Eschatological Verification Reconsidered

Abstract

The world in which we find ourselves is religiously ambiguous. It is possible for different people (as also for the same person at different times) to experience it both religiously and non-religiously; and to hold beliefs which arise from and feed into each of these ways of experiencing. A religious person may report that in moments of prayer he or she is conscious of existing in the unseen presence of God, and is aware — sometimes at least — that his/her whole life and the entire history of the world is taking place within the ambience of the divine purpose. But on the other hand the majority of people in our modern world do not participate in that form of experience and are instead conscious of their own and others’ lives as purely natural phenomena, so that their own experience leads them at least implicitly to reject the idea of a transcendent divine presence and purpose. If they are philosophically minded, they may well think that the believer’s talk is the expression of what Richard Hare has called a blik, a way of feeling and thinking about the world which expresses itself in pseudo-assertions, pseudo because they are neither verifiable nor falsifiable and are therefore factually empty.’ The religious person speaks of God as a living reality in whose presence we are, and of a divine purpose which gives ultimate meaning to our lives.

Reprinted, with permission, from Religious Studies, vol. XIII (1977).