The Humanitas Forum

Outsourcing pregnancy, baby factories, wombs-for-rent, baby farms, and breeders are some of the terms used in discussing the international market for surrogacy—none of which are very flattering.  But HBO Watch editor Jef Dinsmore goes a step farther in describing …

Physician-assisted suicide is currently legal in five states:  Oregon (1997), Washington (2009), Montana (2009), Vermont (2013) and New Mexico (2014).  And California is set to become number six, depending on whether Gov. Jerry Brown gives a signature or …

A recent article in Cosmopolitan should make a Minnesota mother, a lawyer, the poster child for our contemporary therapeutic culture.  According to sociologist Philip Rieff, in a therapeutic understanding of the world, there is “nothing at stake beyond a …

Yes, what Bruce Jenner has done is as profoundly American.  It advances a strain of American culture clearly articulated in the late 1800s by Walt Whitman’s epic poem, Song of Myself:  “I Celebrate myself, and sing myself, …

As the media and much of the American public celebrate the transition of Bruce Jenner to Caitlyn Jenner, there is an unreported down side to the realities of “gender fluidity.”  Only a few journals, blogs and websites have discussed …

“What does it mean to be human?” is perhaps the most significant question of the 21^st century.  Or, asked a bit differently in anticipation of what we might anticipate in what’s called the biotech century, “What is the …

Bill Gates is concerned.  Stephen Hawking is worried.  And Elon Musk warns that artificial intelligence is the “greatest existential threat” facing humankind—“with artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon.”  

Sir Clive Sinclair goes even further:  …

In a 2007 column, George Will described the use of prenatal screening for Down syndrome babies as a search-and-destroy mission.  His assessment was correct then and is ever more apt today.  Over 70 percent of Down babies are …

Lessons on teaching methods and educational philosophy are not what we typically expect at the movies.  Most people expect lots of action and entertaining plots.  The Matrix and The Karate Kid offer both—one a futuristic sci-fi thriller, the …

What has Christian theology to do with posthuman culture?

Much—or it should!  Over a half-century ago C. S. Lewis warned that the last step in man’s conquest of nature would mean the conquest of human nature itself.  …