Religious language

Whether finite human words, learned from limited things, can say anything true about an infinite God.

Keep a word's ordinary meaning and God shrinks to human size; keep God infinite and the word goes empty.

No — it arises even if God exists: can our human words describe such a being at all?

A word that points beyond itself to a deeper reality it can't fully capture — 'God is a rock' means steadiness, not geology.

Describing God in terms of something else to open a truth — 'the Lord is my shepherd' is about care, not sheep.

A story that carries deep meaning without being read as literal history — a creation story teaching the world is a gift.

Religious language was symbol, metaphor and myth all along — so the problem only bites if you insist it be literal.

If God-talk is only a symbol, we must still show it can be TRUE or false — or it stops making a real claim.

The view that a statement is meaningful only if it's true by definition or checkable by experience (Ayer).

True by definition (all bachelors are unmarried) OR checkable by experience (it's raining). Anything else is meaningless.

It's neither true by definition nor checkable, so it's not false but meaningless — it makes no real claim.

False = a real claim that's wrong. Meaningless = not even a claim, so nothing to argue about. Ayer says God-talk is the second.

You can defend a claim, but it's far harder to defend a sentence declared not a claim at all.

Apply the rule to itself: it's neither true by definition nor checkable, so by its own test it's meaningless.

The atheist says God-talk is a false claim; Ayer says it isn't a claim at all — meaningless, not false.

Taken strictly it also wipes out ethics, history and other minds — things we clearly find meaningful.

Analogy (Aquinas), language games (Wittgenstein), and eschatological verification (Hick).

God-words are used in a related, in-between way — like 'healthy' person vs meal — keeping real meaning without shrinking God.

It's the missing middle between 'exactly human meaning' (shrinks God) and 'totally different' (empties the word).

A way of using words that makes sense within a shared practice; religious language is meaningful in its own game, not science's.

'God exists' is a real claim, checkable in principle after death — like travellers who learn at the road's end where it led.

Aquinas reworks HOW words mean; Wittgenstein changes WHERE they mean; Hick changes WHEN they can be checked.

Aquinas and Hick keep God-talk as a real claim about how things are; Wittgenstein relocates its meaning into practice.

The problem (can words reach God?) → the sharp attack (verificationism: meaningless) → the answers (analogy, language game, verified after death).