Abstract

The predicament with which Professor Paton is concerned is that of religion in an intellectual climate in which its continued survival is becoming more and more difficult, the climate of modern science. The seventh chapter entitled “Intellectual Impediments” states the difficulty very strongly: religion is under fire from physics, biology, i.e., evolution, psychology, history. Professor Paton is concerned with what is left of religion after these partial defeats and he hopes, with a modesty which does not succeed in hiding itself, to “induce some of the indifferent to consider the possibility that religion may not be all nonsense, but may contain something precious without which life may be incomplete”.