David Gushee’s attempt to define and defend the concept of the sacredness of life is a welcome reminder of why it is so important that we not take for granted the protections that surround our lives and the lives of others.
In The Kids Are All Right, a sperm donor connects with his biological children but is eventually dismissed as an "interloper" in their lives. To believe that the kids are all right, we have to agree with this judgment.
Based on the award-winning 2005 novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, who also penned The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go is that rare story that doesn't rely on a revelatory plot twist to make its thematic point and drive the message home.
The completion, or near completion, of the human genome project was announced with expressions of Promethean awe. The New York Times called the feat “a pinnacle of human self-knowledge.” Other commentators referred to the new knowledge as the “Book of Life.” President Clinton said mapping the body’s sequence of genes was like “learning the language of God.” And Dr.
When two groups of scientists announced in mid-February that they had finished mapping the human genome, scientists, politicians and journalists paid rapt attention. The human genetic code has been deciphered! We are on our way at last to obeying scientifically the old Delphic oracle: Know thyself!
Last month two fertility specialists, an American and an Italian, announced plans to clone a human being in the next two years. If they don’t get the job done, it’s very likely that someone else on the planet will. Margaret Talbot, writing recently in the New York Times, reports that many scientists expect a cloned human to be introduced within five years.
With an executive order, President Obama made official what many scientists had long anticipated and many religious conservatives had long feared—he lifted his predecessor’s near-total ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
Books
Designer Children: Reconciling Genetic Technology, Feminism, and Christian Faith
Philosophers Mary Midgley and Judith Hughes have observed: “Individualism, like salt, is a very good and necessary thing. . . . But how about a diet of salt alone? . . . Unmitigated individualism is a death wish.”
Books
The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics
Stanley Hauerwas and Samuel Wells, eds.
The Blackwell Companion to Religious Ethics
William K. Schweiker, ed.
Bonds of Imperfection: Christian Politics, Past and Present
Oliver O'Donovan and Joan Lockwood O'Donovan
Nature as Reason: A Thomistic Theory of the Natural Law
Jean Porter
The Moral Theology of Pope John Paul II
Charles E. Curran
Defending Human Dignity: John Paul II and Political Realism
Derek S. Jeffreys
Bioethics: A Primer for Christians
Gilbert Meilaender
Aiming to Kill: The Ethics of Suicide and Euthanasia
Nigel Biggar
Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism
