What are some quotes by Ayer on theology?

Answer

Sir Alfred Jules Ayer (1910-89)
British philosopher, who influenced the development of contemporary analytic philosophy

If the assertion that there is a god is nonsensical, then the atheist's assertion that there is no god is equally nonsensical, since it is only a significant proposition that can be significantly contradicted.
-- A J Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic (1936), quoted from George H Smith, "Defining Atheism." Smith continues: "Unfortunately, Ayer's treatment lacks historical perspective on what atheists have argued for many years. In introducing noncognitivism as a supposed alternative to atheism, Ayer misled a generation of philosophers, for noncognitivism has always been an important weapon in the atheist's arsenal."

Theism is so confused and the sentences in which "God" appears so incoherent and so incapable of verifiability or falsifiability that to speak of belief or unbelief, faith or unfaith, is logically impossible.
-- A J Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic (1936), quoted from Karen Armstrong, A History of God

I take it, therefore, to be a fact, that one's existence ends with death. I think it possible to show how this fact can be emotionally acceptable.
-- A J Ayer, The Humanist Outlook (1968), quoted from Famous Dead Non-theists

Ayer cautioned against confusing his noncognitivist position with atheism. Atheism, which Ayer construed positively as the denial of God's existence, presupposes that the concept of God has meaning. But "if the assertion that there is a god is nonsensical, then the atheist's assertion that there is no god is equally nonsensical, since it is only a significant proposition that can be significantly contradicted."[11]

Unfortunately, Ayer's treatment lacks historical perspective on what atheists have argued for many years. In introducing noncognitivism as a supposed alternative to atheism, Ayer misled a generation of philosophers, for noncognitivism has always been an important weapon in the atheist's arsenal.

For example, the importance of noncognitivism was discussed extensively in the seventeenth century by Ralph Cudworth, whose True Intellectual System of the Universe remains one of the most interesting critiques of atheism ever penned. Some philosophers adopt atheism, Cudworth noted, "because theists themselves acknowledging God to be incomprehensible, it may be from thence inferred, that he is a nonentity." The very notion of an infinite God, atheists maintain, "is utterly inconceivable." Atheists argue that the attributes of God are a "bundle of unconceivables and impossibilities, huddled up together...."[12]

For full text, see http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/smithdef.htm

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