Pedro Pozas, a Spanish animal-rights activist, made international headlines in 2006 when he declared, “I am an ape.” Pozas was speaking as an advocate for the Great Ape Project (GAP), the brainchild of Princeton utilitarian bioethicist Peter Singer and Italian animal-rights philosopher Paola . . . . Continue Reading »
Ben Carson might well profit from his presidential campaign, but his conservative supporters have already lost. They have lost by putting their hopes (and their money) in the wrong places. They would still have lost even if Carson had had no flaws as either a candidate or a man. Carson is a flawed . . . . Continue Reading »
Peter Adamson’s Philosophy in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds accepts a noble challenge announced in the book’s subtitle: A History of Philosophy without any gaps. It’s an impossible objective, of course. Adamson knows this, but admirably proceeds to outline three areas of philosophy that are often overlooked in the hustle of contemporary academic discourse: “Hellenistic philosophy” (the inheritance of Plato and Aristotle), “late antique philosophy among pagans, and ancient Christian philosophy.”
Several years ago, Father Raymond de Souza, one of my fellow faculty members at an annual Kraków-based summer seminar on Catholic social doctrine, made a trenchant observation about the city John Paul II used to call “my beloved Kraków.” Kraków, Father de Souza observed, was the city where . . . . Continue Reading »
In one of its more famous passages, the Talmud records a debate about the mundane (but important) issue of whether a certain oven can be used to cook kosher food. All of the rabbis except one, Rabbi Eliezer, rule that the oven cannot be used because it is impure. To prove that he is correct and that the oven is pure, Rabbi Eliezer calls on God to perform miracles in the presence of his colleagues—a carob tree is uprooted and moves across a field, a river reverses its course, and the walls of the rabbis’ study hall magically begin to cave in—but the rabbis remain unmoved. Continue Reading »
I joined Baylor University’s faculty in July 2003 after a brief stint as a Visiting Fellow in the James Madison Program at Princeton. What drew me to Baylor is what has attracted, and continues to attract, hundreds of other prospective faculty members: the ideals and goals of the school’s . . . . Continue Reading »
To say that we evangelicals haven’t always engaged in respectful dialogue with folks representing other perspectives is to put it mildly. But there are clear signs that things are improving, in at least some parts of the evangelical world. The presence of many evangelical voices as a part of the . . . . Continue Reading »
Of all the documents of Vatican II, few have been more discussed and written about than Nostra Aetate. The official text, the shortest of the council’s documents, is only five paragraphs long, containing forty-one sentences. The fourth paragraph, on the Church’s relationship with the Jewish . . . . Continue Reading »
As a Catholic statistician, I tend to read any story headlined with “Surveys say Catholics . . .” ready to flinch. Robert Wuthnow and Emma Green have both raised serious questions about how much religion polls can tell us, and how easy they are to misinterpret.Since I work as a data journalist . . . . Continue Reading »
The following is taken from a paper that was delivered at a conference sponsored by the Center for Pastor Theologians on November 3.In his 2005 book, The Enlightenment Bible, Jonathan Sheehan describes changes in the Bible’s role in Germany and England between the late seventeenth and . . . . Continue Reading »
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