I’ve refrained from commenting directly on the 2016 presidential campaign, but I feel the need to share a new publication from an extremely important organization that I have supported for years, the Southern Poverty Law Center. Our schoolchildren are being greatly affected by the rhetoric of the election, and I encourage everyone to read The […]
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Abortion and the Paranormal Evidence
Abortion is often in the news, but it has reappeared again lately in three guises: the controversy around Planned Parenthood and the supposed sale of fetal tissue, the violent attacks and murders in a Colorado Planned Parenthood facility by an anti-abortion radical, and the comments by GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump that women who have […]
The Ethical Imperative for Making America Better: Learn from our Peer Nations
For physicians, the Hippocratic Oath forms the ethical basis of their practice. Our leaders in Congress take a solemn vow to defend the Constitution of the United States. Law enforcement officials make promises to “serve and protect.” Whether these promises are actually kept or not, the people making them are, in effect, undertaking an ethical imperative […]
Resurrection: What it Is and Isn’t
Resurrection: a good topic for the continuing Easter season in the Christian calendar. (Our Orthodox brothers and sisters will celebrate Easter on May 1st this year.) While Christians think we have a pretty good idea what we mean by resurrection, or at least the resurrection of Jesus, it is actually more complicated than it appears […]
Capital Punishment from the Perspective of the “Other Side”
The United States is one of the few Western industrialized nations that still allows the death penalty. Americans who favor capital punishment justify it for several reasons: someone who commits a heinous crime deserves to die; the death penalty is a deterrent to violent crime; and death is the only punishment that comes close […]
Some Surprises from the Roman Catacombs 3: The Orante in Light of the Prehistoric Goddess
The prehistoric goddess, the Orante, and the catacombs – now we can begin to reinterpret the pervasive religious symbol of the Orante in the context of nature symbols and the “mother earth” of the Roman catacombs. First, many, if not most, of the symbols used in catacomb art were not purely decorative. Much of it held […]
Some Surprises from the Roman Catacombs 2: Traditional Interpretations of the Orante
The Orante – who was she in the context of pagan, Jewish and early Christian art, and what was she doing in the catacombs? In our last post, we noted a number of religious symbols in the catacombs that indicated a reverence for the prehistoric nature goddess. One of the symbols is the Orante or […]
Some Surprises from the Roman Catacombs 1: Religious Symbols
The ancient catacombs winding for miles beneath Rome, favorites of tourists from all over the world, provide a glimpse of religious life for several centuries of the early Christian era. In the next few posts, we will look at the catacombs from perspectives not usually considered – the symbols evocative of ancient goddess worship and […]
Good Government versus Bad Government: Don’t Throw the Baby out with the Bath Water
We Americans have a long history of ambivalence toward government at all levels. We have recently witnessed the stand-off in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon between authorities and anti-government protesters. Republican presidential candidates cry out for abolition of government agencies – and have been doing so for decades (recall Ronald Reagan’s frequent rallying […]
An Astronaut and the Afterlife
The late Dr. Edgar Mitchell was the sixth man on the moon. He was also the founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) and the first chairman of Eternea, Inc., the non-profit organization founded by Proof of Heaven author, Dr. Eben Alexander. Dr. Mitchell’s life and convictions are worth examining if we harbor any […]