He begins by considering the perceived conflicts between science and religion in areas such as creation and evolution, in the context of current 'hot big bang' creation models. He notes the fine-tuning of the values of the various physical constants in such a way as to enable biological complexity to evolve; this is regarded by some theologians as an argument for a Designer, constituting an '...amazing way of getting creation going..'. He goes on to consider the 'Anthropic Principle' which argues that there could be an infinity of universes, with various sets of differing physical constants, from which only those enabling biology to evolve would support consciousness such as to enable them to be observed and considered. He supports the former approach, that God designed the universe, and the laws of nature operational in it, in such a way as it was inevitable that life would come into being.

He goes on to deal with the nature of humanity, and the emergence of ethics, in the context of a social agreement. The area of ethics is outside science, in that it is not easy to think of measurement of good and bad on a scale, of, say, so many milli-Hitlers. He is critical of the attempts of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology to do this, particularly of the claims of 'social Darwinism'. What does science say about Israel and Palestine? he asks. He regards aesthetics as being outside the scope of science. Yet within science on finds evidence of faith and hope, in that scientists can get together in the belief that they may be able to gain useful insights into how things work.

Ethics is not invented, but discovered; he dismisses the output of sociobiology as being 'shallow ethics', counter-posing 'deep ethics', or 'kenosis', capable of leading to self-sacrifice, a concept which is embedded in all world religions, and at the core of Christianity. He relates this to the Quaker peace testimony, and to the South African experience as expressed by Mandela, Tutu and Biko.

He then comes round to the question of 'fundamentalism' which he defines as 'the proclamation of a partial truth as the whole truth'. There are 'science fundamentalists' as well as religious. Ellis links the former with 'reductionism', and devotes the last section of the pamphlet to an analysis of 'Scientism', as exemplified in Galileo's Finger, by Peter Atkins: 'science is the sole route to true, complete and perfect knowledge'. He does however leave a window open for the the holistic scientist, who is aware of the limitations of reductionism, and is prepared to accept the theology of a transcendent vision, and in this context the present writer can recommend this to a scientific as well as a lay readership.