Laplace demonstrated a model of the solar system to Napoleon. When Napoleon asked where God fitted into this model of planets orbiting the sun, Laplace replied:
Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là ("I had no need of that hypothesis") - Pierre-Simon Laplace Laplace was telling Napoleon that you don't need a literal God to explain the movements of the planets round the sun. Hare is saying that atheists like Flew are guilty of the same sort of mistake that Napoleon made: thinking of God as the answer to a scientific problem.
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An atheist like Flew might reply that many religious beliefs are factual statements and demand to be treated as such. Many religious believers would agree. "God exists" isn't just a statement of a world-view (like saying that the universe seems to be a lovely place); it's a claim about a supernatural being which could be false. The statement that Jesus rose from the dead is a historical statement, which could be true or false.
Many religious believers and many atheists would disagree with what Hare is saying and claim that their beliefs really as "explanations, as scientists are accustomed to use the word". St Paul clearly takes this view when he says that Christianity depends on Jesus being raised from the dead for it to be true.
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A problem with viewing religious belief as a blik is that, although a blik can't be proven wrong, it can't claim to be the truth either. If religious beliefs are bliks then they can't be true or false and there's no way of judging which one to follow, other than personal preference.
Atheists might object to Hare's ideas for another reason. Although Hare doesn't come out and say it, he clearly thinks that atheism is just as much a blik as religious belief. But if atheism is a blik then it's not based on lack of evidence for God's existence - but many atheists would argue that's exactly what their atheism is based on. |
The odd thing is that Hare immediately contradicts himself by claiming that there is an important difference between Sikhs and Muslims (even though outsiders who don't know much about either religion sometimes confuse them for one another).
Hare can't have it both ways. Either people from different religions (or no religion at all) can share the same basic bliks about the meaning and value of life - or they have radically different bliks that affect the way they live and act.
The idea that different religions share the same fundamental blik is essential for the ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT (which gets different religions working together) and the whole idea of a MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY.
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Richard Dawkins sums up what's wrong with religious bliks
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If there was some sort of friendly detente between religious believers and atheists in the 1970s, the mood is rather different today. The "New Atheists" of the 21st century are much more hostile to religion. These thinkers include Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett.
These thinkers claim that there is something that marks out religion as completely different from the scientific worldview: a belief in the supernatural. Dawkins has described religion as a "virus of the mind" that needs to be "cured" and this suggests that atheists and believers do not share the same basic blik.
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Other philosophers think this sort of detachment is impossible when it comes to God. After all, if God exists there is the possibility of an eternal reward in heaven or endless suffering in hell. These possibilities are too attractive/terrifying to regard in a detached way.
Moreover, even if God doesn't punish or reward in this way, God is numinous and awe-inspiring. People who report religious experiences don't describe something that is merely interesting and curious: they report a life-changing encounter. The Christian philosopher Paul Tillich describes God as the "ground of being" and faith as "ultimate concern" - it is not possible to be neutral or detached concerning such things. |
Pure bliks can function only as bliks. But impure bliks can function either as bliks or as assertions - H.J.N. Horsburgh
Impure bliks are rather sneaky. They pass themselves off as assertions. For example, religious believers might claim that abortion is against God's will and that it should be banned. But when impure bliks get falsified, they pretend to be just bliks and ignore the contradictory evidence. People who cling to impure bliks are trying to 'have their cake and eat it too'.
Horsburgh concludes that religious believers responding to Flew's challenge cannot take the approach offered by Hare and must instead look to the arguments offered (later) by Basil Mitchell. |