A.J. Ayer

A.J. Ayer

1. Atheist

   • Started atheist. Had near death experience. Re-evaluated and questioned belief. Concluded still atheist. 
   • No possibility of demonstrating the existence of God
   • No Empirical proposition can be used.
     • Priori proposition can be used but these are tautologies
       • Priori proposition -  known independent of experience. Truth that can be grasped without justification from the character of the subject’s experience 
       • Tautologies - something said in different ways e.g. they arrived one after the other, in succession. 
       • There is a god/there isn’t a god are not propositions
         • Moralist and Agnostic views can be ignored
     • If God existed then an empirical Hypotheses could be used
       • Empirical hypotheses - comes to life when a theory is put to the test using observation and experimentation 
       • Arguments made based on observations in nature
         • For example mathematical regularity in a bee hive or symmetry of a flower.
         • “There is thunder so Jehovah is angry”
           • Awe of natural processes they cannot understand
     • What are God’s Attrubutes
       • God is coined with afterlife
         • The assertion that man has a soul is metaphysical and has no more factual content than “there is a God”