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On the Composting of Thee and Me
In Herman Wouk’s novel War and Remembrance, Warren Henry shocks his Bible-reading father, the novel’s hero, by claiming that human beings are “microbes on a grain of dust…and when it’s over we’re just dead meat.” The Washington state legislature has now topped the cynical young... Read more -
Assessing the Ethical (and Unethical) Implications of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence technology — intelligent machines that work and react like humans — is increasingly becoming part of everyday life, prompting Pope Francis to ask the Pontifical Academy for Life to dedicate the next two years to ethical questions posed by the technology. In a... Read more -
Eugenics and an Overlooked Rebuttal
In the introduction to the French edition of Darwin's Origin of Species, Clémence Royer claimed that Darwin's theory called for the elimination of "all the disgraces of nature" among humanity, and social Darwinism was born. In 1871 Darwin's cousin Francis Galton gave this belief a name,... Read more -
Of Space Aliens and the Catholic Faith
Sabrina Arena Ferrisi On Dec. 16, 2017, reports were released by the U.S. Department of Defense of a possible UFO-sighting 13 years earlier. Apparently, in mid-November 2004, two American fighter pilots spotted and filmed an unidentified flying object off the coast of San Diego. The object they... Read more -
The Church wrestles with transhumanism
For centuries people have looked to words spoken by God in the Bible’s first book for clarity on what it means to be human: “Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness” (Gn 1:26). Consistent with the thinking reflected there, human nature, created by God in his image, is... Read more -
Contract Pregnancies Exposed: Surrogacy Contracts Don’t Protect Surrogate Mothers and Their Children
The current debate over surrogacy in the United States has two main positions. One side argues we should allow the practice with regulations. The other side argues it should be prohibited altogether. All parties in the debate generally acknowledge that there can be abuses and exploitation, and... Read more -
Saudi Arabia becomes first country to grant citizenship to a robot
LONDON: A humanoid robot took the stage at the Future Investment Initiative yesterday and had an amusing exchange with the host to the delight of hundreds of delegates. Smartphones were held aloft as Sophia, a robot designed by Hong Kong company Hanson Robotics, gave a presentation that... Read more -
Three years later, this terminally ill man is glad he rejected assisted suicide
Washington D.C., Oct 4, 2017 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Three years ago, J.J. Hanson received a diagnosis that no one wants to hear. He had terminal brain cancer, and doctors said his time was short – he likely had about four months to live. “The surgeon said my cancer was inoperable... Read more -
Artificial wombs could radically change the abortion debate
It will become clearer that the foetus’s integrity as a living being is fundamentally the child’s own, not the mother’s In The Dialectic of Sex, published in 1970, the feminist thinker Shulamith Firestone made a case for “ectogenesis” on the basis that it liberated women from “the... Read more -
Rescuing iGen: Teens Raised on Smartphones Need an Escape Plan
Imagine the best memories of your youth. Now imagine all of them replaced by a screen. Unless we can outsmart phones, this will be reality for a generation. It seems like millennials are always texting, swiping, browsing, Snapchatting, Instagramming, or wasting time in some other way on a... Read more