All Matters of Life and Death articles – Page 3
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Q&A: Why have anti-abortion activists accidentally banned fertility treatment in Alabama?
Alabama’s Supreme Court has ruled that embryos in deep freeze, stored as part of IVF treatment, can be considered as legal children. This unexpected judgement has prompted many clinics to shut their doors, fearing lawsuits, as the storage and eventual destruction of surplus embryos is standard practice in IVF.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: How can Christian doctors approach medical-assisted dying (euthanasia)?
Medical Assistance in Dying: Judicial activism, suicidal ideation, reasons to stay alive, and Hippocrates’ successful medical practice
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Psychedelics, spirits and the philosophy of Harry Potter
Culture is increasingly interested in psychedelic drugs. Whether it’s Silicon Valley execs micro-dosing LSD to turbocharge their meetings, Americans booking ayahuasca weekends in Mexico, or rafts of studies suggesting ketamine can really help in treating depression, we’re all taking drugs much more seriously than any time since the 1960s counterculture.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Q&A: Should single Christians use dating apps if they strike out at church?
A listener has emailed in his dilemma off the back of our recent series of episodes: His small evangelical church teaches a traditional Christian message on relationships and marriage, yet offers single members like him no opportunities to meet like-minded women. Is it OK for him to turn to dating apps to fish in a deeper pool, or are the apps unavoidably commodifying his sisters in Christ and conforming him to secular cultural ethics on relationships?
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: New Creation: Reading the Bible backwards, the ‘opiate of the masses’, Physics 2.0, and the resurrected yet scarred body
Our four-part series on the deeper narrative of the Bible comes to an end with New Creation. Just as with the beginning of the story, this final chapter is often overlooked in many churches and the Christian narrative is compressed simply to fall and redemption.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Egg freezing revisited: What about the ‘surplus’ eggs, and is better contraception part of the solution?
A listener has emailed in two excellent questions in response to our recent episode looking at egg freezing. What happens to the leftover eggs which are frozen but never reimplanted, and can Christians be relaxed about this intrinsic wastefulness of the process?
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Gender gap in church: Onward Christian Soldiers, the only man in a room full of women, Bonhoeffer’s ‘cheap grace’ and Christian dating apps
In this episode we look at what evidence there is for the idea of a gender gap in church, and then discuss what may have caused it. Are men and women fundamentally so different they worship God and are discipled in radically different ways?
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Q&A: The contradictions which underpin anti-suicide efforts in an era of euthanasia, and are there any honest and unbiased journalists left these days?
Join us as we tackle listener questions on the ethical line crossed with euthanasia legalisation and the contradiction of suicide prevention. Can this worldview stand? We’ll also discuss finding unbiased news amidst conspiracy theories and commercial concerns.
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ShowsMatter of Life & Death: Egg freezing: The ticking biological clock, prosecco and cheese evenings, the culture war over maternal age, and living with wisdom and contentment
Increasing numbers of women are choosing to freeze their eggs in the hope that years down the line they can use these younger, healthier eggs to have children once their relationship, personal, financial or work circumstances are right.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Genetics: Libraries of recipe books, BRCA1, Gattaca, and Big Data Towers of Babel
A final classic episode to see us through the Christmas and New Year break. Today we’re returning to an interview with NHS geneticist Melody Redman.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Pregnancy crisis - A constructive Christian response, heads versus hearts, paternalistic gynaecologists, and ambiguity in the ultrasound clinic
Today we’re returning to a classic episode from our back catalogue, with special guest Sophie Guthrie-Kummer from Choices, a Christian crisis pregnancy centre in London.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Climate anxiety — ’Delay means death’, Extinction Rebellion, throwing pebbles into God’s river, and rediscovering lament
In this episode we consider the communication and changing narratives around climate change, why an unscientific hyper-fatalism has set in with many activists, and what impact this might be having on younger generations terrified humanity itself is going extinct.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Q&A: Should we welcome the coming wave of anti-obesity drugs, and what’s at stake in the argument over the 14-day limit on embryo research?
Our year-end Q&A episode as we discuss hot topics: Wegovy, the controversial anti-obesity drug and the debate on extending the 14-day limit on human embryo research
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Redemption: Always Plan A, sharing in Christ’s sufferings, a Disney fairy story, and the offensive incarnation
Creation. Fall. Redemption. New Creation. Our series on the theological foundations of Christian ethics and the grand narrative of the Bible has reached the third chapter – redemption.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Palliative care, Dogs and Guinness on the wards, complicated grief, DNAR discussions, and resisting assisted dying
A couple of years ago we interviewed Sarah Foot, a Christian palliative care doctor. She spoke about how she treats the physical, mental, social and even spiritual needs of those who are dying, the Christian foundations of the discipline, and what impact her profession has on her.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Q&A: Why are we ignoring rising death rates among poorer ethnic minority children, and will the flesh-and-blood girlfriend become a thing of the past?
New official data in England reveals an alarming and much under-reported phenomenon – significant increases in mortality among children from the most deprived communities over the last two years.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Science and religion 1: The myth of conflict, Charles Darwin’s beetle research, epistemic humility, English country churchyard or Californian fridge?
This week’s guest is Nick Spencer, senior fellow at the faith thinktank Theos, and recent author of Magisteria: The entangled histories of science and religion.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Q&A: The ‘myths’ leading women to choose abortion, and is digital slavery underpinning breakthroughs in AI?
This week we dip back into the postbag to look at some more listener questions.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: Friendship 3: Ruth and Naomi, ‘chesed’, trips to the theatre with John Stott, and an unorthodox rabbi
We last tackled the idea of friendship when we explored the so-called ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ – that cloud of concern that today hangs over any close relationship between two people.
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ShowsMatters of Life & Death: The Fall: Bad actor theory, a malevolent voice in the Garden, Total Depravity and Original Sin, and the ‘Christian heresy’ of liberal humanism
Creation. Fall. Redemption. New Creation. This is the grand narrative of scripture and the theological foundation we use to try to probe into the ethical challenges thrown up by advances in science and technology.
