Futilism toward Quran

Introduction

After introducing 5 types of non-common language (metonymy, allusion, allegory, mystic and myth), the present chapter deals with the sixth deals with considering Quran as futile, called in this chapter futilism.
This type is important due to the fact that it is rooted in positivist view and attributing his view to Quran requires removing all Quran teachings and instructions from life.
In the following, the seventh type of non-common language, expressivism and functionalism approaches to Quran will be dealt with.
The Sixth type: Futilism of Quran
There are some new approaches to the language of religion in west which were generalized into the language of Quran and Islam, among them there is the futilism of Quran language.
According to this approach, the sole method appropriate for assessing the reality and trueness of statements; is the experimental method. Thereby religious, philosophical, moral, spiritual statements which are not possible to be experienced are meaningless/useless.
Here the positivist meaning and purpose and the views on the language of religion will be reviewed:
Positivism means to think positively and orientation toward achievement. Different Persian terms have been used for positivism including the philosophy or religion of achievement, attaining, proof, originality of achievement and orientation toward achievement.
The logical positivism, is a philosophical movement that formed after the session of thinkers including the mathematicians and logicians during 1992-1936.
According to the logical positivists, there are only two meaningful groups:
a) Scientific rules and theories about the material world which are assessable experimentally.
b) Analysis elements that are nothing but what logic and mathematic says.
Ayer states that according to positivism, prior to any effort to determine the trueness or falseness of any issue, it should be assessed that the issue is meaningful or not. The standard of meaningfulness is its performability. About the issue he says:
The standard that we use to assess the authenticity of the statements reflecting the reality, is verifiability. We say that a sentence is meaningful to a person when he knows how to experimentally verify the meaning of the sentence; it means that if he knows what observation can guide him in any situation, he can approve or disapprove of a given sentence.

Triple approaches of logical positivism

Logical positivists, all are based on an approach in meaningfulness, but they offered different interpretations of experimental approach:
1. Experimental verifiability: early positivist knew the experimental verifiability as the first requirement of meaning fullness.
2. Experimental confirmability: Hample criticized the verifiability theory. According to him, the outer world never can prove the trueness of an issue, and if an issue is assessed in the material world, it is verified more and more. The more the verifications increase, they can prove nothing; and there is the possibility that if that issue is assessed in another situation, time and place, it will be disconfirmed, therefore by the high number of confirmations, no logical conclusion can be made. Thereby, Hample emphasizes the influenceability instead of verifiability. Therefore a sentence is meaningful that is experimentally verifiable.
3. Experimental Nullifiability: Pauper even regarded verifiability as nonsense and said what the material world is unable to do, is to reject or nullify a statement, thus if a statement has not been nullified for 200 years, it can’t be said that the statement is approved of, and none can claim its trueness. The material world at most can convert the potential nulifiability into actual nulifiability. The successful statement is the one which does not reach the nullification process. Thereby whether a statement is meaningful that it opposite can be attainable, it means that it is required to prove its opposite in the material world.

Examples of meaningless statements

The logical positivists, due to the need for experimental attainability of meaningful statements, has regarded some statements as meaningless, in short, the logical positivists’ view on evidences of meaningless fields are as below:
1. Metaphysics
The claims and rules about the supernatural metaphysics because of their lack of experimental verifiability are non-instructive/meaningless, therefore they are of no news/use about the material world.
2. Morality
Moral rules are regarded as meaningless by the logical positivists. Carnape and Ayer believed that there is nothing as moral rule. The rule “to rob something is bad” neither is an experimental issue nor is there any relation between robbery and supernatural field. This rule talks of our feelings about robbery (the feeling to not approve of robbery) or according to some positivists, it is an attempt to prevent from robbery.
3. Religious Statements:
The same as philosophical and moral issues, religious items are also regarded non-instructive for the lack of experimental verifiability.
About the logical positivism’s views on the basis of meaningfulness standard and about the adapting such views to Quran components, there are different criticisms including:
1. The sentence “the sole path to assess the trueness of statements the experimental one”, is proposition that is not experimentally proven, therefore it is a paradox.
The experimental method has philosophical and rational bases such as causality, and the reality of the world and the transformation of two opposite issues collection.
3. Quran statements are not all news, but some of them are compositions which are impossible to be experienced.
4. Many Quran statements are testable, such as man’s physical and psychological health which influences the health of body, soul, spirit and also the society. For instance the below verses are experimentally analyzable:
The relation between saying prayer and decrease in wrong-doing:
“إِنَّ الصَّلاَةَ تَنْهَى‏ عَنِ الْفَحْشَاءِ وَالْمُنكَرِ”, “(for) the prayer prevents from ugly and inappropriate deeds”.
-the relation between remembering God and spiritual calmness and psychological health:
“أَلاَ بِذِكْرِ اللَّهِ تَطْمَئِنُّ الْقُلُوبُ”, “beware that heart calms through God’s remembrance”.
-the relation between honey and the cure of diseases
“فِيهِ شِفَاءٌ لِلنَّاسِ”, “in that there is people’s cure”.
5. Damage to the authenticity of natural sciences materials
Accepting positivism not only damage the religion, morality, metaphysics, but also it damages experimental sciences theories; since experimental sciences theories are some general rules that are expressed by general causes, though no general issue is experienceable.
6. The impossibility of certain nullification of any scientific theory
According to Chalmers, the evident statement of “all swans are white” will be nullified if a swan is found which is not white. But this simple example hides the problem of futilism from us which is caused by the complexity of real assessments status. The previous example is single evidence, however the real scientific theory, includes a collection of general issues. Additionally experimental assessment of a theory to nullify it; solely is not achieved via trying the foundations of the theory, and it is required to consider the relation of the theory with auxiliaries such as rules and theories determining how used instruments should function. Besides what mentioned, to do forecasts which their authenticity should be assessed in laboratory, it is required to provide the elementary conditions such as description of laboratory instruments.
7. Nullifiability theory prevents the development of scientific theories.
According to Chalmers, if nullifiability was totally followed, those theories which are regarded as best scientific theories would not develop, and would be departed in the beginning, he states that:
Considering each instance of classic scientific theories, both in its beginning and after it, it is possible to find some observational claims which at that time were publically acceptable but were in opposition, however those theories were not departed and it is good for the science that did not reject them. Some historical example will be reviewed in the following:
Newton’s Gravity theory was nullified in the first years of its development for the observation of month orbit; it almost took 50 years this nullification was removed from Newton’s theory for some reasons. Then the theory was inconsistent with the details of Mercury orbit, though scientists did not departed the theory. Eventually it was proved that never the justification and interpretation of this nullification was not possible in a manner to exempt Newton’s theory.
8. General meaninglessness of philosophical claims including the attainability theory
Due to attainability theory, what isn’t experimentally provable, it is meaningless. To accept the said rule, requires the meaninglessness of the theory itself; since the theory provides a general rule which is not experimentally provable.
9. The theory is challenged with mathematical rules
Positivists’ problem is criticized by mathematical issues which their solvation and explanation are done through rational concepts. Mathematical rules neither are experimentally provable nor are regarded as analytical. Thus they should be meaningless. On the other hand, to see mathematical relations and rules, is not acceptable at all to any scientist.
10. To be nullifiable is a standard for separating scientific rules from the impractical ones, not for separating meaningful ones from the meaningless
Whether the nullifiability standard is approved of, it can’t be an acceptable standard for separating meaningful statements from those meaningless. But according to what is stated by Poier in the book “the logic of scientific explorations”, this standard at most can recognize those scientific materials from non-scientific ones, and to be non-scientific doesn’t mean meaningless.
11. Dissolution as the most significant basis of ontology
Accepting this theory, the firmest foundation of knowledge which is presence-based knowledge will be damaged, accordingly there is no rational explanation for proving the trueness of the understanding and its conformity with its reality. Therefore the positivists are to offer another definition of real knowing. They describe facts as what is known by others and is experimentally provable. However to forge a new relation can’t solve the problem of understanding value, and if the new rule is accepted by some people who don’t consider the above said problem, it won’t give them any credit or authenticity.
12. The claim to regard metaphysical rules and materials as nonsense and meaningless, is a false and inappropriate claim, since if the concepts used in metaphysics are regarded as meaningless, these concepts will be no more than some nonsensical terms and their negation and proving will be simple, though fire is the cause of heat is true, yet its contrariwise is not. Even someone who has not understood the origins of a cause, he will deny that he has understood its meaning.
Seventh Type: Quran Expressivism and functionalism
According to this view, instead of paying attention to meaningfulness of Quran, it is proper to focus on language functions. Therefore we should not try to describe the world, the value of an explanation lies in what is done with it and each field (art, morality, religion, science and philosophy) should follow a strategy which is appropriate due to its aims. Each linguistic types, is of its own regulations and religion’s language has no realism and narration.
The language of religion, has non-instructive functions and the sentence “there is a God”, reflects the reality of man’s ideals and nothing beyond it. Belief produces no new science but it creates a new being. The language of religion reminds of commitment as it is done by love language…..
About expressivism, Dr. Sajedi writes: the expressivism theory about the language of religion; is a non-instructive approach.
According to expressivist theory of religion’s language, all the religious factor and Quran statement solely represent some specific emotion into religious people and the provide no real fact or anything but inner-feelings. For example, the belief in “God is the creator of heaven and earth”, solely represents a kind of fear and amazement that comes to man when he observes the grandeur of nature, or the sentence “God has predetermined salvation, misery, reward or punishment for each person” only reflects man’s poorness and inability to determine his own destiny and the feeling is shown through this sentence or the sentence “God observes men’s deeds and looks upon they do” points to the man’s feeling of peace, calmness and security in the material word. Such sentences are poetic expressions that reflect the inner feelings of people (and they don’t reflect the real world): for example the man can express absurdity feeling through the sentence “life is a moving shadow” instead of saying “O shame on me”, however uttering the former will not reflect the reality.