Examine how the falsification and verification principles challenge the meaningfulness of religious language

To prove that religious language is meaningless, Ayer and Flew each developed a principle, one being the Verification Principle and the other being the Falsification Principle. A.J. Ayer’s Verification principle says that statements are only meaningful if they can be proven true or false. He said that ‘if it is not analytic and cannot be tested then best call it cognitively meaningless’. This means that a statement is not analytic (not true by definition) such a ‘a bachelor is unmarried’ or ‘a wife is married’ then it is not meaningful.

Flew developed Popper’s theory of falsification into his own falsification principle which says that if one piece of evidence can be presented against a statement then it can be falsified and is meaningful. To illustrate his point, Flew adapted Wisdom’s parable of the garden and the invisible gardener. In this parable, two men are debating whether a gardener comes to look after the garden; both men perceive it differently. because they have different bliks, a concept introduced by Hare which refers to the unique ways individuals perceive the world. We will not allow anyone to challenge the way we view the world, likewise, religious believers will not allow anyone to challenge their beliefs.