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The Secret History of C. S. Lewis’s “Interesting Relics”

Near the end of the Hooper Papers Inventory (see “Other Material” in the previous column) one reads of “a few pages of notes about the contents of Lewis’s home in Oxford.” But this is a very erroneous description. These are five small pages of Lewis’s meticulous handwritten instructions (with a sketch) telling Walter Hooper exactly how to clear out Lewis’s Read More ›

“Very Controversial Walter Hooper” “Firmly But Charitably Put in His Place”

First Things is a journal of conservative political opinion and commentary edited (and largely written) by Richard John Neuhouse, a Roman Catholic. The current issue (October 1998) contains Michael Aeschliman’s fine essay “C. S. Lewis on Mere Science” and the following unsigned review of The C. S. Lewis Reader’s Encyclopedia in the “Briefly Noted” section (pp. 77-78): “A hundred years Read More ›

Thanksgiving: A Scientist’s Psalm

by Walter Hearn (First published in HIS Magazine in March, 1964) Praise the Lord, created thing!Let all space with praises ring!Space itself, Hosannas sing,Unto God, Jehovah, King! I Subatomic Particles Particles in smallest cracks,Known but by emulsion tracks;Let all mesons praise Messiah!Songs of praise mount ever higher! Alpha, beta, gamma rays:Join the chorus of His praise!Be you ultimate or not,All Read More ›

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Two people having coffee across from each other
Photo by Joshua Ness on Unsplash

Fruitful Interchange or Polite Chitchat?

The demand that epistemic support be explicated as rational compulsion has consistently undermined the dialogue between theology and science. Rational compulsion entails too restrictive a form of epistemic support for most scientific theorizing, let alone interdisciplinary dialogue. This essay presents a less restrictive form of epistemic support, explicated not as rational compulsion but as explanatory power. Once this notion of epistemic support is developed, a genuinely productive interdisciplinary dialogue between theology and science becomes possible. This essay closes by sketching how the Big Bang model from cosmology and the Christian doctrine of Creation can be viewed as supporting each other. Read More ›
Photo by Luca Baggio

What Brings a World into Being?

Since their inception in the 17th century, the modern sciences have been given over to a majestic vision: there is nothing in nature but atoms and the void. This is hardly a new thought, of course; in the ancient world, it received its most memorable expression in Lucretius' On the Nature of Things. But it has been given contemporary resonance in theories--like general relativity and quantum mechanics--of terrifying (and inexplicable) power. If brought to a successful conclusion, the trajectory of this search would yield a single theory that would subsume all other theories and, in its scope and purity, would be our only necessary intellectual edifice. Read More ›

Illinois Joins States That Care About Babies

On April 5, 2001, a small band of volunteers completed a grand slam in the Illinois legislature. Legislation to save abandoned babies passed the House of Representatives with a vote of 114 – 0. The day before, April 4, the bill passed the Senate 56 – 0. Although the bills passed without a single dissenting vote, as is common in Read More ›

Teetering Health Care

Never thought I’d be writing a book on medicine with a doctor. Of course, I never thought I’d hit middle age and start to find the subject personally interesting, either. I took it on because, after a couple decades pondering the Pentagon, I was ready to try something really crazy. I have not been disappointed. What’s wrong with American medicine? Read More ›

The New Creationists

Last Monday, Mark Edwards, PR man for the conservative think tank the Discovery Institute, was excited. “We landed on the front page of yesterday’s New York Times,” he enthused. Two weeks prior, the Discovery Institute was featured in a story on the front page of the Los Angeles Times. And CNN recently turned its cameras on the Seattle institute. The Read More ›

God’s two books:

http://www.nationalpost.com/search/story.html?f=/stories/20010505/553186.html In America, in the United States particularly, culture wars are so hard fought that the modernist tribes are many, various and jealous of their place and context and meaning. Which means there is always a great deal of energetic sartorial signaling going on: “I am a slacker geek, with closet literary ambitions.” “I am an upper middle-class golf club Read More ›

Gagging Medical Research

Every doctor knows that a gagging patient is a sick patient. But apparently the American Medical Association believes gagging medical research is just dandy when it serves the AMA agenda at the expense of public health. The Journal of the American Medical Association recently “gagged” authors of articles submitted to JAMA from speaking to the media or issuing a press Read More ›