Religion As The Inexpressible Summary

The question of the existence of a divine being, a cosmic higher, is troublesome not only to answer, but the formulation of it to start with. It seems an impossible task to attempt at answering a question which isn’t fully formed, or one that doesn’t exactly convey what we are trying to express. In his essay ‘Religion as the Inexpressible’, Thomas McPherson categorises religion to the ‘sphere of the unsayable’, arguing that this is a natural result of trying to put inexpressible experiences into words.

So how come we still rely on religion for answers, if religion itself cannot be explained, reasoned, or justified? Alisdair MacIntyre explains this by saying that “to ask for reasons for or a justification of religious belief is not to have …show more content…
Clifford argues that a belief will eventually manifest itself into an action, and when this action has been executed it is right or wrong forever. He argues that an unjustified belief, such as a religious belief, can never save anyone from suffering the consequences of what those beliefs brought about. Clifford exemplifies this through an analogy of a ship owner who trusted his ungrounded belief that his ship was fit for sail, he even put his trust in the ship itself, which failed and went down mid-ocean. Clifford holds that the ship owner is to blame for the unjust fate of the travellers on the ship, as he never sought out a reason for trusting the safety of the …show more content…
Bertrand Russell holds that religious belief should be rejected because it is not supported by argument. Religious propositions are sometimes thought to be neither analytic nor synthetic, meaning that they are not truth apt; they do not contain truth in themselves or in relation to the world within which they exist. Furthermore, the logical positivist movement states since religious beliefs are not susceptible to empirical verification they are nonsensical. Thus, Russell and the logical positivists hold that religious belief can never be