This classic essay is part of the Falsification Symposium, so in order to understand it you will need to have read the previous Anthology extract by Flew & Hare. Basil Mitchell is replying to Antony Flew's claim that religious language is meaningless because believers will not allow their statements to be falsified. Antony Flew then replies, offering a criticism of Mitchell's position and that of R.M. Hare from the previous extract.

This extract can be divided into two sections:
The entire essay is summarised here:

Introducing Religious Language

Religious Language is covered in detail in another section of the course. To understand and evaluate Flew & Hare's argument, you need to know the outlines.
Critics have questioned whether religious language makes sense if it is viewed objectively. Some would say that religious language is, objectively-speaking, "meaningless". One of the first people to suggest the difference between meaningful, factual statements and meaningless statements was the British scientist and philosopher Karl Popper. Popper argues that falsification is what makes a statement factual. This is known as the Falsification Principle:
if there is nothing which a putative assertion denies then there is nothing which it asserts either; and so it is not really an assertion - Antony Flew
The Falsification Principle states that meaningful language is language that can be contradicted. In order for statements to be meaningful, there has to be something that could "count against" them.
Scientific statements seem to be falsifiable: you can say what would have to happen to disprove a scientific theory. God, on the other hand, seems to be unfalsifiable. Religious believers don't let anything count against God's existence. Prayers go unanswered, evil people win and good people suffer, prophecies fail to come to pass, miracles get disproved - but believers keep on believing. According to Antony Flew, this is what makes religious propositions meaningless: they're never allowed to be wrong!

In the previous extract, R.M. Hare responded to Flew's challenge by arguing that religious statements aren't really factual assertions at all; they are "bliks" or reflections of the speaker's world-view. A blik can't be proved or disproved. Instead of being a conclusion you reach through considering evidence, a blik is a starting point or assumption that tells you what counts as evidence and what doesn't.

Not everyone is happy with Hare's idea of bliks. In this extract, Basil Mitchell gives a different account of religious language and Flew offers his own criticisms.