Explain the verification and falsification principles.The problem with religious language is one of meaning. If we are to believe in God, we can only do this if we can use language to talk about it in a meaningful way. If talk of God is nonsense, then surely the idea of God is nonsense.One way of establishing whether or not a statement is meaningful was proposed by A J Ayer, with the verification principle. His view evolved from logical positivism of the Vienna Circle, in the 1920s. Logical Positivists believed that if a statement cannot be confirmed by observation, then it was meaningless. Ayer thought that they had uncovered a major problem with language, and so developed the verification principle in his book Language, truth and logic.Logical positivists argued that the only way to test a statements meaningfulness is if it is true analytically, or synthetically. Analytically true statements are true by definition, and thought alone. For example, A bachelor is an unmarried man. Synthetically true statements are verified through our sense data, for example Dom is a bachelor. They concluded that religious statements were meaningless, as they do not satisfy the criteria. Ayer developed this theory. He believed that empirical methods have to be used to assess whether a proposition is verifiable, and therefore meaningful. He decided that a proposition is meaningful if it is known how to prove it true or false. If we cannot know how to prove something true or false, then the proposition is meaningless. Therefore, as religious propositions cannot be analysed using empirical methods, they are meaningless.The falsification principle maintains a similar approach to religious language as the verification principle. However, it is regarded as a more serious challenge to the meaningfulness of religious language. It originates from Karl Poppers philosophy of science, in which he stated that any theory which is impossible to disprove is meaningless. Flew applied this principle to religious language, concluding that religious statements are meaningless. Flew argued that this was because there is nothing which can count against religious statements. They can neither be proved true (verified), nor false, because religious believers do not accept any evidence to falsify their beliefs. A Christian would hold to their belief that God is good, regardless of the evidence offered against Gods goodness. Flew uses an example of a father desperate to save his child sick with cancer. Although God appears indifferent to the childs suffering, he will continue to qualify his beliefs about Gods love.Flew stated that these constant qualifications render religious statements meaningless because they die the death of a thousand qualifications. He used John Wisdoms Gardener Analogy to prove his point that religious statements are meaningless because they allow nothing to count against their beliefs.In this analogy, there are two explorers who come upon a clearing in the jungle, with many flowers. One explorer believes that there it is the work of a gardener, however the other disagrees. The believer in still convinced there is a gardener there, regardless of the evidence against his beliefs. Similarly, theists behave in the same way. They both render themselves meaningless, as their statements and claims about God are made to fit in any circumstance.