I ask, can non-realism do any better? I want to suggest that the question "Does God exist?" is a product of the mistaken assumptions of theological realism - by which I mean the view that God should be thought of as an "extra entity" over and above the persons and things encountered in ordinary life. By implication the issue is one of fact: if you say that there is a God and there isn't, or if you say that there isn't a God and there is, then in either case you have got your facts wrong.
Now having carped at those who meet assertion with counter-assertion it behoves me not to come up with counter-assertions of my own. My purpose is not to assert anything but simply to invite you to reflect on what is involved in the notion of religious commitment.
Many such reflections already exist, particularly in the writings of Don Cupitt. In brief, commitment is not genuinely religious if it involves submission to some external authority. If a powerful ruler presides over everything, it may indeed be prudent to enlist in his service, but it would be a misleading use of language to describe such commitment as "religious". Secondly, if commitment is to be religious it needs to be unconditional. Marriage is for some people a commitment of this kind - not something that they are entitled to give up, as of right, as soon as it becomes inconvenient. The committed person is saying, like Job, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him" (Job 15, xiii). Questions of fact are irrelevant.
There is a further consideration - not indeed a new one but one which has somewhat fallen into neglect. This is the issue of "verification" as discussed by the logical positivists in the 1930s. In some of its versions the "verification principle" was clearly open to objection, but its important message remains: that we should be careful not to use language in a self-defeating way. This is an issue I now wish to explore.
In the past - perhaps before about the 17th century - no distinction was drawn between language which reported matters of fact and language used for other purposes: for proclamation, for edification, and so on. The four gospels illustrate this point: we are nowadays inclined to say that they are proclamations rather than records of historical fact. At the time when they were written, however, it seems highly unlikely that either the authors or their readers drew any such distinction.
Now that we do make the distinction, however - albeit, in the case of some of us, with reservations - it is important that we should work out the consequences. We owe to Wittgenstein the idea that using language is in some respects like playing a game - and games have to be played according to the rules. The risk is that, all unwittingly, we sometimes break the rules.
I have defined a theological realist as one who makes claims about questions of fact. Anyone, however, who makes claims about questions of fact is tied by certain rules. In particular there is the obligation to specify what observations are the "pay-off" ones - what are the events that would make the claim in question definitely true. If one sees a puppet on a stage one can make the inference that a puppeteer behind the scenes is pulling the strings. Here one will achieve the pay-off observation if one walks behind the scenes and comes face to face with the puppeteer.
If, however, the issue is that of "inferring the existence of God", the analogy with the puppeteer behind the scenes will not work. It is incumbent on theological realists to indicate what the pay-off observation will be: the equivalent of meeting the puppeteer. If God was a person with a beard and lived beyond the clouds there would be no problem: the rules of the language game would be the same as those in which people discuss the existence or non-existence of the Loch Ness monster. However, theological realists assure us that these are crude and child-like conceptions of God: there is "something there" but not anything that anyone could ever observe. I invite you to reflect on whether this form of words serves any purpose.
We are often told that there is merit in open-mindedness. Perhaps after all, it may be said, there is such a power and we are being arrogant and dogmatic to say that there is not. To argue in this way, however, is to miss the point. There is indeed merit in open-mindedness - but not in muddle-headedness! The objection to theological realism is not that it is factually wrong (and must therefore give place to atheism) but that it involves a breach of linguistic rules: to profess to be a theist or an atheist in the traditional sense without indicating what is the "pay-off" observation is to use words in a self-defeating way. We can do better than assertion and counter-assertion if we reflect carefully on what we wish our words to achieve.
One of my central aims here has been to invite you to reflect more carefully on the differences between fact-stating language on the one hand and the language of religious commitment on the other. It is absence of such reflection which has led to the apparently insoluble dispute between "theism" and "atheism".
Tim Miles is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Wales, Bangor, and a Quaker. This is the text of a short talk given at last year's SoF Conference under the title "Assertion and Counter-Assertion: Can Non-Realism Do Any Better?" Short shrift I was somewhat surprised at the disproportionate amount of space given to different speakers in your coverage of the annual conference - over five pages to Don Cupitt's closing address, three-and-a-half to the Buddhist contribution, and three paragraphs each summarising the two major addresses by Karen Armstrong and Hugh Dawes, under "Workshops and Talkshops" (which they were not).