Religious freedom — the ability to live and act according to one’s faith — is one of our most fundamental human rights. But as Western society has secularized, religious freedom seems to have been eclipsed by other concerns. Indeed, freedom of religion is too often devalued in the public square, and in some places in the world, is under direct — and even violent — assault. No one has put more thought into this urgent concern and what to do about it than Sam Brownback, returning for his sixth interview on Humanize. Sam Brownback served as Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom from February 2018 to January 2021. He served as Governor of Kansas from 2011 to 2018. Prior to that he represented his home state in the United States Senate and the House of …
King Cove is a remote town in the Aleutian Islands, adjacent to the 300,000-acre Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. In 1980, the refuge was designated a wilderness area. That caused a severe problem for the people of King Cove. The nearest full-service hospital is in Anchorage, 900 miles away. The town does not have an all-weather airport. This means that people needing lifesaving care may not be able to access it during inclement weather. A town 20 miles away called Cold Bay does have an all-weather airport from which sick and injured people could be flown for medical help in bad weather — if they could only get there. So, the people of King Cove sought permission to cut a gravel road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge to Cold Bay. They even offered a land swap that …
We are in the age of artificial intelligence. But what does that mean for the human future? Some claim that AI is merely a very sophisticated tool that will lead to stunning societal improvements such as miraculous medical breakthroughs, greater economic efficiency, and an exponential increase in human knowledge. But others worry that an out-of-human-control AI could destroy liberty, create immeasurable societal destruction, and perhaps, even unleash a technological Armageddon that brings about the end of the human race. Which is it? Or are both potential possibilities? To sort it all out for us, on this special summer edition of Humanize, Wesley asked Discovery Institute’s Robert J. Marks II to return for his third appearance. An electrical engineer by education and …
In 50 BC, the great Roman statesman Cicero expressed a thought that has been echoed by thinkers down the generations: “The celestial order and beauty of the universe compel me to admit that there is some excellent and eternal Being who deserves the respect and homage of men.” But in our own day, the evolutionary biologist and atheism proselytizer Richard Dawkins has claimed, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” Dawkins believes that complex life and the cosmos arose through gradual, evolutionary mechanisms, not through any influence of a creator or purposeful creation. But which worldview does the scientific evidence …
The United States is in a cultural crisis. Our young are experiencing unprecedented levels of mental illness. Family structures are crumbling with out-of-wedlock births increasing while, at the same time, the number of children being born is decreasing. Some worry about masculinity under attack while others believe that “toxic masculinity” is the cause of most problems. Many are even worried that democracy itself is in real and present danger. It’s all a big mess. How do we restore societal equilibrium? In a new compendium of his many columns on cultural issues, What Really Matters, Timothy S. Goeglein offers readers what he calls a “blueprint” to encourage us “to reevaluate the road we currently travel” and get back to the basics of …
