Stephen M. Barr

Mary Ruiz’s amusing post on Samuel Pepys and his “towsing” of “ladies not his wife” puts me in mind of that most intelligent and charming of English monarchs, Charles II, who was famous for his dalliances with the ladies. (G.K. Chesterton, in a ballad from his . . . . Continue Reading »

In their response to me , Robert George and Patrick Lee argue that some form of material continuity, indeed, a partial identity with respect to the material aspect of the human person, is part of what it means to believe in the resurrection. As I understand them, what they mean by "partial . . . . Continue Reading »

I am not competent to get involved in the theological and philosophical discussions among Robert P. George, Patrick Lee , Robert T. Miller , and Claire V. McCusker on the relation between bodies and souls. However, as a physicist I am interested in one statement made here yesterday by Robert George . . . . Continue Reading »

While not an Anglican, I was quite interested in a piece of news that comes from The Christian Challenge , an online magazine that calls itself "The Only Worldwide Voice of Traditional Anglicanism." It reports that former U.S. senator John Danforth (also an Episcopal priest) gave a talk . . . . Continue Reading »

The Rev. George Coyne, S.J., director of the Vatican Observatory, has a penchant for theologically risqué statements. In a recent talk he asked, about life’s origins, "Do we need God to explain this? Very succinctly, my answer is no." Well, very succinctly, that is absurd. Of . . . . Continue Reading »

For a while it seemed that Father John Jenkins, the new president of the University of Notre Dame, was going to do the sensible thing about the performance of “The Vagina Monologues” on his campus. Unfortunately, he seems to have suffered some kind of collapse, whether of the will or . . . . Continue Reading »

There are two fundamentally different battles raging in the current debates about evolution. The first pits nearly the entire scientific community against creationists, who believe that they are upholding the veracity of Scripture by denying that evolution happened at all. The second battle . . . . Continue Reading »

In his op-ed piece last Sunday in USA Today , Edward O. Wilson makes a sweeping pronouncement: “The two world views—science-based explanations and faith-based religion—cannot be reconciled.” I agree: one cannot reconcile them, because they do not need to be reconciled. They . . . . Continue Reading »

One often hears it said that modern science has adopted a methodology that takes no account of teleology and final causation. This is taken to be a point against teleology by some and against modern science by others. It is true that Bacon, Descartes, and many others who have philosophized about . . . . Continue Reading »

Every academic knows how completely in thrall to identity politics and quotas our universities are. I heard a refreshing comment on this recently at a physics research talk. The speaker was a scientist originally from the Soviet Union, now at an American university famous for its liberalism and . . . . Continue Reading »