The struggle over the legality of abortion has roiled the country for more than fifty years. On one side, the pro-life movement insists that innocent life must be protected by the government and in morality from conception to natural death. On the other, “pro-choice” advocates insist that abortion is medical care and that the decision of whether to terminate a pregnancy belongs solely to the mother and her doctor. Few issues have so bitterly divided the country for as long as abortion has, with the exceptions of Abolition and the Civil Rights movements. Pro-life advocates are often stereotyped as being merely pro-birth, that is, only caring for a baby until he or she is born. But is that true? And what drives committed pro-life advocates to expend so much time and energy …
Is evil a metaphysical reality, or is it merely a word we use to describe intentionally destructive behavior or horribly painful outcomes? If evil is real, what is its nature? Can one believe in the existence of evil without having a religious understanding of reality? And if evil does exist, does that mean good must also? My guest today, a priest in the Orthodox Church, has some informed opinions on these questions. The Very Rev. Archpriest Andrew Stephen Damick is Chief Content Officer of Ancient Faith Ministries, the former pastor (2009-2020) of St. Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church of Emmaus, Pennsylvania, and author or co-author of The Wolf and the Cross (2025), The Lord of Spirits (2023), and several other books, all from Ancient Faith Publishing. He has been podcasting since …
Whether or not human beings are exceptional is one of the most important questions of our age. Either we have unique value and moral responsibilities, or we are just another animal in the forest, and if that is how we perceive ourselves, it is precisely how we will act. Most contemporary commentary about this crucial issue deny our exceptionalism. But now, making his second appearance on this podcast, Princeton professor Robert P. George has authored an important new book — Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth — which argues in favor of human exceptionalism (although he doesn’t use that term) and grapples with the issues that flow from that important understanding. George holds Princeton University’s celebrated McCormick Professorship of Jurisprudence and is Founder and …
Something has gone terribly wrong with American medicine. The COVID pandemic broke the back of trust in our public health officials. There is an affordability crisis. Medical ethics have degraded to the point that doctors no longer take the Hippocratic Oath. Chronic diseases are on the rise, particularly in children. It has all become such a mess. But what should be done about it? Christ famously said, “Physician, heal thyself.” Is that the answer? Welsey’s guest on this episode of Humanize, Aaron Kheriaty, MD, thinks it is. He has written an important book — Making the Cut: How to Heal Modern Medicine — a fascinating combination of memoir, exposé, and advocacy for reform as the author grapples with the most intractable problems afflicting our healthcare …
The Epistle to the Hebrews tells us that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” That isn’t science. It is religion, and these days, many have come to believe that never the twain shall meet. But what if the reality of God could be demonstrated scientifically? What evidence would it take? What would be the consequence? French author Olivier Bonnassies has co-authored an internationally bestselling book (400,000 books sold), recently translated into English, that grapples with these questions. In God: The Science, The Evidence, Bonnassies and Michel-Yves Bollore argue that science is in the midst of a “great reversal” in which the supposedly incompatible realms are becoming mutually reinforcing. Bonnassies is a …
Mark Twain is generally credited with the quip, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” The same can’t be said about climate change, which has become one of our most contentious and complicated public policy controversies. It’s also divisive. According to a recent Gallup Poll, sixty-two percent of those polled worry about climate change a great deal or a fair amount. Thirty-eight percent worry about warming just a little or not at all. What to do about it causes further disagreement, even among those very concerned about a warming climate. The question of how to best balance the use of fossil fuels and renewable energy sources takes up most of these debates, an issue for another day. But there are also disagreements about how to …
The existence of the human soul is usually described as a matter of faith unprovable by science. But is that true? What if evidence exists that we each do indeed have souls and even, that life continues after death? Whether we have souls and what happens to us after death — obliteration, reincarnation, heaven, hell — is a question about which humans have obsessed for as long as we have records of our existence. Indeed, it may be the ultimate question, for as a suicidal Hamlet laments in Shakespeare’s most immortal soliloquy: To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;For in that sleep of death what dreams may comeWhen we have shuffled off this mortal coil,Must give us pause… Wesley’s guests on today’s program respond …
