General Salus

Introduction   For future generations, genetic engineering might all but eliminate the predisposition to serious disease and disability.  It is not difficult to imagine a future where parents routinely select genetic enhancement to “improve” not only the health and longevity, but the physical features, behavioral traits, and aptitudes of their children.  I want to discuss…

Keith Ward will be the 2008-09 Metanexus Senior Fellow. There is a picture of human intellectual progress made popular by Auguste Comte (it originated with Robert Turgot and Henri de Saint-Simon) that sees humanity as moving from the earliest stage of religion through a stage of metaphysics to the final maturity of science. Each stage…

Describing the inner life In this paper I offer a descriptive analysis of ways in which we experience our own inner lives and those of others. I use the term “phenomenology” in the broad sense of receiving thoughts and sense impressions as they present themselves, the “da sein” of things. 1 An ability to describe…

For all its success in sounding Roland’s horn to save planet Earth, Al Gore’s multi-media ecology lesson An Inconvenient Truth may well have muffled other notable calls-to-environmental-action. Published simultaneously, E. O Wilson’s The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth —the author’s twenty-first book on evolutionary biology—is framed as an appeal to a Southern…

Nelson Pike, in the introduction to his book “God and Evil,” states the problem of evil thusly: If God is omnipotent, then He could prevent evil if He wanted to. And if God is perfectly good, then He would want to prevent evil if He could. Thus, if God exists and is both omnipotent and…

Metanexus Salus. 4,494 Words. “While the literature on religion, spirituality, and health has improved since our first review in 1999, a great deal remains to be accomplished. This review addresses current problems in the field and makes recommendations for activities worth pursuing, not worth pursuing, and about an important clarification of the aims of such…

Metanexus Salus. 17,188 Words. Research on the relationships among religion, spirituality and health has grown dramatically over the past decade. It is clear from the literature that many in research, in health care, in the public, and in government, believe that important positive connections have been established and should be vigorously studied. It is also…

Bringing Meaning and Medicine Together An integrative model of healing  To See or Not to See- That is the Question It was 7:30 am on a weekday and a blind woman, dressed for work, was walking in Center City, Philadelphia with her Seeing Eye dog at her right side. As I crossed the street, walking…