Stephen M. Barr

Many people have been amazed by the capabilities of ChatGPT and the rapid advances in artificial intelligence. But something even more remarkable has now appeared: a book, described by its publishers as “plumb[ing] the depths of the science and philosophy of decision-making,” that claims to have . . . . Continue Reading »

The War That Never Was: Evolution and Christian Theology by kenneth w. kemp cascade, 234 pages, $28 Conventional wisdom has it that science and religion have perennially been at war. This “conflict thesis,” as historians call it, can be traced to the late nineteenth century and to two . . . . Continue Reading »

Why Only Us: Language and Evolutionby robert c. berwick and noam chomskymit press, 224 pages, $22.95Perhaps the most sensitive point of contact between religion and science is the issue of human distinctiveness. Christian teaching affirms that there is an “ontological discontinuity” between . . . . Continue Reading »

God’s Planet by owen gingerich harvard, 192 pages, $19.95 According to a famous formulation of Stephen Jay Gould, science and religion constitute “non-overlapping magisteria” or “NOMA.” What he meant is that they are separate domains, deal with different questions, and can never conflict . . . . Continue Reading »

I think Matt Franck is being too hard on Charles Krauthammer. Continue Reading »

Scientists are beginning to get very worried—-that an idea proposed by me and three collaborators in 1997 may turn out to be right. If it is right, then (a) we live in a “multiverse” (an idea that most physicists hate) and (b) there is a good chance that certain discoveries people . . . . Continue Reading »

From Big Bang to Big Mystery: Human Origins in the Light of Creation and Evolution by Brendan Purcell New City Press, 370 pages, $34.95 Benjamin Disraeli famously asked whether man is “an ape or an angel” and answered that he himself stood “on the side of the angels.” The question, while . . . . Continue Reading »

Christians who accept Darwinian evolution are, it is sometimes said, trying to have it both ways. If evolution is driven by random mutations, we cannot be part of a divine plan. How, the critics ask, can we possibly exist by chance and by design, by accident and by intention? The question of how to . . . . Continue Reading »

What does it mean? Not a whole lot. There is now a lot of soul-searching about the direction of the Republican Party and much doubting of its future viability if does not adapt itself in some way to an electorate that has (it is said) fundamentally shifted over the last few decades. I am a . . . . Continue Reading »

Fr. Leonard Klein, who is well known to the readers of First Things , is pastor of a parish in my own state of Delaware. Yesterday he gave a homily in which he did an wonderful job of sorting out how Christians should think about forgiveness, justice, terrorism, and war. It can be found here . . . . . Continue Reading »