I propose in this essay to take a new look at an issue in the philosophy of religion that is now some twenty years old, viz. the so-called "theology and falsification" issue. Religious believers have always assumed that such theological statements as "An omnipotent and loving God exists" were meaningful assertions that describe the world in factual terms. But in i95 ol Anthony Flew challenged this assumption. In a symposium with R. M. Hare and Basil Mitchell which was widely read when it was reprinted in New Essays in Philosophical Theology (I955), 2 Flew argued that typical theological statements are not assertions at all, i.e. are not the kinds of utterances which can describe the world or which can be either true or false. They assert nothing.
II
Let us first be clear on the nature of Flew's criticism of theological statements.
We must begin with a definition -let us say that a statement is an "assertion" and is "cognitively meaningful" if and only if it makes a genuine factual claim about the state of the world, if it is the kind of utterance that can describe how the world is. Thus the statement, "The item on the table is a piece of chalk" is a genuine assertion, but "Shut the door!" and "Hurray for our team!" are not. These utterances describe nothing in the world -the first gives an order and the second vents an emotion -neither makes a factual claim. They are, then, cognitively meaningless utterances.
1 The "Theology and Falsification" exchange first appeared in the now defunct journal University (i 95o-I). 2 A. Flew and A. MaeIntyre, New Essays in Philosophical Theology (London: SCM Press, I955), pp. 96-I3o.