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Falsification and Belief

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Schubert M. Ogden
Affiliation:
Professor of Theology, Perkins School of Theology, Dallas, Texas

Extract

In general, there are two main approaches to settling the alleged conflict between religion and science. On the first approach, one argues that there is not even the possibility of such a conflict, since the uses of religious utterances are sufficiently different from those of scientific ones to constitute them a distinct logical type. Thus, if religion appears to conflict with science, either this is merely an appearance, or else one of them, at least, is also performing the function of the other, in which case their conflict is really either a scientific conflict or a religious conflict. In no case, however, can the truth of a scientific utterance be any reason for inferring the falsity of a religious one, and much less can it be any reason for entertaining doubts about the religious utterance's logical propriety.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

page 22 note 1 See Ferré, Frederick, ‘Science and the Death of “God”’ in Barbour, Ian G. (ed.), Science and Religion: New Perspectives on the Dialogue (New York, Harper & Row, 1968), pp. 134–56.Google Scholar

page 23 note 1 The Hague: Mouton & Co., N. V., 1970. Subsequent references to the book are made in the text in parentheses.

page 29 note 1 Although McKinnon speaks here and elsewhere (p. 99) of ‘efficient causes’, I can only suppose he means what have usually been called more precisely ‘secondary causes’.

page 29 note 2 Among recent discussions of these difficulties, see especially Phillips, D. Z., Faith and Philosophical Enquiry (New York, Schocken Books Inc., 1971), pp. 3846Google Scholar; and Munitz, Milton K., The Mystery of Existence (New York, Appleton-Century-Croft, 1965), pp. 103–25.Google Scholar

page 32 note 1 Meaning and Truth in Religion (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1964).Google Scholar

page 33 note 1 Meaning and Truth in Religion, p. 109.

page 33 note 2 In addition to Ferré's essay referred to above see especially Mapping the Logic of Models in Science and Theology’, The Christian Scholar, XLVI (1963), 939.Google Scholar

page 34 note 1 McKinnon does say, to be sure, that there are ‘two aspects of faith’ even at the assertional level, in that the believer's claims ‘are not merely or even primarily items of mere abstract assent’, but ‘are rather matters of existential commitment in the proper sense of that term’ (p. 97). But it is by no means clear just what is to be made of this qualification. If the two aspects of faith referred to are the same as belief in and belief that, then the latter distinction can hardly be taken, as McKinnon certainly takes it, as exactly corresponding to that between the self-instructional and assertional uses of language. On the contrary, if ‘the two aspects of faith’ refers to something different from the two kinds of belief, one can only guess as to its exact referent. Moreover, so far as the context gives any indication as to what is meant by ‘existential commitment in the proper sense of that term’, it, too, seems but another way of referring to belief in, which gives rise to the same difficulty (cf. especially p. 97, n. 3).

page 35 note 1 Cf., e.g., Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics, vol. II/1, trans. Parker, T. H. L. et al. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1957), p. 3Google Scholar: ‘The knowledge of God occurs in the fulfilment of the revelation of His Word by the Holy Spirit, and therefore in the reality and with the necessity of faith and its obedience. Its content is the existence of Him whom we must fear above all things because we may love Him above all things; who remains a mystery to us because He Himself has made Himself so clear and certain to us.’

page 36 note 1 See Hartshorne, Charles, The Logic of Perfection and Other Essays in Neoclassical Metaphysics (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court Publishing Co., 1962), pp. 28117Google Scholar; and Anselm's Discovery: A Re-examination of the Ontological Proof for God's Existence (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court Publishing Co., 1965)Google Scholar, passim.

page 37 note 1 Cf. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Über Gewissheit (On Certainty), ed. Anscombe, G. E. M. and von Wright, G. H.; trans. Denis Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe (New York, J. & J. Harper, 1969), §§341–4Google Scholar: ‘That is, the questions we raise and our doubts rest on the fact that certain propositions are exempted from doubt, being, as it were, the hinges on which the former turn. That is, it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things in fact are not doubted. But this does not mean that we can not investigate everything, and so are forced to be content with assumption. If I want the door to turn, the hinges must be fixed. My life consists in my being content with many things’ (my translation). Unlike McKinnon, Wittgenstein is quite clear that the only certainty their common assumptions allow one to claim for merely factual truths is the de facto certainty that some of them have by virtue of their foundational role in our ongoing investigations or interpretative activities. Thus he does not speak, as McKinnon does, of such truths as ‘necessary’, and he resists the use of ‘I know’ with respect to them (§498)—even while recognising that ‘I believe’, precisely in its religious sense (§§500, 459), by no means expresses, as McKinnon avers, merely ‘an entertainment relation to a factual but nevertheless contingent truth’ (p. 65, n. 9).

page 38 note 1 Anselm's Ontological Arguments’, The Philosophical Review, LXIX (1960), 56.Google Scholar

page 40 note 1 Science and the Modern World (New York, The Macmillan Co., 1925), p. 270.Google Scholar

page 41 note 1 As the context indicates, an ‘existential claim’ in the sense now in question is more than a mere assertion of existence, such as has figured in the previous discussion. In this sense, a claim is properly spoken of as ‘existential’ only if, in addition to asserting existence, the warrant for it is in the nonsensuous, as distinct from the merely sensuous, aspect of our experience.

page 41 note 2 On the whole issue of myth and demythologising, see my book, The Reality of God and other Essays (New York, Harper & Row, 1966), especially pp. 99119.Google Scholar It may be worth pointing out that myth, on my view, is not merely a formally improper expression of the metaphysically necessary. Although myth necessarily implies the strictly metaphysical, and does so more directly than, say, science or morality, it nevertheless cannot be exhaustively interpreted in strictly metaphysical terms, since such terms pertain solely to factuality, as distinct from particular fact. Myth is in its own way the assertion of fact, even though, in spite of its empirical form, the only fact of which it intends to speak is the primal fact of our own existence in its authentic possibility, which includes, of course, the world and God as well in their factual aspect. Thus it has been rightly said that ‘mythic time is always present, and myth re-creates and re-presents what it portrays; it actualizes what it tells. Standing outside of time, making present what it presents, myth tells the event itself, not a mere description of it. It makes past and future immediately present; it expresses man's solidarity with his world, and reasserts that solidarity in the face of human doubt’ ( O'Dea, Thomas F., The Sociology of Religion [Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1966], p. 43).Google Scholar