In his opening paragraph, the Profession states the fundamental questions, or some of them anyway. "Is there a God" is a question which must be answered if one is to have any logic in religion at all. The article fails to state whether attempts have been made to answer the question, and whether any success has attended such efforts. The way in which the article omits to draw attention to the endeavours in this field by men as eminent as the learned professor or even Earl Russell leaves the inference that the only satisfactory answers are supplied by faith alone. Later on an effort is made to whittle away the bases of faith, and this leaves an uninformed reader with the general impression that religious belief is after all an unstable and unreliable thing.

I have not time, and I do not desire to occupy the space to deal thoroughly with the article as it stands. It is a shallow treatment of what it admits is a vital subject, but it covers a very wide field, and therefore requires an extensive rebuttal.

Taylor Doubted

Nevertheless a great deal of truth is stated, but I feel that wrong inferences are drawn largely on account of the omission of important aspects of the subject. For instance the Professor says. "Nothing can influence closed minds" and leaves it at that. He omits to point out that some men of religion have had minds which stand out as being as open as the human mind can he within the limits of reason.

He lumps together the concepts of Virgin Birth and Relativity and states that both are born of human experience and liable to error. In the first place, how he denies Virgin Birth on the ground of human experience is difficult to see, as if there were no Virgin Birth there would be no question of experience liable to error. However, the main point here is that those who believe the doctrine of the Virgin Birth believe first that it depends upon the existence of God. If that is proved, then the question of the Virgin Birth is removed from the plane of human opinion, experience or decision entirely. On the other hand, exponents of Relativity do not believe that the theory's origination or its exponents, however brilliant, possess Divine omniscience. Therefore the two questions must be approached from different angles. Although the point just considered is but a small part of the article, it serves to illustrate the difficulties which exist throughout the whole treatment.

In conclusion then, I have no objection to the treatment of the subject either for or against religion. I do feel however that the article attempts to cover too much ground in a limited space, and secondly that such ground as is covered is not considered in a scientific manner. There is too much unproved hypothesis, too much unscientific argument and too much left to inference. When dealing with a subject so important, a properly equipped writer could well have avoided all the flaws and submitted a thesis containing closely reasoned argument. After all, "Salient" is a University paper, both writer and readers are University people and articles in such a paper should not savour of the modern "Digest" variety.