Different people have different experiences in which shape their opinion about god. We have the believer and the disbelievers. Flew is one of the disbelievers who tries to prove the fantasy of god. He successfully questions theory of god by using the Verificationist Theory of Meaning, the gardener parable, picture preference, the problem of evil, and statements about god.
There are great deal of hypothetical statements the trick is to know how to distinguish between a false meaning and a confirmed one. The method that is used to verify and falsify meanings of statement is the Verificationist Theory of Meaning. We as a society use this type of technique to differentiate between what is true and what is phony in a declarative statement. For instant if one would to say “I am holding a book in my hand”. The meaning of this statement can either be verified or falsified by the Verification Theory. One can verify the meaning of this statement by saying that there is actually the book in that person hand. Therefore the meaning of that statement would be true because one can prove the proclamation to be correct by seeing that there is actually a book in that person’s hand. A false statement would be the one that the mean
The connection between belief in the gardener and belief in god is what is called picture preference. (Flew part 2) The believer clings to the idea of god so strongly that they ignore everything else. They might ignore or deny the evidence that are very clear to others but is too painful or frightening for them to comprehend. It is easier for the follower to believe in god rather than acknowledge the facts of none existence of god because it would be to frightening and to painful therefore they chose not to accept it.
Flew uses the problem of evil to question the existence of god. “God loves us as a father loves his children” (Flew part 3) If that was sow how come there is so much evil in the world. Flew uses the example of a child dying from inoperable cancer. An earthly father would do anything in his power to cure the child if he loved the child. (Flew part 5) But if god loves the child like an earthly father so why doesn’t god cure the child or take away the pain? The believer may say that god is testing our faith or this is just part of gods plan. If god is considered to be all loving but there is so much evil in the world. “Just what would had to happen not merely (morally and wrongly) to tempt but also (logically and rightly) to entitled us to say “God does not loves us” or even God doesn’t
Example Essays Home
