We live in a time in which eliminating suffering is considered by many to be society’s ultimate purpose. Too often, this leads to policies that eliminate suffering by eliminating the sufferer. Still, for those not experiencing intense pain or anguish, arguing for improved care instead of increased access to assisted suicide or euthanasia can seem like a blithe platitude. “If you were really suffering,” I have heard repeatedly in my more than thirty years involved with these issues, “you would sing a different tune.” Perhaps. But many people who suffer intensely sing from the same songbook. One, is my good friend and guest for this episode of Humanize, Mark Pickup. Pickup has experienced the intense terror and anguish caused by disabling and progressive multiple sclerosis …
To say the least, bioethics is controversial. Many in the mainstream movement reject the sanctity and equal dignity of human life around issues such as abortion, assisted suicide, and biotechnology. But there is a robust pushback against such approaches—a human dignity bioethics, if you will—that promotes medical ethics and public health policies that align with the “do no harm” ethic of the Hippocratic Oath. The differences in these approaches impact our very understanding about the meaning and importance of human life. How do these distinctions play are among the most important and contentious controversies of the day. To get a handle on the current bioethics landscape, Wesley interviewed one of the most impressive and energetic defenders of human exceptionalism in …
It is no secret that most of society’s critical institutions are suffering from a crisis of trust. One of these is science, which heretofore enjoyed the confidence of the vast majority of the American people. To learn, what happened, whether the loss of confidence is deserved, and what can be done about it, Wesley asked the Director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture to engage the crisis. This is Meyer’s second appearance on Humanize. Dr. Stephen C. Meyer received his Ph.D. in the philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge and is a former geophysicist and college professor. He authored Signature in the Cell, which was named a Book of the Year for 2009 by the Times of London, the New York Times best seller, Darwin’s Doubt, and most …
Racism has been America’s lingering cancer. There is no question that great strides have been made in eradicating this evil from our culture since the bad old days of slavery and Jim Crow. But alas, the urgent task is not completed, and as a result, a great divide still lingers among too many Americans based on superficial and irrelevant differences of skin color and hair texture. Listening to each other’s stories and understanding differing perspectives are crucial medicines in healing this great wound in our collective national soul. My guest today is an expert communicator in this regard, helping to build bridges and palliate bitterness across racial divides. The Reverand Dr. Arthur Cribbs, Jr. is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, a former network …
We are in the midst of a transgender moral panic. Where only recently, very few people sought what used to be called a sex change, today the numbers of people seeking to “transition” to the other gender—particularly among children and teenagers—is becoming a flood. Much of the American medical establishment and the Biden administration claim that immediately yielding to children’s feelings that they are not the sex they were born is medically necessary, life-saving care. But is the science really settled? Recently, the United Kingdom, France, Norway, and other European countries hit the brakes on immediate gender affirmation in children—to the point that the UK shuttered its largest gender clinic for children as unsafe for patients. Even the World Health …
The southern border of the United States is in chaos. Millions of people from all over the world are flooding here each year, mostly illegally, but still allowed to remain in — and be transported free — throughout the country. Matters are quickly coming to a head. The crisis has strained our infrastructures, exacerbated our bitter political divisions, and called into question the ability and, indeed, willingness of the federal government to control American borders. At the same time, the system of legal immigration is strained with people waiting to come here lawfully facing complicated bureaucratic processes and long delays. Why is this happening? What can be done to improve the situation? Can America remain sovereign and treat those coming here illegally for a better life …
When the Supreme Court ruled that abortion was a constitutional right in Roe v. Wade in 1973, it not only throttled an important ongoing democratic debate in the country about legalizing abortion, but it tore this country’s culture apart. In the next fifty years, dedicated pro-life activists committed themselves to democratic engagement and advocacy to reverse Roe and return the struggle over the right to life to the democratic sphere. That decades-long effort bore fruit last year in the Supreme Court case of Dobbs. But that is far from the end of the story. The abortion issue continues to roil the country, with state legislatures passing dramatically different laws about the issue and voters in state initiative elections, such as in Kansas and Ohio, supporting legalization. …
