Answers to the problem

The big idea: The problem left us pinched: literal God-talk shrinks God, and verificationism says God-talk is empty.

Three thinkers offer three very different escape routes. One reworks HOW the words mean; one changes WHERE they mean; one changes WHEN they can be checked. Together they're the standard toolkit for defending religious language.

You'll meet them one at a time: Aquinas on analogy, Wittgenstein on language game, and Hick on eschatological verification.

The first answer reworks the squeeze from micro one — the trap of 'same meaning' versus 'totally different'.

Aquinas: God-words are analogical: Thomas Aquinas spotted a third option the squeeze missed. When you say 'God is good', you don't mean good in exactly the same way a person is (that shrinks God), and you don't mean something totally different (that empties the word). You mean it by analogy — in a related, in-between way. Think how 'healthy' works: a healthy person, a healthy meal, a healthy complexion — not identical meanings, not unrelated ones, but connected. God's goodness and human goodness are like that: linked, because our goodness reflects God's, even though God's is greater. So the word keeps real meaning without cutting God down.

Checkpoint — Aquinas: In one line: God-words are used by analogy — a related, in-between meaning that keeps sense without shrinking God. Now a reply that shifts the whole question.

Wittgenstein: religious language is its own game: Ludwig Wittgenstein said words get their meaning from the practice they belong to — each practice a language game with its own rules. 'Out!' means something in cricket, not at a dinner table. Religious language, he suggested, is its own game: prayer, worship, hope, trust. Verificationism went wrong by judging it with the rules of the SCIENCE game, where you check by experiment. Inside its own practice — a community living a faith — religious language is perfectly meaningful. It was never trying to play science's game.

Checkpoint — Wittgenstein: In one line: religious language is meaningful inside its own practice — you can't judge it by the rules of a different game. Now a reply that meets verificationism on its OWN ground.

Hick: verification comes after death: John Hick accepted the verificationist demand — a real claim must be checkable in principle — but denied the check has to happen NOW. He tells of two travellers on a road: one believes it leads to a Celestial City, the other doesn't. They can't settle it along the way — but at the road's end they WILL find out who was right. Likewise, Hick says, 'God exists' could be confirmed after death, if there is life beyond it. So it's a genuine claim, verifiable in principle — just not yet. He calls this eschatological verification (from a word meaning 'the last things').

Go further — higher-level insight: See how the three answers pull in different directions. Aquinas and Hick keep religious language as a real claim about how things ARE (analogy still describes God; Hick's road really does lead somewhere or not). Wittgenstein is bolder — he half-agrees with the critic that it's not fact-stating like science, and relocates its meaning into practice. So a sharp question for the essay: does defending religious language mean saving it as TRUTH (Aquinas, Hick) or as a form of LIFE (Wittgenstein)? Naming that split is a top-band move.

Checkpoint — three answers: (1) Aquinas: analogy. (2) Wittgenstein: its own language game. (3) Hick: verified after death. All three say God-talk is meaningful — they just disagree on why.

How Section B works: Philosophy of religion is an OPTIONAL theme, so it's assessed in Paper 1 SECTION B: an ESSAY on a set question, no stimulus [25]. The command is usually 'Evaluate' or 'Discuss'. Same 5-step method as Section A — just built from the question itself instead of a stimulus.

Common mistakes: 1. Describing views instead of arguing them. 2. Answering a different question — the claim is 'meaningless', so attack meaninglessness, not 'is God real'. 3. Only one view — top bands need tension. 4. No conclusion — decide, with a reason. 5. Name-dropping — a name earns nothing without its argument.