When Pope Benedict XVI visited the United States in April of 2008, I had the chance to attend the opening ceremony at the White House South Lawn.

On this day of the Summer Solstice, I think of how much I enjoy the calendar published by the Vatican Observatory, with beautiful photographs of the planets taken with its telescopes at its headquarters on the grounds of the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo.

President Obama, on March 9, 2009, signed an important executive order that vastly expanded federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research and crossed a significant and troubling ethical line.

I write this fresh from debating bioethicist Peter Singer on "Can we be moral without God?" at Singer's home campus, Princeton University.

The scientists were jubilant, as men are when dividing the spoils.

We share 98% of our genes with chimpanzees. Why does that piddling 2% make us so different?

Laws like those in Germany and Italy, while they would not stop every injustice done to embryos, could go a long way towards stemming the tide and assuring that further forms of laboratory barbarism and human exploitation do not become commonplace.

Whenever longstanding laws are reversed, and practices come to be sanctioned that were formerly forbidden, it behooves us to examine whether such momentous legal shifts are morally coherent or not.

The scientist's problem with God did not spring from his theory.

Feb. 12, 2009 is the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. By coincidence it is also Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday, but the media hype I have seen has been reserved mostly for Darwin.