We’ve all heard of the placebo effect, that is some people will seem to experience benefit from a “drug” they think they are taking, even when they are not. But a new study on pain found that even when pain controlling drugs are being administered, if the subject believes . . . . Continue Reading »
First Things presents its first video, The Creed: What Christians Profess, and Why It Ought to Matter . Produced by actor, director, and writer, Tim Kelleher, The Creed is a remarkable film about why the radical claims made in the Nicene Creed are so important to all of us. Whether you are a . . . . Continue Reading »
I was asked several months ago by Human Life Review to react to Peter Singer’s presentation at Princeton University’s conference on abortion, in which pro life and pro choice advocates exchanged views and respectfully debated. I wrote about that here at SHS (also here), but the HLR . . . . Continue Reading »
Today’s first “On The Square” item is Joe Carter’s ” My Heroes Have Always Been Hebrews ,” where he explores evangelicals’ theological commitments to the welfare of Jews and the state of Israel: Indeed, it is almost impossible to overstate the influence of . . . . Continue Reading »
Policy advocates hurt their own cause when they easily pull out the Nazi analogy. Unless it is actually apt, calling your opponents “like the Nazis” is rightly seen by readers or listeners as a lazy slur. Alas, that’s what James Delingpole, the Telegraph’s warming . . . . Continue Reading »
Alister McGrath explains the concept of faith for the New Atheists: As William James pointed out many years ago, religious faith is basically “faith in the existence of an unseen order of some kind in which the riddles of the natural order may be found and explained.” Faith is based on . . . . Continue Reading »
I’m very sorry not to have time to post here. On the BIG THINK front, I’ve been trying to mainstream pomocon ideas on happiness, evolution, and all that. In the thread, I called Darwinian Larry a closet Epicurean. Here’s what I meant: The theory of evolution for him is really a . . . . Continue Reading »
While you might have a hard time finding a seat at Sunday Mass, there is plenty of pew space in the mainline denominations : The Roman Catholic Church is growing, but most mainline and evangelical Protestant churches are losing members, according to the 2011 Yearbook of American & Canadian . . . . Continue Reading »
When my mother called me on the phone to tell me about a book she’d recently read, I listened with some interest, but begged her not to send it along. She is the type of person who will immediately run to the post office or to UPS to ship a book or anything else that is not nailed down . . . . Continue Reading »
The Leftist bias in major universities can’t be denied. With regard to issues dealt with here, can you imagine a pro lifer with the credentials of Peter Singer—who doesn’t even have a Ph.D—given one of the most prestigious chairs in bioethics in the world, as Singer was . . . . Continue Reading »
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