In Human Embryos, Human Beings, A Scientific and Philosophical Approach philosopher Samuel Condic and Neurobiologist Maureen Condic advance a careful and detailed case for the proposition that a human being comes to be at fertilization, and refute the main arguments to the contrary. Along the way they clarify the concepts of substance, substantial form, soul, organism, and final and formal causality.
The HHS has recently—and rightly—described life as beginning at conception. Dr. Richard Paulson’s denial of this claim contradicts the standard scientific position, and his arguments against that claim are fallacious and inaccurate.
The traditional philosophical and theological concept of the soul allows us to integrate what the empirical sciences reveal with what we know about ourselves as rational and moral beings.
Senator Rubio is on the firmest possible scientific ground when he says that science shows that the child in the womb, from the very point of successful fertilization, is indeed a human being.
The commitment to be faithful to one’s spouse—for better, for worse, in sickness and in health—is not a pledge to keep the same feelings. It is a pledge to do certain things, to voluntary conduct.
Total brain death is a valid criterion for pronouncing the death of human beings.
To recap two major problems with the HHS mandate: it restricts the natural right of religious freedom and imposes a false view of religion.
The conjugal conception of marriage is just and coherent; the same-sex marriage proponents’ conception of marriage is unjust and incoherent.
Defenders of conjugal marriage must be careful to not obscure the true nature of marriage—and the state’s true interest in promoting it.
There is an intrinsic link between marriage and procreation, but this does not mean that infertile couples cannot really be married.
President Obama has called for vigorous debate on the abortion question. For that to happen, though, his own position must be clarified. The picture that emerges is not a flattering one.
A recent story in Newsweek claimed that the only reasons for opposing same-sex “marriage” are religious. But there are powerful arguments for marriage rooted not in faith but in reason.