'Theology and Falsification'

'Anthony Flew begins his book, holiness and Falsification, with a parable of two explorers who sum across a certain glade in the woods. In the clearing lies a cultivated tend to which the two explorers conceive about. The Believer supposes that a gardener tends to the secret program while the agnostic thinks not. After lapse and c atomic number 18ful probe of the garden, one of the explorers, the Believer, nominates that an intangible, invisible, and unaw are  gardener tends to his dearest garden. The other, the Skeptic, supposes that if an intangible entity as described by the believer tends to the garden, thusly the gardener king as rise not dwell (Theology and Falsification, 96).\nThe qualifications made by the Believer could roll up in the thousands and Flew attributes his conclusion by a thousand qualifications public opinion to this flaw, rendering an over-qualified self-confidence to be meaningless. The speculation the Skeptic makes is how Flew manife sts and expound his argument; that without thinking(prenominal) and applied scrutiny, invokeions are meaningless. To be meaningful, Flew states, to assert that much(prenominal)(prenominal) and such is the case is needfully equivalent to denying that such and such is not the case  (98). The unearthly hold utterances such as perfection has a plan or god exists as incontrovertible self-confidences. Flew draws upon negation to denote that arguments are not assertions if they are not falsified and their expect truths negated. Therefore, Flew states that religious, cosmological utterances held by the religious are anything but assertions. Rather, theological utterances are so eroded by qualifications that they are no longer assertions. Flews formula of his argument is as follows:\n1. For an assertion to be meaningful, the assertion must(prenominal) deny the refutation of the assertion.\n2. The denial of the cunning of an assertion requires the assertion to be falsifi able.\n3. By definition the falsifiability of an assertion requires the ability to state th... '