Component 2 religious language: the via negativa, the verification and falsification debate (Ayer, Flew, Hare, Mitchell, Hick), analogy and symbol (Aquinas, Ramsey, Tillich), and Wittgenstein's language games, with strengths and weaknesses.

A part (a) AO1 question on the five-band scheme. Explain the debate accurately.

Flew (drawing on Wisdom's parable of the gardener) argues that religious statements are meaningless because believers allow nothing to count against them: "God loves us" is qualified to death whenever evidence of suffering appears, so it "dies the death of a thousand qualifications" and asserts nothing. Hare replies with "bliks": religious statements express a blik, an unfalsifiable but meaningful way of seeing the world (his lunatic who thinks all dons want to murder him), which matters even though it makes no factual claim. Mitchell replies with the parable of the partisan and the stranger: the believer, like the partisan who trusts the stranger despite ambiguous evidence, treats "God loves us" as a meaningful factual claim held on trust, not immune to evidence but not abandoned at the first difficulty. A top band answer states Flew's challenge and both replies accurately.

A part (b) AO2 question; the top band rewards balanced argument and a justified conclusion.

For the view: Ayer's verification principle holds that a statement is meaningful only if it is analytic or empirically verifiable; "God exists" is neither, so it is meaningless; Flew adds that believers let nothing falsify their claims. Against: the verification principle is self-refuting (it is itself neither analytic nor verifiable); it is too narrow (it rules out ethics, history and the principle itself); Hare, Mitchell and Hick (eschatological verification, the Celestial City) show religious language is meaningful; and analogy (Aquinas), symbol (Tillich) and language games (Wittgenstein) explain how it functions non-literally. Weigh whether the cognitivist or non-cognitivist account is stronger, and conclude.