There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
The response to COVID has invited reflection about the relative value of one human death (and so of one human life) as compared with another. This is a radical question because it makes us ask whether the value of a human life is defined by economic wellbeing and by potential contribution to the economy, or by deeper qualities.
The term 'therapeutic cloning' is unfortunate, as it has nothing to do with replicating humans. Researchers undertaking therapeutic cloning would say that the circumstances under which they stimulate human eggs to develop ensure there is no way the result could ever become a human baby.
We live in a time when around the world so many lives seem not to matter. Whether they be Uighur lives, women’s lives, Black lives, Yemeni lives or refugee lives. So widely disregarded in practice, the large claim that every life has value, however, oftentimes has to be justified. The ultimate reason is that each human being is precious and has an inalienable dignity. No person may be used as a means to another’s end.
This week is the fortieth anniversary of the death of Ita Ford and Maura Clarke in El Salvador. An event distant in place and time, but worth remembering and honouring in its distance. And also worth reflecting on for its significance for our own time.
Approaching the walled and caged building where the sentence was carried out, our young fellows have always been struck by something of a paradox proclaimed in two signs at the door: ‘Bureau of Corrections’ alongside ‘Lethal Injection Chamber’. They were quick to seize upon it. ‘How can you correct and rehabilitate a person after you have killed him?’ they would ask.
These last weeks the possible re-election of Donald Trump has been one of the dark birds that visit many of us in the night. As with other such epochal events, of course, how we might react internally to it is of vastly less weight than its effect on the world. Neither early morning wandering nor anything else we can do will change that. But it might shape our response.
The Buhler arrest stirred a range of responses from across the political divide, many troubled. Legal representatives and human rights advocates were similarly disturbed by what they regarded as a lack of proportion and restraint in police action.
The need to contain the spread of COVID-19 has led to a raft of emergency laws that have challenged us to deeply consider the appropriate balance between community and individual rights.
For the Life of the World is recent document prepared by Orthodox clerical and lay scholars and ratified by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople that challenges perceptions. Based strongly in the faith of the church and addressed primarily to members of the Orthodox churches, it is confident and independent in its voice and radical in many of its conclusions.
Government attitudes towards universities, the humanities and the arts, are often a strange mixture of ignorance, blindness and misplaced priorities. It is almost as if their graduates fail to match the image of what the government would prefer Australians to be.
To think of life after COVID-19 is daunting. The changes that it has brought to our daily lives have been vertiginous. Our awareness of its potential harm is still limited. We are only beginning to catch sight of the grim beast that slouches towards us threatening death and devastation in coming months.
I've been watching Stateless, the ABC drama about Australia’s immigration detention system, with some reluctance. Not because it is poor, but because it is so powerful.
1-12 out of 200 results.
x
Subscribe for more stories like this.
Free sign-up