Items included on this page come from a variety of sources. The perspectives conveyed may or may not express a Lutheran ethos. They can serve our instruction as discussion-starters, examples (positive and negative), and illustrations of intersections between God’s two kingdoms, intersections sometimes characterized by tension, sometimes by congruence. Inclusion does not imply endorsement.
An extra-uterine system to physiologically support the extreme premature lamb: Scientists have created an “artificial womb” in the hopes of someday using the device to save babies born extremely prematurely. Study research Dr. Alan Flake says his team has no interest in trying to gestate a fetus any earlier than about 23 weeks into pregnancy: “I […]
What’s It Like To Be A Squirrel? This brief update (including a great 2 min video of a squirrel with a GoPro!) on Thomas Nagel’s famous essay on consciousness can introduce students to the problem of consciousness, subjectivism, objectivism, and the difficulties of arriving at a common baseline for reality. Students in apologetics should be […]
The Science of Sinning Less: What new research reveals about self-control and willpower — Few topics in social science right now are hotter than willpower and self-control, considering both the number of studies on the subject and the disputes over their validity. Psychologists, sociologists, and other scientists aren’t just interested in self-control’s practical benefits. They want to […]
Life Is The Network, Not The Self: The fundamental unit of biology is not the “self,” but the network. This view of life has practical consequences. The fungal growths swarming my Petri dishes have a lesson beyond the immediate practical benefits of managing and studying living networks. Every textbook diagram and every written metaphor shape how we […]
God in the machine: my strange journey into transhumanism — a former dispensationalist Christian (see the Schofield Study Bible) found herself adrift in the world but then found solace in Ray Kurzweil’s radical technological philosophy of transhumanism. But its promises of immortality and spiritual transcendence soon seemed unsettlingly familiar. Students can examine this first person account […]
A Baby With 3 Genetic Parents Seems Healthy, But Questions Remain: A new report describes in further detail both the technique and the participants in the recent birth of a healthy boy with the blended DNA of the birth mother, father, and an unrelated female donor. This event has prompted numerous ethical and scientific questions. See also […]
Mind, Matter And Materialism: If mind rests on matter, this must include admitting just how murky our understanding of matter is at the deepest levels. Our job in thinking about the world is to distinguish what science has actually found out about the world from the metaphysical commitments for which the findings of science are often mistaken. We […]
Supreme Incoherence: Transgender Ideology and the End of the Law — Agree or disagree with the author, this careful analysis will challenge students to think carefully about language, positive law, and the claims our words make to natural and revealed knowledge. This might be the essay to help students on any side of the gender identity […]
Daniel Dennett’s Science of the Soul: This lengthy article explores Daniel Dennett’s (Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Simon & Schuster, 1996)) views on consciousness and physicalism: a materialist view on human nature. Students may find it useful as a conversational introduction to the various current positions on consciousness, soul, and the transcendent: the physicist’s world of matter and […]
A celebration of peace through progress: This article can introduce students to London’s Great Exhibition of 1851 and modernity’s coming-of-age. The Crystal Palace resembled a mighty cathedral: the great nave, more than half a kilometer in length, was intersected by a transept where the immense barrel-vaulted glass roof dwarfed the elm trees enclosed by it. When the […]
True Paradox: How Christianity Make Sense of Our Complex World by David Skeel (Veritas Books IVP, 2014)
David Skeel teaches corporate law at the UofPenn Law School. This book calmly presents five chapters in 160 pages that explain the Christian account of life to a skeptical, distracted, yet still-interested society. No simple answers here to human complexities. Rather, Skeel discusses how these complexities point us toward Christ.
