the legitimicy of the belief in god in carnapian philosophical framework

Carnap, the most prominent logical positivist, has a famous sentence that metaphysics is nonsense. at the first glance, it seems that any religious belief, especially the belief in god, is illegitimate according to carnap’s philosophical principles. since carnap holds the same view regarding the meaningfulness of ethical beliefs and at the same time regards ethical behaviour valuable, it looks that at its best in carnapian framework it might be reasonable to value following religions as well and rejecting any kind of religious belief simultaneously. the main claim of this article is that contrary to such superficial judgment, though the belief in philosophers’ god has no place in carnap’s philosophical framework, the belief in religions’ god is totally consistent with his philosophical principles. for carnap, experience is the only source of knowledge and any judgement that is not rooted in empirical evidences is epistemically meaningless. all empirical propositions are probable and in claims about facts of matter there is no place for any logical certainty. however, it is reasonable to believe and be certain about the truth of empirical sentences. here it will be shown that we can establish our belief in religious factual claims including claims about god in the same way that carnap establishes his belief in the claims of natural sciences