Free Republic

Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality is Nancy Pearcey’s timely attempt to defend traditional Christian morality against a surging secular tide. In seven chapters, Pearcey takes on the most contentious issues of our time—abortion, euthanasia, sexual morality, marriage, transgenderism—and exposes the dualistic framework behind them, a fractured view of reality that splits personhood from embodiment, intimacy from sex, the body from the self, gender from biological sex, the moral order from the natural order. These ideologies, she argues, depend upon a “devastatingly reductive view of the body,” a body with only instrumental value and no intrinsic...

Msgr. Charles Pope The Catholic Answer Teleology vs. Typology? Q. I am trying to understand the different theological and philosophical terms that we use as a Church. Two big ones for me are teleology and typology. They both seem to point to the future, but how are they different? Typology was used by the Church Fathers, right? Claire, Alexandria, Va. A. Teleology comes from the Greek word telos, meaning “end,” “goal,” “destination” or “perfection.” As such, teleology is that aspect of theology that looks to the end, or goal, of something. In terms of theology, the end goal of the...

“Why should we give a damn about the Afghan people?” Andy McCarthy asks. Our presence in Afghanistan, he says, is “pointless.” Now, this is different than saying we would like to help them but the ability to do so is beyond our reach. It’s also a separate matter from saying that there are countless claims on our conscience, but because of inherent limitations on our resources, the suffering the Afghan people are experiencing doesn’t warrant our assistance. And it’s a different argument from saying we shouldn’t continue to expend American blood in a 10-year-old war.No, what McCarthy is arguing, in...

Shedding Light on the Protein Big Bang Theory March 13, 2009 — The precise three-dimensional structure of a typical protein molecule is so complex, its origin would seem hopeless by chance. What if evolutionary biologists were to discover a whole host of proteins literally exploded into existence at the beginning of complex life? We can find out what they would think by looking at an article on the “protein big bang” found on Astrobiology Magazine...

Man as the Representative of the SupernaturalThe Duke of Argyll THE denial and exclusion of what is called "The Supernatural" in our explanations of nature, is the same doctrine in another form as the denial and exclusion of anthropopsychism. The connection may not be evident at first sight, but it arises from the fact that the human mind is really the type, and the only type, of that which men call the supernatural. It would be well if this word were altogether banished from our vocabulary. It is in the highest degree ambiguous and deceptive. It assumes that the...

The key to understanding Lincoln's philosophy of statesmanship is that he always sought the meeting point between what was right in theory and what could be achieved in practice. By Dinesh D'Souza Most Americans -- including most historians -- regard Abraham Lincoln as the nation's greatest president. But in recent years powerful movements have gathered, both on the political right and the left, to condemn Lincoln as a flawed and even wicked man. For both camps, the debunking of Lincoln usually begins with an exposé of the "Lincoln myth," which is well described in William Lee Miller's 2002 book Lincoln's...