Module No.

9 (Good for 2 weeks)

Title: RELIGION
Instructor: MELQUISEDEC M. DELOSO
I. Course Description
This course is an introductory point on the nature of religion, religious
experiences and spirituality that have contributed a lot to human history and
have gradually shaped human life. It allows the students to explore the
complexity of philosophical, sociological and political dimension of religion. It
will also make the students ponder on major themes such as: Relation of religion
and philosophy; the existence of God; faith and reason; opinion, belief and
knowledge; religion and language; the problem of evil; religion and death; religion
and life.

II. Objectives
The students will be able to:

 Distinguish 3 arguments from Antony Flew, R. M. Hare and Basil

Mitchell
 Create an evaluation about the debate
III. You can reach me out through:

 Messenger (Milky Deloso)

 FB (Milky Deloso)
 Mobile phone (09560547966),
 [email protected]
 at the office or at home if necessary.
Good day to you my dear student! Hope you responsibly comply with the
following activities may be given to you. I believe in you! You can do It.!

IV. Pre-Test.
Instruction: Identify the thinker of the ff. statements/sentences.
Options:
Antony Flew,
R.M. Hare,
Basil Mitchell
1. For if the utterance is indeed an assertion, it will necessarily be equivalent to
a denial of the negation of that assertion.
2. Picture preference.
3. I wish to make it clear that I shall not try to defend Christianity in
particular, but religion in general.
4. Because when people have had a good Christian upbringing, as have most of
those who now profess not to believe in any sort of religion, it is very hard to
discover what they really believe.
5. It is here that my parable differs from Hare's.
6. The Christian, once he has committed himself, is precluded by his faith from
taking up the first attitude: "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God."
7. An explanation, to be an explanation at all, must explain why this particular
thing occurs.
8. Lunatic.
9. Blik.
10. Partisan.

V. Discussion
Note: The discussion is not rephrased. Since it is a debate, I want you to read
their direct writings.
The Falsification Debate
ANTONY FLEW
Let us begin with a parable. It is a parable developed from a tale told by
John Wisdom in his haunting and revelatory article 'Gods."1 Once upon a time
two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing
many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, "Some gardener must tend
this plot." The other disagrees, "There is no gardener." So they pitch their tents
and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. "But perhaps he is an invisible
gardener." So they set up a barbed wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with
bloodhounds. (For they remember how H. G. Wells's The Invisible Man could be
both smelt and touched though he could not be seen.) But no shrieks ever
suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever
betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the Believer
is not convinced. "But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible to
electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener
who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves." At last the Sceptic
despairs, "But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you
call invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary
gardener or even from no gardener at all?"
In this parable we can see how what starts as an assertion, that
something exists or that there is some analogy between certain complexes of
phenomena, may be reduced step by step to an altogether different status, to an
expression perhaps of a "picture preference."2 The Sceptic says there is no
gardener. The Believer says that is a gardener (but invisible, etc.). One man talks
about sexual behavior. Another man prefers to talk of Aphrodite (but knows that
there is not really a superhuman person additional to, and somehow responsible
for, all sexual phenomena).3 The process of qualification may be checked at any
point before the original assertion is completely withdrawn and something of that
first assertion will remain (Tautology). Mr. Wells's invisible man could not,
admittedly, be seen, but in all other respects he was a man like the rest of us.
But though the process of qualification may be, and of course usually is, checked
in time, it is not always judiciously so halted. Someone may dissipate his
assertion completely without noticing that he has done so. A fine brash
hypothesis may thus be killed by inches, the death by a thousand qualifications.
And in this, it seems to me, lies the peculiar danger, the endemic evil, of
theological utterance. Take such utterances as "God has a plan," "God created
the world." "God loves us as a father loves his children." They look at first sight
very much like assertions, vast cosmological assertions. Of course, this is no
sure sign that they either are, or are intended to be, assertions. But let us confine
ourselves to the cases where those who utter such sentences intend them to
express assertions. (Merely remarking parenthetically that those who intend or
interpret such utterances as crypto commands, expressions of wishes, disguised
ejaculations, concealed ethics, or as anything else but assertions, are unlikely to
succeed in making them either properly orthodox or practically effective).
Now to assert that such and such is the case is necessarily equivalent to
denying that such and such is not the case.4 Suppose then that we are in doubt
as to what someone who gives vent to an utterance is asserting, or suppose that,
more radically, we are sceptical as to whether he is really asserting anything at
all, one way of trying to understand (or perhaps it will be to expose) his utterance
is to attempt to find what he would regard as counting against, or as being
incompatible with, its truth. For if the utterance is indeed an assertion, it will
necessarily be equivalent to a denial of the negation of that assertion. And
anything which would count against the assertion, or which would induce the
speaker to withdraw it and to admit that it had been mistaken, must be part of
(or the whole of) the meaning of the negation of that assertion. And to know the
meaning of the negation of an assertion, is as near as makes no matter, to know
the meaning of that assertion.5 And if there is nothing which a putative assertion
denies then there is nothing which it asserts either: and so it is not really an
assertion. When the Sceptic in the parable asked the Believer, "Just how does
what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an
imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?" he was suggesting that the
Believer's earlier statement had so been eroded by qualification that it was no
longer an assertion at all.
Now it often seems to people who are not religious as if there was no
conceivable event or series of events the occurrence of which would be admitted
by sophisticated religious people to be a sufficient reason for conceding "There
wasn't a God after all" or "God does not really love us then." Someone tells us
that God loves us as a father loves his children. We are reassured. But then we
see a child dying of inoperable cancer of the throat. His earthly father is driven
frantic in his efforts to help, but his Heavenly Father reveals no obvious sign of
concern. Some qualification is made—God's love is "not a merely human love" or
it is "an inscrutable love," perhaps—and we realize that such sufferings are quite
compatible with the truth of the assertion that "God loves us as a father (but, of
course, . . .)." We are reassured again. But then perhaps we ask: what is this
assurance of God's (appropriately qualified) love worth, what is this apparent
guarantee really a guarantee against? Just what would have to happen not
merely (morally and wrongly) to tempt but also (logically and rightly) to entitle
us to say "God does not love us" or even "God does not exist?" I therefore put to
the succeeding symposiasts the simple central questions, "What would have to
occur or to have occurred to constitute for you a disproof of the love of, or of the
existence of, God?"
R. M. HARE
I wish to make it clear that I shall not try to defend Christianity in
particular, but religion in general—not because I do not believe in Christianity,
but because you cannot understand what Christianity is, until you have
understood what religion is.
I must begin by confessing that, on the ground marked out by Flew, he seems to
me to be completely victorious. I therefore shift my ground by relating another
parable. A certain lunatic is convinced that all dons want to murder him. His
friends introduce him to all the mildest and most respectable dons that they can
find, and after each of them has retired, they say, "You see, he doesn't really
want to murder you; he spoke to you in a most cordial manner; surely you are
convinced now?" But the lunatic replies "Yes, but that was only his diabolical
cunning; he's really plotting against me the whole time, like the rest of them; I
know it I tell you." However many kindly dons are produced, the reaction is still
the same.
Now we say that such a person is deluded. But what is he deluded about?
About the truth or falsity of an assertion? Let us apply Flew's test to him. There
is no behaviour of dons that can be enacted which he will accept as counting
against his theory; and therefore his theory, on this test, asserts nothing. But it
does not follow that there is no difference between what he thinks about dons
and what most of us think about them—otherwise we should not call him a
lunatic and ourselves sane, and dons would have no reason to feel uneasy about
his presence in Oxford.
Let us call that in which we differ from this lunatic, our respective bliks.
He has an insane blik about dons; we have a sane one. It is important to realize
that we have a sane one, not no blik at all; for there must be two sides to any
argument—if he has a wrong blik, then those who are right about dons must
have a right one. Flew has shown that a blik does not consist in an assertion or
system of them; but nevertheless it is very important to have the right blik.
Let us try to imagine what it would be like to have different bliks about
other things than dons. When I am driving my car, it sometimes occurs to me to
wonder whether my movements of the steering-wheel will always continue to be
followed by corresponding alterations in the direction of the car. I have never had
a steering failure, though I have had skids, which must be similar. Moreover, I
know enough about how the steering of my car is made, to know the sort of thing
that would have to go wrong for the steering to fail—steel joints would have to
part, or steel rods break, or something—but how do I know that this won't
happen? The truth is, I don't know; I just have a blik about steel and its
properties, so that normally I trust the steering of my car; but I find it not at all
difficult to imagine what it would be like to lose this blik and acquire the opposite
one. People would say I was silly about steel; but there would be no mistaking
the reality of the difference between our respective bliks—for example, I should
never go in a motor-car. Yet I should hesitate to say that the difference between
us was the difference between contradictory assertions. No amount of safe
arrivals or bench-tests will remove my blik and restore the normal one: for my
blik is compatible with any finite number of such tests.
It was David Hume (a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian,
economist, librarian and essayist, who is best known today for his highly
influential system of philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism) who
taught us that our whole commerce with the world depends upon our blik about
the world; and that differences between bliks about the world cannot be settled
by observation of what happens in the world. That was why, having performed
the interesting experiment of doubting the ordinary man's blik about the world,
and showing that no proof could be given to make us adopt one blik rather than
another, he turned to backgammon to take his mind off the problem. It seems,
indeed, to be impossible even to formulate as an assertion the normal blik about
the world which makes me put my confidence in the future reliability of steel
joints, in the continued ability of the road to support my car, and not gape
beneath it revealing nothing below; in the general nonhomicidal tendencies of
dons; in my own continued well-being (in some sense of that word that I may not
now fully understand) if I continue to do what is right according to my lights; in
the general likelihood of people like Hitler coming to a bad end. But perhaps a
formulation less inadequate than most is to be found in the Psalms: "The earth
is weak and all the inhabiters thereof: I bear up the pillars of it."
The mistake of the position which Flew selects for attack is to regard this
kind of talk as some sort of explanation, as scientists are accustomed to use the
word. As such, it would obviously be ludicrous. We no longer believe in God as
an Atlas—nous n'avons pas besoin de cette hypothese. But it is nevertheless true
to say that, as Hume saw, without a blik there can be no explanation; for it is by
our bliks that we decide what is and what is not an explanation. Suppose we
believed that everything that happened, happened by pure chance. This would
not of course be an assertion; for it is compatible with anything happening or
not happening, and so, incidentally, it is contradictory. But if we had this belief,
we should not be able to explain or predict or plan anything. Thus, although we
should not be asserting anything different from those of a more normal belief,
there would be a great difference between us; and this is the sort of difference
that there is between those who really believe in God and those who really
disbelieve in him.
The word "really" is important, and may excite suspicion. I put it in,
because when people have had a good Christian upbringing, as have most of
those who now profess not to believe in any sort of religion, it is very hard to
discover what they really believe. The reason why they find it so easy to think
that they are not religious, is that they have never got into the frame of mind of
one who suffers from the doubts to which religion is the answer. Not for them
the terrors of the primitive jungle. Having abandoned some of the more
picturesque fringes of religion, they think that they have abandoned the whole
thing—whereas in fact they still have got, and could not live without, a religion
of a comfortably substantial, albeit highly sophisticated, kind, which differs from
that of many "religious people" in little more than this, that "religious people" like
to sing Psalms about theirs—a very natural and proper thing to do. Nevertheless,
there may be a big difference lying behind—the difference between two people
who, though side by side, are walking in different directions. I do not know in
what direction Flew is walking; perhaps he does not know either. But we have
had some examples recently of various ways in which one can walk away from
Christianity, and there are any number of possibilities. After all, man has not
changed biologically since primitive times; it is his religion that has changed,
and it can easily change again. And if you do not think that such changes make
a difference, get acquainted with some Sikhs and some Mussulmans of the same
Punjabi stock; you will find them quite different sorts of people.
There is an important difference between Flew's parable and my own which
we have not yet noticed. The explorers do not mind about their garden; they
discuss it with interest, but not with concern. But my lunatic, poor fellow, minds
about dons; and I mind about the steering of my car; it often has people in it that
I care for. It is because I mind very much about what goes on in the garden in
which I find myself, that I am unable to share the explorers' detachment.
BASIL MITCHELL
Flew's article is searching and perceptive, but there is, I think, something
odd about his conduct of the theologian's case. The theologian surely would not
deny that the fact of pain counts against the assertion that God loves men. This
very incompatibility generates the most intractable of theological problems—the
problem of evil. So the theologian does recognize the fact of pain as counting
against Christian doctrine. But it is true that he will not allow it—or anything—
to count decisively against it; for he is committed by his faith to trust in God. His
attitude is not that of the detached observer, but of the believer.
Perhaps this can be brought out by yet another parable. In time of war in
an occupied country, a member of the resistance meets one night a stranger who
deeply impresses him. They spend that night together in conversation. The
Stranger tells the partisan that he himself is on the side of the resistance—indeed
that he is in command of it, and urges the partisan to have faith in him no matter
what happens. The partisan is utterly convinced at that meeting of the Stranger's
sincerity and constancy and undertakes to trust him.
They never meet in conditions of intimacy again. But sometimes the
Stranger is seen helping members of the resistance, and the partisan is grateful
and says to his friends, "He is on our side." Sometimes he is seen in the uniform
of the police handing over patriots to the occupying power. On these occasions
his friends murmur against him: but the partisan still says, "He is on our side."
He still believes that, in spite of appearances, the Stranger did not deceive him.
Sometimes he asks the Stranger for help and receives it. He is then thankful.
Sometimes he asks and does not receive it. Then he says, "The Stranger knows
best."
Sometimes his friends, in exasperation, say "Well, what would he have to
do for you to admit that you were wrong and that he is not on our side?" But the
partisan refuses to answer. He will not consent to put the Stranger to the test.
And sometimes his friends complain, "Well, it that's what you mean by his being
on our side, the sooner he goes over to the other side the better."
The partisan of the parable does not allow anything to count decisively
against the proposition "The Stranger is on our side." This is because he has
committed himself to trust the Stranger. But he of course recognizes that the
Stranger's ambiguous behaviour does count against what he believes about him.
It is precisely this situation which constitutes the trial of his faith.
 When the partisan asks for help and doesn't get it, what can he do? He
can (a) conclude that the stranger is not on our side or; (b) maintain that he is
on our side, but that he has reasons for withholding help.
The first he will refuse to do. How long can he uphold the second position
without its becoming just silly?
I don't think one can say in advance. It will depend on the nature of the
impression created by the Stranger in the first place. It will depend, too, on the
manner in which he takes the Stranger's behaviour. If he blandly dismisses it as
of no consequence, as having no bearing upon his belief, it will be assumed that
he is thoughtless or insane. And it quite obviously won't do for him to say easily,
"Oh, when used of the Stranger the phrase 'is on our side' means ambiguous
behavior of this sort." In that case he would be like the religious man who says
blandly of a terrible disaster "It is God's will." No, he will only be regarded as
sane and reasonable in his belief, if he experiences in himself the full force of the
conflict.
It is here that my parable differs from Hare's. The partisan admits that
many things may and do count against his belief: whereas Hare's lunatic who
has a blik about dons doesn't admit that anything counts against his blik.
Nothing can count against bliks. Also the partisan has a reason for having in the
first instance committed himself, viz. the character of the Stranger; whereas the
lunatic has no reason for his blik about dons—because, of course, you can't have
reasons for bliks.
This means that I agree with Flew that theological utterances must be
assertions. The partisan is making an assertion when he says, "The Stranger is
on our side."
Do I want to say that the partisan's belief about the Stranger is, in any
sense, an explanation? I think I do. It explains and makes sense of the Stranger's
behaviour: it helps to explain also the resistance movement in the context of
which he appears. In each case it differs from the interpretation which the others
put upon the same facts.
"God loves men" resembles "the Stranger is on our side" (and many other
significant statements, e.g. historical ones) in not being conclusively falsifiable.
They can both be treated in at least three different ways: (1) As provisional
hypotheses to be discarded if experience tells against them; (2) As significant
articles of faith; (3) As vacuous formulae (expressing, perhaps, a desire for
reassurance) to which experience makes no difference and which make no
difference to life.
The Christian, once he has committed himself, is precluded by his faith
from taking up the first attitude: "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." He is
in constant danger, as Flew has observed, of slipping into the third. But he need
not; and, if he does, it is a failure in faith as well as in logic.
ANTONY FLEW
It has been a good discussion: and I am glad to have helped to provoke it.
But now—at least in University—it must come to an end: and the Editors of
University have asked me to make some concluding remarks. Since it is
impossible to deal with all the issues raised or to comment separately upon each
contribution, I will concentrate on Mitchell and Hare, as representative of two
very different kinds of response to the challenge made in "Theology and
Falsification."
The challenge, it will be remembered, ran like this. Some theological
utterances seem to, and are intended to, provide explanations or express
assertions. Now an assertion, to be an assertion at all, must claim that things
stand thus and thus; and not otherwise. Similarly an explanation, to be an
explanation at all, must explain why this particular thing occurs; and not
something else. Those last clauses are crucial. And yet sophisticated religious
people—or so it seemed to me—are apt to overlook this, and tend to refuse to
allow, not merely that anything actually does occur, but that anything
conceivably could occur, which would count against their theological assertions
and explanations. But in so far as they do this their supposed explanations are
actually bogus, and their seeming assertions are really vacuous.
Mitchell's response to this challenge is admirably direct, straightforward,
and understanding. He agrees "that theological utterances must be assertions."
He agrees that if they are to be assertions, there must be something that would
count against their truth. He agrees, too, that believers are in constant danger
of transforming their would-be assertions into "vacuous formulae." But he takes
me to task for an oddity in my "conduct of the theologian's case. The theologian
surely would not deny that the fact of pain counts against the assertion that God
loves men. This very incompatibility generates the most intractable of theological
problems, the problem of evil." I think he is right. I should have made a
distinction between two very different ways of dealing with what looks like
evidence against the love of God: the way I stressed was the expedient of
qualifying the original assertion; the way the theologian usually takes, at first, is
to admit that it looks bad but to insist that there is—there must be—some
explanation which will show that, in spite of appearances, there really is a God
who loves us. His difficulty, it seems to me, is that he has given God attributes
which rule out all possible saving explanations. In Mitchell's parable of the
Stranger it is easy for the believer to find plausible excuses for ambiguous
behaviour: for the Stranger is a man. But suppose the Stranger is God. We
cannot say that he would like to help but cannot: God is omnipotent. We cannot
say that he would help if he only knew: God is omniscient. We cannot say that
he is not responsible for the wickedness of others: God creates those others.
Indeed an omnipotent, omniscient God must be an accessory before (and during)
the fact to every human misdeed; as well as being responsible for every non-
moral defect in the universe. So, though I entirely concede that Mitchell was
absolutely right to insist against me that the theologian's first move is to look for
an explanation, I still think that in the end, if relentlessly pursued, he will have
to resort to the avoiding action of qualification. And there lies the danger of that
death by a thousand qualifications, which would, I agree, constitute "a failure in
faith as well as in logic."
Hare's approach is fresh and bold. He confesses that "on the ground
marked out by Flew, he seems to me to be completely victorious." He therefore
introduces the concept of blik. But while I think that there is room for some such
concept in philosophy, and that philosophers should be grateful to Hare for his
invention, I nevertheless want to insist that any attempt to analyse Christian
religious utterances as expressions or affirmations of a blik rather than as (at
least would-be) assertions about the cosmos is fundamentally misguided. If
Hare's religion really is a blik, involving no cosmological assertions about the
nature and activities of a supposed personal creator, then surely he is not a
Christian at all? Second, because thus interpreted, they could scarcely do the
job they do. If they were not even intended as assertions then many religious
activities would become fraudulent, or merely silly. If "You ought because it is
God's will" asserts no more than "You ought," then the person who prefers the
former phraseology is not really giving a reason, but a fraudulent substitute for
one, a dialectical dud cheque. If "My soul must be immortal because God loves
his children, etc." asserts no more than "My soul must be immortal," than the
man who reassures himself with theological arguments for immortality is being
as silly as the man who tries to clear his overdraft by writing his bank a cheque
on the same account. (Of course neither of these utterances would be
distinctively Christian: but this discussion never pretended to be so confined.)
Religious utterances may indeed express false or even bogus assertions: but I
simply do not believe that they are not both intended and interpreted to be or at
any rate to presuppose assertions, at least in the context of religious practice;
whatever shifts may be demanded, in another context, by the exigencies of
theological apologetic.
One final suggestion. The philosophers of religion might well draw upon
George Orwell's last appalling nightmare 1984 for the concept of doublethink.
"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs
simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The party intellectual knows that
he is playing tricks with reality, but by the exercise of doublethink he also
satisfies himself that reality is not violated" (1984, p. 220). Perhaps religious
intellectuals too are sometimes driven to doublethink in order to retain their faith
in a loving God in face of the reality of a heartless and indifferent world. But of
this more another time, perhaps.
VI. Evaluation (Activity)
Essay
Instruction: Answer the following statement/s or question/s in not less than 10
lines. Write on a 1 whole sheet of yellow pad. NOTE: The upper part of this paper
is where you put your answers from pre-test. Use only one yellow pad.

 In addition to the examples given in the readings, can you cite other
example of assertions that we would want to consider meaningful even
though they do not appear to be falsifiable?
 Choose 1 among the 3 thinkers above and provide a summary of his
arguments. Make sure to use your own words and understanding. Copy
and pasting method is highly discourage.
Rubrics/Criteria for essay:
Originality Grammar & Content of the Essay Total
Consistency of
ideas
10 10 10 30

VII. Application
Essay
Instruction: Answer the following statement/s or question/s in not less than 10
lines. Write on another 1 whole sheet of yellow pad. Use the same yellow pad.
 Whose argument has clearer claims on the idea of God? Explain
 Do you think having verified assertion about God can answer your doubt
in His existence? Why and why not? Explain
Rubrics/Criteria for essay:
Originality Grammar & Content of the Essay Total
Consistency of
ideas
10 10 10 30
VII. Terminologies
None
VIII. Summary
None
Submission
December 15, 2020- Pretest and evaluations
December 22, 2020-applications