A.J. Ayer makes it clear that metaphysical claims are nonsense which should be devoted to the flames, but his discussion on theology and God is one that I find to be most interesting. Growing up in a Southern Baptist Church, I have heard a plethora of “reasonings” for God being real, and most of which lead me to later refute the teachings I’d heard my whole life. While Ayer provides a rather happy medium when discussing with a theologist, I can’t help but find an issue with his stance based on personal experience.

For Ayer, any metaphysical premises are nonsense. They should be committed to flames as they have no meaning. They have no meaning because they have no evidence. That is, they have no empirical evidence, nothing we can gather from observation to prove or disprove the statement, nor are they analytic truths, which for Ayer are mere tautologies. Let’s look at an example to guide us through this discussion: “There are mountains on the far side of the moon.” Now, Ayer says we can find knowledge empirically to verify a claim, and for this example, we can look in a telescope and look for mountains on the far side of the moon. If they are there, we can verify it to be true, but if they aren’t, then we can find it to be false. However, for analytic truths, our best example can be seen in math. 2+2=4 is an analytic truth, which is a tautology or an a priori proposition. To be 4 means you are the sum of 2 and 2, and to look at 2+2 is to understand that the answer is 4. For Ayer, when you put God in the equation, you come out with nonsense. If we look at “god exists” we can find that this cannot be a tautology because a tautology is an a priori truth, which means we can know it before experience. We can look into tautologies and find further tautologies, like above with 2+2=4; however, we cannot do that with “god exists.” Furthermore, we open the door to even more questions when we assert there can be empirical evidence of such, which is where my issue begins to grow. Ayer uses nature as an example next, one that is quite common in the Southern Baptist sphere, and one that is meant to provide empirical evidence: “God exists because nature is so beautiful” or more commonly stated “I know God exists because I look out in my backyard and see the trees and the sunsets.” For Ayer, this simply boils down to equating god with a requisite regularity in nature, which is perfectly fine as long as that was the intention; however, this is not what religious people are saying when they make the statement. When making this claim, religious people mean to say that god is a transcendental force capable of creating the beauty seen in nature, and the existence of such beauty in nature is enough “evidence” to prove that god is indeed real. Another example of (a lack of) empirical evidence can be seen in the use of a testimony. A testimony is done when you decide to dedicate your life to god and refute the ways of the world. You prepare your testimony, which is essentially a laundry list of your sins in life and how you got to believing in god and dedicating your life to him, and tell the congregation before being baptized. Nine times out of ten, this testimony will follow along the lines of going from extreme to extreme, like going from being reliant on drugs and alcohol to being reliant on praying -- the equating of praying to a drug is essential if addiction is a part of your story. These testimonies are seen as empirical evidence for religious people. They see the change in life as the empirical evidence to support the belief that God exists. “God changed my life around and only He could cause such a big difference in my life.” When in reality, they got sober and were then capable of leading a “normal” life, or they got a degree that made it possible for them to have an income and change their financial state. There is empirical evidence to support a difference in their lives, but they are meaning to attribute this difference to a transcendental being. Where is the empirical evidence that a transcendental being was the cause and not their own doing? My final claim for empirical evidence, one that is incredibly popular among the religious, is prayers. “I prayed for x and I got x”. This is the same as the previous example. Yes, there can be empirical evidence that a change happened overtime, whether it is a change for the better or worse; however, where is the evidence that this change was perpetuated by a transcendental being rather than time, or science, or your own doing? A religious person is always intending to mean a metaphysical, transcendental meaning with their assertions, which I will delve into further shortly.

In a slightly different aspect, there are also the claims that revolve around feeling. It is said almost every single Sunday: “You can feel god in this room with us.” However, for Ayer, these can be neither true nor false due to the fact you’re simply expressing your emotions. You are not necessarily saying “God exists” in a way that alludes to a physical entity, but that you feel something tantamount to god. Once more, that is not what a religious person would be asserting, they always, in my experience, mean the transcendental god is in the room with each and everyone of them also in the room. They mean that he is simultaneously with them all and able to provide them with a feeling to validate their experience -- which is clearly metaphysical nonsense. Ayer uses his ideas of emotivism to provide religious people comfort regarding expressing their “religious” premises; however, this is where my issue flourishes. As I’ve continued to point out, religious people, God fearing/believing people, are always referring to god in a mystic, metaphysical, transcendental way. It is always nonsense. For the Southern Baptist belief, anytime you mention “God” you are mentioning this transcendental three-in-one. God is an unintelligible conglomeration of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We are taught that God the Father impregnated a virgin mystically, he simply said it and it was so, and then from that virgin came God the Son, who is referred to as Jesus when referring to the physical man -- which is a whole different story and essay entirely -- and then you have God the Holy Spirit who lives within each of us when we pray away our sins and refute our Earthly ways and dedicate ourselves to Him -- the three-in-one. This is why a religious person is always speaking metaphysical nonsense -- their religion is metaphysical nonsense. (A harsh statement from a recovering Southern Baptist Christian, but true based on personal experience nonetheless.) I appreciate Ayer’s comfort in their propositions being neither true nor false, but in dealing with and listening to Southern Baptist believers, it is not quite that easy.

In conclusion, I, as a metaphysician, thoroughly enjoyed Ayer’s comments and ideas on theology and god. I like the idea that there is comfort for a theist in their propositions being neither true nor false; however, I know from experience that it does not bring them comfort at all. Because they, in the Southern Baptist Church, mean god in a metaphysical, transcendental, omniscient way and never anything less. Nonetheless, I shall remember this lack of verifiability when the holidays come around and I spend more time with my Southern Baptist family.