Wesley J. Smith

I am concerned that Western society is threatened with two metastasizing twin crises of competence and character.  Science is not immune from larger cultural forces, and thus two recent stories worry me that the dual afflictions have spread to science too.First, it appears . . . . Continue Reading »

Oh brother.  A woman named Faye Flam, who writes the Planet of the Apes blog for the Philadelphia Inquirer about evolution—Get it? We’re all just apes. Get it?—has written a distinctly unevolutionary blog supposedly word processed by her cat Higgs, in which the cat attacks . . . . Continue Reading »

I marvel at how the supposed defenders of SCIENCE so often conflate the method with ethical and policy controversies.  Case in point: A Yale law professor named Adam Cohen, writing at the Time website, is upset that Tennessee is allowing teachers to (voluntarily) teach their students . . . . Continue Reading »

James Lovelock, the radical environmentalist who came up with the idea that the Earth is a living organism, has poured cold water on his own previously raging global warming hysteria. From the MSNBC story:James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the . . . . Continue Reading »

IVF has always been a form of human experimentation—which costs the subject’s (the baby) parents a lot of money—since we jumped head first into the technology without fully knowing the potential consequences. And now, decades later, we are finding that people born from IVF have . . . . Continue Reading »

For all the screaming about Republicans cutting Medicare, Obamacare cut it by $500 billion. The law provided that the bite begin this year. Oops. That could hurt the president’s reelection chances. So, the spending has been maintained by pretending existing Medicare programs are experimental! . . . . Continue Reading »

This blog is written in real time. It is primarily commentary, not journalism, in the literal sense.  It also seeks to engage readers in discussions about the cutting edge issues of human exceptionalism, bioethics, animal rights, scientism, radical misanthropic environmentalism, . . . . Continue Reading »

I did a small post on Secondhand Smoke that I thought might be of interest to First Thoughts readers.  A Presbyterian pastor apparently considers transhumanism inevitable, and even, consistent with Christian views.  I think “Christian transhumanism” is an oxymoron.  Here . . . . Continue Reading »

A Presbyterian pastor/ethicist named Mark Douglas has apparently claimed that transhumanism is consistent with Christian theology. Pshaw. They are theologically diametrically incompatible.  From the Toledo Blade story:Theologically, one can find support in the Bible for . . . . Continue Reading »

Jennifer Lahl—I call her, “She Who Walks Through Walls”—founded the Center for Bioethics and Culture in 2000, and had the wisdom to bring me on as a paid consultant (he said modestly).  Over the last 12 years, the  CBC has really been doing very energetic and . . . . Continue Reading »