What is Religious Language? And how can we truly understand it?

When starting this topic we looked at code breaking... and I can safely say I think it was the most fun I've ever had in a lesson for quite some time! And when getting onto more topic specific things such as scholars, I found Ferdinand de Saussure's idea of semiotics very interesting as well. The three main things to grasp in semiotics are the Sign, the Signifier and the Signified. The first, is a label that we give something which enables us to communicate about it. The second is the form that the Sign takes. So by using an apple as an example, 'apple' would be the sign, and depending on the kind of apple of course, one might say that as well as the attributes the object has, such as green/red skin, stalk and general roundish shape, the Signifier of it is the way in which we pronounce that particular thing, e.g. A-P-P-L-E. And finally the concept that one is left with, which is the Signified, is the final result of both Sign and Signifier that come together in a coherent idea that allows people to talk about and understand what the apple is.

However, as Kant pointed out, some things in this world that can be talked about such as time, and cause and effect don't need Semiotics to explain them. He called these things Conceptual Schemes. For, within these things, the innate ideas of them are compatible with everyone's understanding, despite the fact that time is something we've implemented to help us understand the world. When really time is subjective to different people, and doesn't necessarily work in the way we've made it. So, concept schemes are produced by the imagination in relation to time, as humans tend to have a need to produce an anthropocentric view of the world.

Now, the real reason that religious language is necessary is so we can participate in 'God-talk', which is the ability to be able to talk about God in a meaningful and coherent manner. The two sides that represent a kind of 'For' and 'Against' when trying to decide whether 'God-talk' is meaningful or not, are the Centuries old traditional religious believers who believe that you can speak and write about God, because God is a part of reality. And on the other hand, are the Logical Positivists and those that they influence who claim that statements about God have no meaning, because they don't relate to anything in reality. A possible explanation of this might be the epistemic distance that is sometimes described to exist between God and humans, because due to this we would potentially never be able to understand God as a part of our world and would therefore make it impossible to make any statements about God that have any real meaning. However, although the Logical Positivists are using empirical reasoning and Cognitive Language, which are factual statements that are proved either true or false, religious statements may still have value and meaning. This is because, although Non-Cognitive Language such as religious statements cannot be verified, they cannot be falsified either, which suggests to me that perhaps they should be treated as though they have meaning until proved incorrect. In addition to this, because Non-Cognitive Language includes things such as symbols, it can still be very meaningful to a religious believer. Furthermore, it is then free from scrutiny from people who criticise religious language, as it seems as though art and symbols can evoke a different kind of emotion and connection to God than what can be explained by just religious language alone.