Talk of God is meaningless

Theological non-cognitivism (the verification principle)

Alfred Jules Ayer 1910 · 1989A sentence no experience could verify is meaningless, and 'God exists' is one of them.

What it claims

"God exists" is neither true nor false, and there is nothing to believe: the believer says nothing false, but says nothing about the world. ("God does not exist" makes no more sense.)

Why

A sentence is meaningful only if true by definition or checkable by observation; "God exists" is neither.

The same idea through history

Ludwig Wittgenstein1921The Tractatus draws the limit of what can be said: the facts of the world. What concerns God, value and the meaning of life lies beyond. But for Wittgenstein this unsayable matters a great deal; for Ayer, there is nothing behind it.

Alfred Jules Ayer1936Ayer, aged 25, brings the ideas of the Vienna Circle to English readers: a sentence that no experience could verify is neither true nor false, and "God exists" is one of them.

Antony Flew1950Flew replaces "verify" with "falsify": an assertion that nothing could ever count against no longer asserts anything. This is the parable of the invisible gardener.

In short

"Talk of God is meaningless" is an argument by Alfred Jules Ayer (Language, Truth and Logic, ch. VI (1936), 1936) on the question "Does God exist?" (answer: atheism). Its claim: "God exists" is neither true nor false, and there is nothing to believe: the believer says nothing false, but says nothing about the world. ("God does not exist" makes no more sense.). According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 4 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Language, Truth and Logic, ch. VI (1936)

Valid with an implicit premise

Other arguments ask whether God exists. Ayer asks a question that comes first: does the sentence "God exists" even mean anything? For him, a sentence about the world has meaning only if some experience could, at least in principle, make it more or less probable. But the believer speaks of a being beyond all experience. So the sentence is neither true nor false: it says nothing. Note: Ayer refuses to be called an atheist or an agnostic. Saying "God does not exist" would make no more sense, and the agnostic is wrong too in thinking the question is a real one. We still file the argument under atheism, in the site's broad sense ("no good reason to believe"): if Ayer is right, there is nothing to believe at all.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.

Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, the computer finds a case where "God exists" has no literal meaning, yet one would keep a reason to "believe": for example if believing in God were not holding a sentence true but adopting an attitude, a trust (this is Mitchell's line, below).

P1, P2 and P3 are enough to conclude that "God exists" has no literal meaning: it is reasoning by elimination (neither true by definition nor verifiable, hence meaningless). P4 adds the step to "nothing to believe". Ayer does not put it that way: he only says that the believer cannot be accused of saying something false or of lacking evidence, since he says nothing. The whole debate is about P1 (is the criterion right?) and P3 (really no experience, not even after death?).

Analogy. "Nothingness nothings" (Heidegger), "time sleeps beneath the world": these sentences have fine grammar, but no one can say what would change in the world if they were true. For Ayer, "God exists" is of the same kind. The believer will answer: I know very well what would change, everything.

Objections

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Classic objection to logical positivism attacks premise 1

The criterion refutes itself. The sentence "a sentence has meaning only if it is true by definition or verifiable" is not true by definition, and no observation could verify it. By its own rule, then, it has no meaning.

Ayer replies

summary: their text is not yet in our corpus

A. J. Ayer 1946 · Ayer's reply (2nd edition, 1946)

The criterion is not a claim about the world that would have to pass its own test. It is a definition: it fixes what will be called "having literal meaning", as the sentences of science and common sense do. It is not arbitrary, but it does not need to be verified by experience.

A. J. Ayer 1946 · What Ayer concedes at once

But a definition can be refused. Ayer admits it on the same page: he thinks it unlikely that a metaphysician would yield to such a claim. The criterion becomes a method one proposes, no longer a proof that compels.

The debate goes on (our summary) If the criterion is only a definition, the believer can propose another, wider one, in which "God exists" has a meaning. The debate is then no longer about logic but about choosing the best definition of meaning. Most philosophers eventually gave up the criterion in its strict form.

Richard Swinburne 1977 · attacks premise 1

We understand perfectly well sentences that nothing could verify. His example: at night, when no one is watching, some toys leave the cupboard, dance, then go back without leaving any trace. No observation can confirm it, and yet everyone knows what it means, and that it is probably false. If it has meaning, "God exists" can have one too.

no reply

No reply possible: objection raised in 1977, after the author's death (1989).

The debate goes on (our summary) A verificationist would answer that the toy sentence is understood because its words name things one can see (toys, a dance). "A spirit without a body, present everywhere" has no such support. The theist will answer that we also understand words like "spirit" or "present" from our own experience, and can extend them.

John Hick 1960 · attacks premise 3

"God exists" is verifiable in principle, but later: after death. Two travellers walk the same road. One believes it leads to a Celestial City, the other that it leads nowhere. During the journey, no observation settles it between them. But at the last corner, one of them will have been right. The sentence cannot be falsified if it is false, but it can be confirmed if it is true: that is enough for it to have meaning.

Ayer replies

Kai Nielsen 1963

Verification after death settles nothing. Even if I survived and had strange experiences, how would I know that I was meeting an infinite, all-powerful being, present everywhere? Such qualities cannot be observed. To verify "God exists", one would first have to know how God would be recognised, and that is exactly what is missing.

John Hick 1960 · Hick's reply in advance (same article)

Hick raises the question himself: how would one know that it was God one had met? His answer: the Christian does not expect to meet an abstract infinite, but two experiences together, the fulfilment of God's purpose for him and communion with God as he made himself known in Christ. It is this second point that makes recognition possible.

The debate goes on (our summary) For critics, Hick's reply moves the problem: it already assumes that Christ reveals God, which is exactly what is in question. And it only holds for the Christian believer. Hick admits it: faith could be verified for the one who lives it, without ever being proved to the unbeliever.

Basil Mitchell (reply to Flew) 1955 · attacks premise 3

Flew asked the believer: what would have to happen for you to admit that God does not exist, or does not love you? Mitchell answers with another parable. In wartime, a resistance fighter meets a Stranger who claims to be the leader of the Resistance, and trusts him. Afterwards, he sometimes sees the Stranger helping the resistance, sometimes helping the enemy. These facts count against his trust, and he admits it. But he does not let them count decisively, because he has reasons to trust. The believer does the same with evil: he admits that it counts against his faith, without giving it up. So his sentence is not empty.

Ayer replies

Antony Flew 1950 · Flew's question, still standing

Flew had stated the problem with his parable of the invisible gardener. The believer keeps adding qualifications (invisible, intangible, odourless, making no sound) until his assertion can no longer be told apart from nothing: "just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?"

The debate goes on (our summary) One can answer that in Mitchell's parable the Stranger is a man one has met: we know what would prove his betrayal. For God, the believer still has to say what would count decisively. What Mitchell mainly shows is that faith is less like a hypothesis than like trust in someone.