Legislation in at least eight states would expand the rights of doctors, nurses, hospitals and even insurance companies to refuse to provide or pay for care — from contraception and ...

If signed into law, a bill recently passed by the State Legislature would permit students to opt out of coursework that goes against their conscience or religious beliefs.

This is the fifth in a series of posts excerpted from my book, The Four Realms of Existence. (Read posts one, two, three and four.) The key premise of the book is that everything about a human being, ...

Research suggests that consciousness could extend far beyond just humans—every cellular creature in the universe, no matter how big or small, could be conscious, too. Studies show that single-cell ...

Being good enough, like the others, is good but not sufficient. Christian discipleship is not merely about “do’s and don’ts” — it is a call to advance inward. Perhaps I am yet to understand, for our ...

Scientists and philosophers studying the mind have discovered how little we know about our inner experiences What was I thinking? This is not as easy or straightforward a question as I would have ...

Consciousness has long been one of science’s most stubborn mysteries. We can map the brain in exquisite detail, decode neural circuits, and even build machines that rival human abilities in language ...

What would it feel like to be a brain in a vat? If you had no body and no world in which to ground yourself, could you be conscious of anything at all? Neuroscientists and philosophers have debated ...

Researchers at Ruhr University Bochum explore why consciousness evolved and why different species developed it in distinct ways. By comparing humans with birds, they show that complex awareness may ...

For decades, scientists assumed that consciousness—the subjective feeling of being aware—was the crowning achievement of the human brain. Other animals, such as birds, lacking a cerebral cortex, were ...

Our conscious experience makes up our lives, often through positive pleasure: I feel the warm Sun on my skin, I hear the singing of birds, I enjoy the moment. Yet we also often experience pain: I feel ...

Understanding the biophysical basis of consciousness remains a substantial challenge for 21st-century science. This endeavor is becoming even more pressing in light of accelerating progress in ...