SPOILER ALERT FOR THE NEW MOVIE, “THE REVENANT”!   I went to a movie theater in the Portland area last night for an advance screening of “The Revenant”. Here is the official trailer for the movie, which releases tomorrow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wg72UQCJFEM. Conditions were bad on the roads by Portland standards earlier in the week. Schools had been closed because of snow and ice. So, it was a relief to be able to get out last night to see the movie. Talk about... Read more

In my last post titled “What’s Up with Monogamy? Reflections and Resolutions in a Time of Transition,” I noted the overriding sense in American society to look upon extramarital sex critically. Then I went on to ask: Why does American society, by and large, still look upon extramarital sex with disfavor? Does the disfavor point perhaps to the receding echo of an ancient divine decree? Vestiges of the essential nature of things, created and/or evolved?… Does the disfavor follow from... Read more

Many people with whom I speak can’t get over Donald Trump’s ongoing ascendance in national polls. He leads the field of candidates for the Republican Party’s nomination by staggering numbers. Whatever you think of him, he is hard to dismiss as an outlier (See “Latest Polls Set Stage for Unprecedented Circumstances”). An African-American civil rights lawyer with whom I spoke on Sunday agreed. Keep your eyes wide open. Don’t discount Trump, for he speaks to our base passions. He makes... Read more

Is a patient near the end of life simply temporarily animated matter–a soon-to-be corpse that is turned to ash or locked in a box?[1] Is the patient a combination of material and immaterial substances, the latter of which is easily separated like a pound of flesh that lessens the body’s weight at death?[2] Or is the patient a relational energy (namely, a soul or spirit), who returns to the divine Spirit, the same Spirit who enlivens his or her bodily... Read more

Donald Trump’s recent statements about banning Muslims from the States has met with a wide array of reactions—from total support to outright disgust. Some fear that Trump’s stance is counterproductive and will only benefit ISIS propaganda that the States and the West as a whole are anti-Muslim. Tribalism only intensifies conflicts rather than reduces them, as Steven Pinker argues in The Better Angles of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. While some dispute Pinker’s view that violence is on decline... Read more

Anti-Theologies Are Theologies, Part I For those who think that metaphysics and theology are antiquated disciplines that have no place in our scientific age, please think again. Take one prominent contemporary example—Richard Dawkins. Like Freud, he is an anti-theology theologian in disguise. The anti-theological Dawkins presents theological or metaphysical claims. His fundamental thesis that the gene is selfish and that it governs all reality is not a hypotheses that Dawkins could readily jettison on the basis of empirical observations. Rather,... Read more

In the concluding chapter of Sociobiology: A New Synthesis, Harvard University’s Edward O. Wilson states, “Scientists and humanists should consider together the possibility that the time has come for ethics to be removed temporarily from the hands of the philosophers and biologicized.”[1] Wilson is certainly not the first to recommend this move.[2] For Wilson, it is bound up with his aim to promote the “Modern Synthesis” involving sociobiology, which he defines as “the systematic study of the biological basis of... Read more