Verifiability and the Existence of God

When debates about the existence of God arise in the course of public discourse, usually non-believers will assert that God is a meaningless concept. “How can we possibly even put ourselves into a position to know whether or not God exists?” they ask. Then the believer usually claims “have faith” and the discussion reaches no satisfactory resolution. Is there a way to avoid this? I believe there is, but unfortunately I will not be expanding on that idea here. Instead, in this article, my focus is going to be on the philosophical underpinnings, usually called verificationism, of what most non-believers use when they assert that “God is a meaningless concept.” I will do this by explaining what the verification theory of meaning is, and then show how using this philosophical position implies that God is a meaningless concept. I will not be judging here whether verificationism is true or false, only what it is, and how it pertains to the God debate. I will admit, however, that the view is attractive to me, even if only in a limited sense.

Background

Alfred Jules Ayer wrote his book Language, Truth & Logic in 1936, when he was just twenty six years old. Quite an amazing feat, considering he was only two years older than I am currently. The book caused an uproar in the philosophical community, for it asserted that, if the verification theory of meaning was accepted, much of what passed for philosophy was nonsensical gibberish. Obviously this would not set well with the main group he was attacking, that of the metaphysicians. However, simply because many people may have been excluded under its criterion, it does not follow that he was wrong. What will be more productive is to look at what Ayer actually had to say about verificationism itself.

Verification Theory of Meaning

Ayer begins his exposition by first defining what the verification theory of meaning actually is. In his words, “The criterion with which we use to test the genuineness of apparent statements of fact is the criterion of verifiability. We say that a sentence is factually significant to any given person, if and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express-that is, if he knows what observations would lead him, under certain conditions, to accept the proposition as being true, or reject is as being false.” What he means by this is that in order for any genuine assertion to have any meaning at all (factually significant), it must be verifiable, which is to say some sort of observation(s) must have an affect on its truth value.

Practically and Principally

Next Ayer makes a distinction between what he calls “practical” and “principle” verifiability. For a claim to be practically verifiable, it must be something that is not overly difficult to observe, or read about someone else observing. For example, if I claim that Barack Obama is the 44^th President of the United States, it can easily be verified with public records. By principally, Ayer means it is “theoretically possible” that observations could be made that would have an effect on the truth value of a claim, even if those observations are not available at the present moment. For this, the example of mountains on the moon is used. “No rocket has yet been invented which would enable me to go and look at the farther side of the moon, so that I am unable to decide the matter by actual observation. But I do know what observations would decide it for me if, as is theoretically conceivable, I were once in a position to make them.” Also keep in mind, this book was written in 1936, if the example is bothersome.

Strong and Weak

Ayer further delineates between “strong” and “weak” verifiability. To be strongly verifiable, observations must conclusively establish that an assertion is true. Weakly, observations could only decrease or increase probability, but never conclusively so. He rejects strong verifiability due to the fact that most of science is done in a weakly verifiable way, and if conclusive were accepted, science would have to be as meaningless as metaphysical and religious assertions. Clearly, Ayer does not want that result. He also rejects falsifiability (the view that some statements can definitely be proved false based certain observations) because it cannot be used conclusively either.

The Meaningless of God

As is becoming clearer, this view will eliminate much of human thought as neither true nor false, but simply meaningless. Moral judgments are rendered obsolete. What room is left for God? Ayer claims that “For if the existence of such a god were probable, then the proposition that he existed would be an empirical hypothesis. And in that case, it would be possible to deduce from it, and other empirical hypotheses, certain experiential propositions which were not deducible from those other hypotheses alone. But in fact this is not possible.” Are there any direct observations that would lead one to say it was more probable that God existed, and less probable that he did not? God is often described as being imperceptible and beyond the reach of the current human capacity to observe the world. Therefore, I see no direct observations that would lead to an increase or decrease in the probably of the existence of God.

I want to quickly return to Ayer’s assertion that the concept of God is meaningless. There is a possibility for confusion here. Ayer is not asserting that God does or does not exist. He is asserting that the whole idea of God is completely and utterly nonsensical. He even points this out, stating “For if the assertion that there is a god is nonsensical, then the atheist’s assertion that there is no god is equally nonsensical, since it is only a significant proposition that can be significant contradicted.” He continues, pointing out “An interesting feature of this conclusion is that it accords with what many theists are accustomed to say themselves. For we are often told the nature of God is a mystery which transcends the human understanding. But to say that something transcends the human understanding is to say that it is unintelligible. And what is unintelligible cannot be significantly described.” In other words, when theists assert that “The Lord works in mysterious ways” and is “beyond our comprehension” Ayer believes they are actually expressing agreement with his conclusion.

Summation

So in the future, when an atheist asserts that God does not exist, it implicitly assumes that God is a meaningful concept and one which can be discussed. And when a theist asserts that God is unintelligible to human beings, the non-believer can simply smile, knowing the theist has agreed with the verification theory of meaning, most likely without even realizing it. Since I am undecided on whether I agree with this view, I will end this article here.