Religious Beliefs and Language-Games

Abstract

Many philosophers of religion have protested against the philosophical assertion that religious beliefs must be recognised as distinctive language-games. They feel that such an assertion gives the misleading impression that these language-games are cut off from all others. This protest has been made by Ronald Hepburn, John Hick, and Kai Nielsen, to give but three examples. Hepburn says, ‘Within traditional Christian theology … questions about the divine existence cannot be deflected into the question, “Does ‘God’ play an intelligible role in the language-game?”’¹ Hick thinks that there is something wrong in saying that ‘The logical implications of religious statements do not extend across the border of the Sprachspiel into assertions concerning the character of the universe beyond that fragment of it which is the religious speech of human beings.’² Nielsen objects to the excessive compartmentalisation of modes of social life involved in saying that religious beliefs are distinctive language-games, and argues that ‘Religious discourse is not something isolated, sufficient unto itself’.³ ‘Although “Reality” may be systematically ambiguous … what constitutes evidence, or tests for the truth or reliability of specific claims, is not completely idiosyncratic to the context or activity we are talking about. Activities are not that insulated.’⁴