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.
The Madness Of Humanity Part 4: Science Vs. Religion: One installment in a series. Gleiser’s essay on science and religion is brief. Instructors and students can consider whether his choice of phrases, expressions, and characterizations helps or hinders the S&R disputes and whether they fit his series title, “The Madness of Humanity.” The article could serve […]
Brain-controlled drone race pushes future tech: A drone race has used a brain-controlled interface by which 16 pilots used willpower to drive drones through a 10-yard dash over an indoor basketball court at the University of Florida. This technology delivers an abstract thought through the digital realm and into the real world as programmers write code to translate […]
U.S. Public Wary of Biomedical Technologies to ‘Enhance’ Human Abilities: Americans are more worried than enthusiastic about using gene editing, brain chip implants and synthetic blood to change human capabilities. The survey examines public attitudes about the potential use of three emerging technologies that could fundamentally improve people’s health, cognitive abilities or physical capacities. See also Christians to […]
Has Physics Gotten Something Really Important Really Wrong? In their book, The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time: a Proposal in Natural Philosophy (Cambridge, 2014), Unger and Smolin caution that, “Science is corrupted when it abandons the discipline of empirical validation or dis-confirmation. It is also weakened when it mistakes its assumptions for facts and its […]
Should NASA Have Given $1.1M to a Theology Institute? 2014, NASA gave $1.1 million to the Center of Theological Inquiry, an independent institution “rooted in Christian theology.” The grant supports an initiative to study “the societal implications of astrobiology.” The Freedom From Religion Foundation asked NASA to withdraw the grant.
Blind faith in DNA: “We should be wary of accepting bold claims by researchers until they have been thoroughly tested,” says this position piece on science in the news. Have we really found the essence of life, as Nobel laureate James Watson puts it, by studying its parts? The genetics narrative may not be as air-tight […]
Is There No Moral Law, or Is There No Law Without Morality? Canada’s parliament has passed the assisted-dying bill into law. This position piece challenges the autonomy argument of such a law and examines the ethical claims at work in that argument. Students can consider the various positions and the social and theological implications of the […]
Did Richard Dawkins Hand Creationists (sic) Their Next School Strategy? This position piece re-examines Kitzmiller v. Dover, an important court case that involves issues and unresolved questions about jurisprudence, science, and religion. The case and article may serve as an intro for the larger topic or selected themes.
Noted physicist says string theory suggests we’re all living in God’s matrix: Theoretical physicist, futurist, and bestselling author Michio Kaku has developed a theory that points to the existence of God using string theory. “It is clear that we exist in a plan which is governed by rules that were created, shaped by a universal intelligence […]
New Physics Beyond The Higgs? — When do scientists declare that something is “real”? that is, that something belongs to the collection of other particles we have found so far that make up all the material diversity we see? The Large Haldron Collider compiles and analyzes data it generates, then interpret the whole thing takes not just […]
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.
