One unit, one argument — asked in four different registers. Whatever a scholar's answer, they are all wrestling with the same worry: that talk about God might not mean anything at all.
Can talk about God be meaningful at all?
Every debate in this unit lines up on the same axis — from meaningless (the challenges destroy religious language completely) to meaningful, in many registers (cognitive, non-cognitive, analogical, symbolic). Pick a sub-topic, then tap a position to see what it claims.
Tap a circle — or use Tab and Enter — to explore each position.
The four sub-topics don't argue in isolation. Three questions run through all of them — spot the thread and you're writing at the top of the mark scheme.
Ayer and Flew assume God-talk must state facts to mean anything. Hick agrees, and defers the check to death; Hare and Wittgenstein rescue meaning by giving up the fact-claim; Aquinas and Tillich try to keep a foot in both camps.
Flew's question — what would disprove this? — never goes away. The Via Negativa and Tillich's symbol both try to say something true about God without making a claim that could be falsified in the ordinary sense: is that honesty, or evasion?
Univocal language shrinks God to a creature; the Via Negativa protects his otherness completely but says nothing positive. Analogy and symbol both try to keep real content AND real transcendence together — ask whether picking just one descriptor was ever the right demand.
The unit splits into four debates. They look different, but each is really asking what would it take for talk about God to mean something?
Everything for the unit, in one place. Open a sub-topic's lesson, booklet and podcast, and use the Philosopher Companion across all four.
LINKS list near the bottom, and paste each SharePoint share link once. Buttons with no link show as "Link not set".
Use your resources in this order. The Philosopher Companion is where you learn to plan both question types.
One podcast per sub-topic — a teacher and student talk each view through to a judgement. Annotate as you listen.
Read the given text, write each scholar's claim in your own words, then decide the strength and weakness you'd give each view.
In the Companion: match each term to its meaning, then use it in a sentence. RAG-rate the mastery checklist with the three faces.
Use the Companion frameworks and the guidance-left / your-turn-right scaffolds. Never evaluate what you haven't first explained.
A full review of Religious Language — the Challenges, the Responses, Analogy & the Via Negativa, and Symbol & Synthesis. Best watched before you start revising, then again to check your recall.
Teacher: paste the YouTube link in the VIDEO_URL line near the bottom of this file. The player then appears here automatically.
Flip a card to check yourself. Switch between key terms (term → meaning) and views (view → claim, strength & weakness), and filter by sub-topic.