Easter, when we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, will soon be upon us, so it is appropriate to reflect on that resurrection and on the one which will be given to us, as Paul said in his letter to the Corinthians. It is an article of faith for us as Catholics that we will […]
[Feynman] “Do you know calculus?” [Wouk] “I admitted that I didn’t” [Feynman] “You had better learn it…It’s the language God talks.” Herman Wouk, converstion with Richard Feynman in The Language God Talks, p.5 “What is your number?” My grandson, Gabriel (age 2), on meeting someone. “If you ask how such things can occur, seek the answer […]
I’ve wondered, since my conversion, why some found it so much harder to believe in God than in Science. When I was younger in college, I took the pronouncements of my teachers–Nobel Prize winners* and graduate students–as holy writ (although I didn’t know then what holy writ was). In laboratories we repeated famous experiments, Galileo’s […]
New Year’s Resolutions tend towards the personal: lose weight, take up a hobby, spend more time with the family, get up earlier, read great books, etc. But this new year I beg people to take some time to learn more about bioethics. The stakes are high. Our definitions of life, death, and human dignity are […]
In our long stride toward the inevitable designer babies, the first manipulation has been the noble goal of creating babies free of the mitochondrial diseases carried by their mothers. This series will examine the issue rather thoroughly in four basic segments: 1. The basic cell biology involved. 2. The problem of defective mitochondria. 3. The […]
The term “theistic evolution” is used in contrast to the atheistic idea of evolution. It means evolution set in motion by God or under the direction of God, and seems appropriate for a believer who admits some truth to evolutionary science. But I don’t like the phrase because it’s a confusing redundancy. Think about it. If you’re a […]
People ask me what I teach my kids about evolution. The answer is, “I teach the science, but not the ideology.” The Evolutionists say, “You are failing your kids as an educator!” No, I’m teaching my children to keep a view of reality firmly in place, the very first thing a scientist ought to do. The Creationists […]
For those who believe that life begins at conception, abortion hangs over society like a dark cloud. So long as the culture and the courts continue to embrace this barbaric practice as simply a matter of “women’s health care,” there remains a need for pro-life advocacy and activism. According to the most recent statistics gathered […]
I just finished writing a thesis about the late Father Stanley Jaki’s work for a Master’s degree in Theology, and my brain hurts. I love that about scholarship. You learn, assimilate, and then possess new knowledge. It’s hard, but you earn it. In the end, it’s more exciting than going to the mall, buying a […]
Leyna Gonzalez is a precious little girl – a 20 month old bundle of energy and joy. Against all odds, she is with us today. While in utero, an ultrasound was performed at seventeen weeks that revealed she had a rare tumor protruding from her mouth — an oral teratoma — making her survival highly […]
Researchers who justify the killing of human beings at the embryonic stage “demean” themselves and diminish their own humanity, an American ethicist told LifeSiteNews.com at the Vatican’s stem cell conference last month. By willingly participating in an evil, even to bring about a great good like cures for diseases, “You demean yourself, you make yourself […]
A report from The Witherspoon Council, a newly-formed bioethics body, argues that even the noblest aspirations of the scientific enterprise must be guided by ethics and governed under political authority. The stem cell debates of the past decade and a half were among the most heated controversies about science and politics in recent memory, raising […]
If I had to name the most important topics in science during our time, they would probably be evolutionary biology, cosmology, particle physics, and psychology to understand the human person better. However, if I had to name the most important issue in science today, it would be something more over-arching. It would be the general issue of […]
University of Chicago biologist Jerry Coyne has an interesting post over at his blog “Why Evolution Is True,” which hits on something I care a lot about: science and religion. Specifically whether they go together or not. Coyne mentions two posts from the New York Times blogs, one against naturalism and one in favor of […]
