Wittgenstein was a strong influence on the Vienna Circle, a
group of philosophers that challenged the way many philosophers used language
to convey meaning. They belonged to the Logical Positivist movement which holds
that the only thing that is meaningful is that which can be verified
empirically. Consequently, Logical Positivists came to the conclusion that
God-talk is meaningless as it says nothing about reality and cannot be
empirically verified.
Taking up the ideas of Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle,
A. J. Ayer argued the Verification Principle.
The Verification Principle states that a sentence is only meaningful if
it is either analytic or synthetic.
- Analytic – true by definition (tautology) and cannot be false, the wording of the statement verifies its truth. (E.g. frozen water is ice).
- Synthetic – can be verified through empirical evidence and is meaningful because it can hold verifiable truths. (E.g. the Big Bang Theory).
Ayer concludes that if a statement is neither analytic nor
empirically verifiable, it says nothing about reality and is therefore meaningless.
This is similar to Hume’s viewpoint that if a statement does not contain any
abstract reasoning or any experimental reasoning, then it says nothing about
reality. John Hick gives the examples, “the universe doubled in size last night”
and “there is an invisible, intangible...rabbit in this room” to demonstrate how
a statement can appear to be making claims about the world, but on a closer
look it is apparent that they do not in fact reveal anything about the world. According
to the Verification Principle, this would make them meaningless.
Indeed, claims such as “God created the world” or “God loves
me” would be meaningless according to the Verification Principle as they cannot
be shown to be either true or false empirically.
